Latest news with #PostOffice
The Sun
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
Major bank axing key service at 12 branches within days – is your local affected?
A MAJOR banking chain is axing a key service at 12 high street branches within days. Santander is getting rid of counters in these branches and switching them to a "counter-free" format. 1 This means customers will no longer be able to deposit or withdraw coins or large amounts of cash at these locations. Instead of speaking to staff at a counter, customers will be directed by floor staff to use ATMs and payment machines, making most transactions digital. Santander has already removed counters from six of its branches this year, but another 12 are set to lose the service in the coming weeks. Branches in Bromsgrove, Northwich, Sittingbourne, and Streatham will stop offering counter services on Monday, June 30. Customers in Bracknell will see counters removed on July 7, while Hartlepool and Nuneaton will follow on July 14. Gravesend and Liverpool's Allerton Road branch will lose counters on August 4. Camberley, Orpington, and Rotherham branches will make the switch to a counter-free format on August 11. Customers needing to deposit or withdraw coins will have to visit another full-service Santander branch or use one of the 11,684 Post Offices. Withdrawals over £500 a day will also need to be made elsewhere. This is because cash withdrawals will now be handled through in-branch ATMs rather than in person at a counter. Inside the hubs restoring high street banking and reversing the tide of mass branch closures Customers can use their debit card to withdraw more cash at the Post Office, with a limit of £10,000, depending on the funds available at the branch. For withdrawals over £5,000, there is a £10 flat fee. Withdrawals over £2,000 incur a charge of 50p per £100, while amounts above £5,000 are charged at 35p per £100. A spokesperson for Santander UK, said: "As customer behaviour changes, we are ensuring that our branches remain fit for the future. "Our new combination of full-service branches, alongside Work Cafés, counter-free branches and reduced hours branches, aims to provide the right balance between digital banking and face-to-face money management and guidance. "As a business, we must move with customers and balance our investment across all the places where we interact with customers, to deliver the very best for them now and in the future." Which branches are already counter-free? Abingdon - 23 Bury Street, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 3QT Accrington - 29-31 Union Street, Accrington, Lancashire, BB5 1PL Stirling - 49-51 Port Street, Stirling, Stirlingshire, FK8 2EW Eastleigh - 58 Market Street, Eastleigh, Hampshire, SO50 5RU Edgware - 115 Station Road, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 7JG Neath - 20 Green Street, Neath, West Glamorgan, SA11 1EA What else is happening at Santander? Santander is cutting the opening hours of dozens of its branches from June 30. This move comes as part of a broader restructuring, which also includes the closure of 95 branches and the conversion of 18 to "counter-free" service desks. Currently, most branches are open Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 3:00pm, with many also open on Saturday mornings from 9:30am to 12:30pm. Under the new plan, these branches will only open three days a week. Twenty-one branches will operate on a Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday schedule, while 14 others will open on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:30am to 3:00pm. One branch will see its hours reduced even further, opening only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The bank, which serves over 14million UK customers, announced in March that it plans to close 95 branches across the UK. Following the shake-up, just 349 branches will remain on the high street. What you can do if your local bank is set to close There are still a number of ways people can access basic banking services without having to venture to another town with a branch. You can use one of the Post Office's 11,684 branches to perform basic banking tasks — but not to open new bank accounts or take personal loans and mortgages. You can find your nearest Post Office branch by visiting Meanwhile, many banks offer a mobile banking service - where they bring a bus to your area offering services you can usually get at a physical branch. Other banks use buildings such as village halls or libraries to offer mobile banking services. It's worth contacting your bank to see what mobile services they have available, and when they might next be in your area. New super ATMs are being rolled out across the UK where branch closures have left residents unable to access essential banking services. These ATMs will allow customers to withdraw funds, access their balance, change PIN numbers and deposit cash. Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Halifax, Lloyds, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank are already signed up to allow deposits, at the super ATMs. Banking hubs are also being opened across the UK with 250 set to be available by the end of 2025. These sites typically feature a counter service operated by the Post Office as standard, enabling customers to conduct routine banking transactions conveniently. Each hub also has a private area where customers can consult with staff representing their banks for more complex matters. What services do banking hubs offer? BANKING hubs offer a range of services to bridge the gap left by the closure of local branches. Operated by the Post Office, these hubs allow customers to perform routine transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, and balance enquiries. Each hub also features private booths where customers can discuss more complex banking matters with staff from their respective banks. Staff from different banks are available on a rotational basis, ensuring that customers have access to a wide range of banking services throughout the week. Additionally, customers can receive advice and support on various financial products and services, including loans, mortgages, and savings accounts.
