Harpenden’s Member of Parliament Bim Afolami, who chairs Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Markets and Services, has called for new banking hubs to be centres of community, in a new report (Banking for Britain: The role of financial services in levelling up) published by Public First.
The report highlights the critical importance of banking branches to local communities, with 81% of people feeling that having a bank branch on their local high street was important, making them the fourth most important local amenity for residents. In Harpenden, residents have been concerned about an ongoing trend of high street bank branch closures – and the prospect of further closures which could leave the town without any local banking services.
Mr Afolami has been campaigning for a Harpenden banking hub to be established, following local concerns about the decline in bank branches on Harpenden’s high street. Earlier this year, Mr Afolami wrote to the Leader of St. Albans City & District Council to ask for a space to be created for a community banking hub in the new Harpenden Public Halls development. At that time, the Member of Parliament argued that the District Council-owned space would become a vital publicly-owned asset for the community by protecting banking services at the centre of Harpenden for generations to come.
Now this new report suggests that this hub could have an even greater public use, with hubs delivering a wider range of services in partnership with charities and local government – offering a one-stop shop for banking, public services and community advice.
Bim Afolami MP said,
“Residents in Harpenden, Redbourn, Sandridge and Wheathampstead have told me how important it is to our local community that we have local high street banking services in Harpenden. Hundreds of local people have gotten behind my campaign for a District Council-owned banking hub in the Public Halls and this work I have been doing in Westminster as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Markets and Services has further underlined the importance of bank branches as community assets to people right across the country.
“The evidence shows that people want bank branches on their high streets – but it also shows us the value that these new banking hubs could have to provide services beyond banking. I am immensely grateful to local residents for their support for my campaign for a Harpenden banking hub. I will continue to engage with the District Council to deliver a community hub in Harpenden’s Public Halls which can secure in-person banking services in Harpenden for future generations and which can provide a whole range of other community services which would be of huge benefit to local residents.”
