Jayne Kirkham

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wishart. I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden)—who faces issues similar to those we have in Cornwall—for securing this debate. Lloyds, the last bank in Falmouth, closed in March. Big banks have been pulling their branches out of our towns and cities at great speed since covid. From the Moor to Market Street in Falmouth, the most obviously empty and degrading buildings are those that used to have banks in them. The population of Falmouth and Penryn, plus the villages, is approaching 30,000. We now have a banking hub, which opened when Lloyds closed. However, like the hub mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), our hub has only a temporary location, in the town council offices, and I am concerned that it does not have a more permanent home. None of the numerous empty buildings in Falmouth —most of which used to be banks—is decreed suitable for a more permanent banking hub. Ours is one of the 230 banking hubs now in the UK. I support the Government’s commitment to increase that number to 350—if not more—by the end of this Parliament. I hope that more of those banking hubs find a permanent home. The Post Office had been the last bastion against that change until now. Customers are directed to post offices by closing banks, but that is now changing. The franchise model that the Post Office has adopted means that it relies on bigger stores to run post offices, which leaves it vulnerable to high street closures. The post office in Truro—Cornwall’s capital—is closing in October because it resides inside a TGJones that used to be a WH Smith. Due to the Post Office insisting on finding another franchise rather than a direct store, we have to wait for a commercial procurement process for a host company, which will leave the capital of Cornwall without a post office—we do not know for how long—and vulnerable to the same thing happening again. The Post Office can justify that by saying that there is another post office just under a mile away as the crow flies, but it is a tiny shop across a dual carriageway, and it is in no way suitable to serve the capital city of Cornwall.