Daily Mirror
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'Keir Starmer caved again - so who's in charge of Britain?'
There is a knack to reversing ferrets, and Keir Starmer hasn't got it. Having sent almost 4million disabled people into a tailspin, he chewed through a 165-seat majority to provoke his party into its biggest rebellion for years. He insisted he wasn't caving even as he strapped on a headtorch and flippers, and then caved only halfway. He's suffered a massive loss of personal political power, and guaranteed future rebellions to undermine him even further. Here's how the Prime Minister's team ought to have done it: 1) Don't cut the means which disabled people use to get into work and society in the first place, you gonks. 2) Pay attention to the first rumblings. Is it coming from the actual ground you're standing on? 3) Look bendier, earlier. 4) Don't save face - earns points for honesty and humility. Faced with rebellion, Keir should have swept the entire benefits bill off the table a week ago, make like he was knocking Cabinet heads together, and bring it back in a month with concessions. Instead he looks indecisive, malleable, and his credibility has been holed below the waterline. Again. But the story being told about Starmer is not how he really is. When he's acted instinctively and relied on his judgement it's worked well - the rapid courts crackdown after the Southport riots, the firm-but-friendly dealing with Donald Trump, the trade deals. Statesmanship appears to be something he can do, and do well. It's the stuff he delegates that trips him up. Rachel Reeves was persuaded by Treasury officials to cut the winter fuel payment, and he didn't overrule her. Liz Kendall came up with the benefits reforms, and the son of a toolmaker and a chronically-disabled woman didn't say "'do what, now?" Now the Hillsborough Law he's promised four times and already delayed once is on-course to expose him to fresh allegations of incompetence. This piece of anti-scandal legislation was always intended to make it illegal for a public official to lie, as they have done in courts, to ministers, and at inquests and inquiries over the 1989 football disaster, infected blood, the Post Office scandal and dozens more. It protects junior staff who get ordered to lie by superiors, as happened when senior officers told constables to rewrite their pocket books to cover-up police failures at Hillsborough. Introducing such a law is a legacy that will save the state billions in compensation, and forever mark the PM that did it as a moral crusader. It is, unarguably, A Good Thing All Round. And senior civil servants in Whitehall hate it. They claim it's unworkable and they'll get arrested for taking the paperclips home. Seeing as the families' draft of the bill states the criminality only kicks in for "court proceedings, official inquiries and investigations where their acts or omissions may be relevant", it's a reach. Yet ministers and SpAds have taken it as gospel, and told the families the bill must be watered down so it applies only when giving evidence under oath. But here's the thing: there is no middle ground. You either tell the truth, or you don't. Officials have told campaigners: "We f***ed up... we should never have promised the families what they wanted." Which is the same as saying that Starmer f***ed up, by making the promise to grieving mothers, by stating it in his conference speeches, and putting it in his election manifesto. As one person with knowledge of the process told me: "Putting politics aside, this Government is showing awesome ineptitude. It could be an easy win for Starmer but his team seems determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.' There is no clearer way to indicate the Prime Minister isn't driving the train, than his underlings telling people he's consistently wrong. If the officials succeed in destroying the central requirement of legislation the PM has ordained, he might as well take to his bed for the next four years and have done with it. There is one glimmer of hope: when it comes to choosing between his power base and the demands of officials, Starmer bends the knee to his backbenchers. More than 120 Labour MPs signed the amendment which undermined the PIP cut s - more than 140 have already signed a letter demanding he deliver the Hillsborough Law he promised. If a corrupted, asinine version of the legislation gets before Parliament, the rebellion will be greater. Party conference in Liverpool will be torture. Activists, councillors, MPs and peers will unite to rise up against a leader they will see as the man who trampled the dead. "It will be war," one Labour insider told me. "It will make the PIP rebellion look like a pat on the back." The PM has yet to realise he's landed a job running a fudge factory, and nothing will ever be neat and tidy. But his party contains more functioning eyes, ears, and political antennae than Downing Street does, and a year in, they are flexing their muscles. This summer Starmer will be asked to show who's in charge of Britain - his MPs, the Whitehall officials, or the man he can be, when and if he tries.
