South East Cornwall MP Colin Breed has stepped into the row over the imminent closure of Polperro's only bank - Barclays - describing the situation as appalling. The branch, which only opens three mornings a week in winter but Mondays - Fridays in the summer because of the numbers of visitors to the village, will close its doors on April 7.
Customers in the village with personal accounts, not business accounts, will be able to gain access to their money through an arrangement the bank has made with the local Post Office, but traders in the small fishing village, which has thousands of tourists a year are complaining they are being left high and dry. They say taking large amounts of cash over to the nearest bank at Looe in the summer time will be inconvenient and a security nightmare. They are also fed up that the village which also has no cash machine and not even a National Lottery point is daily having to send its tourist trade, described as its life blood, elsewhere.
'It is all very well Barclays promising to install cash machines in most Post Offices at some point in the future, but the people of Polperro need bank services now' said Mr Breed. 'I have written to the managing director of Barclays to ask for his assurance that the bank will not close until alternative and adequate access to services is provided in Polperro'. Mr Breed said it was events like these which showed the importance of the campaign to save local post offices. 'The banks are simply not interested in serving the local community only in more and more profits for their shareholders'.
Mr Neville Jolliff, owner of Neville's Restaurant which is based in the Barclays building has received a letter, as has the tenant of a flat above the bank, informing him the building is to be sold as a whole. 'I will now have to consider what my next step will be' he said, 'but the loss of another facility will be bad for Polperro as a whole'.