LOCAL MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has joined more than 50 others to call for changes in the rules around banking hubs to ensure no community is left without bank facilities.

They have written to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) chief executive Nikhil Rathi urging him to allow the swifter installation of hubs in places where individual bank branches are closing.

The FCA is the regulator for LINK, the body responsible for assessing a community’s access to cash needs

But as the rules stand, it is unable to recommend the opening of a banking hub until a town’s last bank announces its closure.

MPs say it risks leaving people with limited or no access to cash - or dependent on charging cashpoints - for weeks and possibly months while new arrangements were put in place.

They say the procedures need to be relaxed so that a hub can be opened when the second-to-last bank in town closes, arguing that such a move would also allow staff to be moved over to a banking hub seamlessly.

The FCA is currently consulting on proposed changes to the rules and Mr Liddell-Grainger, who represents West Somerset and will be the Conservative General Election candidate for a new constituency taking in parishes around Wellington and the Culm Valley, said it was only right that the interests of banking customers should be paramount.

He said: “Thousands of them have been as good as abandoned in recent years as the banks have abruptly decided it is costing them too much to remain on the high street.

“It is therefore only fair that we should be doing what we can to soften the blow of those closures.

“Unfortunately, the days when banks were regarded as benign institutions and run by sympathetic local managers have long gone, it is a much more cut-throat world.

“At one time it would have been unthinkable to lose your local bank branch.

“I know from correspondence how much many people, especially the elderly, still rely on them and still value face-to-face contact.

“But to argue the case that online or telephone banking is not for everybody cuts no ice with the banks.

“That being the case, we have to do whatever we can to soften the blow, and ensuring the early provision of the safety net of a banking hub is one way we can do so.”

In Wellington, a banking hub is set to open temporarily in town council facilities in Fore Street opposite Lloyds Bank, which is closing on March 25, until a permanent location can be found for the hub.