Spectator
12 hours ago
- Business
- Spectator
Revealed: the dodgy data undermining Universal Credit
As Sir Keir Starmer offers concessions to 126 rebels to water down his welfare reform bill, a scandal that undermines the entire Universal Credit system goes ignored. The Spectator has seen figures revealing that the HMRC data feed which powers Universal Credit payments to low-paid workers may be so error-strewn that as many as one in four claimants has been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all. When Universal Credit was introduced 11 years ago to modernise benefits, it required a robust data system to drive it. HMRC's answer was the 'Real Time Information' (RTI) system – hailed at the time as the most significant overhaul of the tax system since PAYE's introduction in 1944. Employers were required to report payroll information every time they paid staff, enabling near real-time benefit calculations. The system was later used to support the Covid furlough scheme. But problems surfaced almost immediately. Financial penalties that were triggered automatically to ensure employers reported earnings records accurately and on time were abandoned after just one use in 2014, almost as soon as the data stream was turned on. A senior official at HMRC said at the time: 'We haven't been able to target them [400,000 automated compliance messages to employers] as sharply as we hoped and they went to people who had complied.' In hindsight, some insiders draw comparisons to the Post Office's Horizon scandal. The implications of flawed RTI data are vast. FTSE 100 companies have seen tax liabilities misstated by millions because what they owe in tax is also calculated using RTI. Businesses have lost faith in the integrity of the figures. This same stream underpins tax assessments for 30 million people and Universal Credit payments for 23 million. Yet the data is routinely late, inaccurate, or missing. The fallout? Missed tax receipts, unpaid benefits – and in the most severe cases, people wrongly accused of fraud. In 2023, I reported that, while the government claimed the RTI error rate was under 1 per cent, figures I obtained showed a monthly error rate closer to 5 per cent. One in 20 Universal Credit claims for working households, it turns out, may be wrongly calculated every month – a figure the government strongly disputes. More recent Freedom of Information requests suggest an error rate as high as 8 per cent, or 2.5 million incorrect records monthly. The benefits bill is unsustainably high and reform is clearly needed These reports in The Spectator led to the shop workers union USDAW including questions about Universal Credit payments in its annual survey to thousands of members. I have now obtained the results. Of those surveyed, some 1,265 said they claimed Universal Credit. Some 23 per cent admitted they had had issues with their UC claims because the details of their households' total pay were wrong at DWP or had an incorrect date shown. That suggests that almost one in four in-work UC claimants have been made a victim of this error that stems from the RTI system. Nearly 29 per cent of those who had experienced an error ended up in financial hardship as a result. Some 22 per cent said they'd experienced issues but not been able to get a satisfactory response from the DWP. The USDAW survey, which is the first of its kind to ask in-work UC claimants if they've experienced errors stemming from RTI, reveals that even the error rate of 4-8 per cent I've previously reported on could be a considerable underestimate. The survey responders are all USDAW members so tend to be people working in lower-paid private-sector roles. It's not possible to say for certain that they are all UC claimants, but their membership suggests these are the type of people likely to be in the in-work claimant population governed by RTI. A common issue raised was the misreporting of pay dates for supermarket workers paid every four weeks. The RTI system often logs two payments in a single calendar month, triggering a drop in benefit entitlement. These are not isolated glitches; they point to a systemic failure. A government spokesman said: 'In the vast majority of cases using Real Time Information supplied by employers is an efficient and accurate method of calculating Universal Credit payments – and less than 1 per cent of cases do not match. 'If a claimant wishes to dispute the earnings information we have used, they can submit evidence to us, and we will look into the case and make any necessary changes.' The benefits bill is unsustainably high and reform is clearly needed. But if Starmer is now open to concessions, this is his opportunity to go beyond cash savings. He should instruct Welfare Secretary Liz Kendall to review the reliability of the RTI system underpinning Universal Credit. At its core, the principle that work should pay is absolutely right. But it only holds water if the systems ensuring that promise are accurate, transparent and fair. Because too many claimants are being failed by the very mechanism meant to support them. If Starmer wants to reform welfare, he must start by fixing the machinery behind it before another Horizon-style scandal hits the headlines.
