Madam,

I thought that I had heard another Machynlleth rumour, but yesterday I called into my branch of NatWest on Maengwyn Street, and had my worst fear realised.

I don’t care how you dress it up, but offering a NatWest cash machine in Dolgellau, as an alternative - well it might as well be on the other side of the moon.

Do these bank bosses have no understanding of the geography of mid Wales?

But, in truth, this closure is not just about geography, it is about people, and it is about community, something that lies at the heart of life in Welsh towns and villages.

This is why I value my branch of NatWest in Machynlleth, more than any other reason. It’s the people, and the community to which they belong, that matters more. It could be any bank, but in my case it happens to be NatWest.

The staff in the branch in Machynlleth are part of my community and, over time, they get to know their customers, and their customer’s lives. So the relationship that develops between us can’t help but be personal.

We become good friends, and at the same time we receive an excellent standard of service from these friends in the bank.

The corporate world doesn’t value, or even understand, this concept of a personal relationship between customers and counter staff in a bank branch. The corporate world prefers that clinical and emotionless separation provided by online banking, and remote call centres. It lacks humanity. It also does a disservice to local businesses in small towns like Machynlleth.

Gone is the night safe; gone is the ability to pay in cash and cheques, quickly and simply at the end of the day, or the next morning; gone is the cash machine; gone is that friendly face the other side of the counter.

Ah but don’t worry you can take a morning out of your next working day to drive 18 miles to Aberystwyth, or 16 miles to Dolgellau, surely? And then who runs the business while you’re doing that? Who pays for fuel?I will never get to appreciate or understand the corporate world because it is fundamentally heartless, and inhumane. It would rather employ robots, than employ people. Robots don’t get sick, don’t need holidays, don’t have babies, don’t have bad hair days, don’t need National Insurance payments or pension fund contributions.

If NatWest doesn’t value its customers enough by providing that friendly local human contact, then it can do without our money.

I would rather place the little money I do have in the hands of a Credit Union that is serving its local community’s needs, than entrust it to a bank that shows so little respect to the communities that it purports to serve.

Yours etc,

Steve Jagger, Machynlleth.

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