Simon Read: 'The big idea of banks? To get out of all our villages'

NatWest shut 149 branches last year and is closing 99 in 2015

Have you ever been to Knott End-on-Sea, a small village in Lancashire not far from Fleetwood? It's got a decent-looking café that serves up a generous all-day breakfast for £6.90, and its own pub, the Bourne Arms. There's a golf club and a library and a range of shops. And, crucially, it has a bank.

For a small local community of 5,000, like Knott End, a bank is essential. Residents and small businesses in the area rely on it. Experience has shown that in every village or town across the country where the last bank has closed down, local shops have quickly followed.

So villagers are up in arms at news that the bank, a branch of the state-owned NatWest, will close its doors for ever on 15 September. The bank says: "We are working to ensure there are a number of alternative ways for people in the area to continue to bank with us." It is keeping an ATM there and has arranged for locals to use the local post office. But, ironically, five years ago the branch was featured in a NatWest TV ad that promised to keep branches open if they were the last in town.

It went back on that pledge in April 2014 when it gave notice to 14 "last banks" that it was abandoning them. There'll no doubt be more as Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns NatWest, cuts costs and chases profits.

The group shut 149 branches last year and is closing 99 in 2015. As well as taking out the last bank in town in Lancashire's Knott End, its plan to close 11 branches in Wales will leave Corwen and Llangollen without a single bank, after HSBC recently closed its two branches in the towns.

RBS bosses hosted their annual general meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday. Chief executive Ross McEwan told shareholders that it is on track to become a low-risk, profitable, UK-focused bank by 2019, 11 years after it was bailed out by the taxpayer. He's currently busy, he reported, running down the non-core parts of the bank, dealing with conduct charges and fines, and focusing on the core business – but he plans to turn RBS into the best in the UK for customer service.

Those still facing problems because of its computer meltdown will have a quiet laugh at that, as will those in Knott End fighting the branch closure.

s.read@independent.co.uk

Twitter: @simonnread