Powys County Times
16 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Criminal trials linked to Post Office Horizon scandal could wait until 2028
Criminal trials stemming from the Post Office Horizon scandal might not get underway until 2028, according to the police officer leading the investigation. Commander Stephen Clayman said police are 'making some real progress' but warned it would take time as they widen the investigation from people 'involved in the immediate decision-making'. He told the BBC: 'The teams need to be really meticulous and pay attention to detail. 'We are beginning to scope, looking at wider management. That will happen, and is happening, it will just take time to get there.' The investigation, known as Operation Olympos, is focusing on potential crimes of perjury and perverting the court of justice, linked to the wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters and the wider presentation of the Horizon IT system. Police have said the inquiry is 'unprecedented' in size, with potentially more than 3,000 victims and evidence currently including more than 1.5 million documents that have to be reviewed and forces across the UK involved. No decision will be made over potential criminal charges until the public inquiry into the scandal has published its final report and investigators have 'thoroughly reviewed' its contents. It is understood that dozens of people have been classed as persons of interest in the investigation. The investigation has identified seven suspects, according to the BBC. Former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall told the BBC victims were 'desperate to see some kind of accountability', but backed the need for police to 'do it properly'. More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their accounts. Hundreds are still awaiting compensation despite the previous government saying that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts. The scandal is one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British legal history. A Post Office spokesperson said: 'Post Office has co-operated fully and openly with the Metropolitan Police since early 2020 to provide whatever information it needs for its investigations.'
South Wales Guardian
16 hours ago
- Politics
- South Wales Guardian
Criminal trials linked to Post Office Horizon scandal could wait until 2028
Commander Stephen Clayman said police are 'making some real progress' but warned it would take time as they widen the investigation from people 'involved in the immediate decision-making'. He told the BBC: 'The teams need to be really meticulous and pay attention to detail. 'We are beginning to scope, looking at wider management. That will happen, and is happening, it will just take time to get there.' The investigation, known as Operation Olympos, is focusing on potential crimes of perjury and perverting the court of justice, linked to the wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters and the wider presentation of the Horizon IT system. Police have said the inquiry is 'unprecedented' in size, with potentially more than 3,000 victims and evidence currently including more than 1.5 million documents that have to be reviewed and forces across the UK involved. No decision will be made over potential criminal charges until the public inquiry into the scandal has published its final report and investigators have 'thoroughly reviewed' its contents. It is understood that dozens of people have been classed as persons of interest in the investigation. The investigation has identified seven suspects, according to the BBC. Former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall told the BBC victims were 'desperate to see some kind of accountability', but backed the need for police to 'do it properly'. More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their accounts. Hundreds are still awaiting compensation despite the previous government saying that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts. The scandal is one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British legal history. A Post Office spokesperson said: 'Post Office has co-operated fully and openly with the Metropolitan Police since early 2020 to provide whatever information it needs for its investigations.'
