South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge is planning to gauge reaction to the news through social media to relay back to the bank.
The outlet in the High Street is set to close this summer as the number of customers using the branch have fallen dramatically. Barclays Bank will close on Friday, June 1, after nearly 200 years of serving the town and bosses said the decision to close the branch was not taken lightly and credited dramatically falling usage figures as behind the reason.
More than 77% of customers already use online or phone banking, while leaflets distributed by the bank say that just 154 people out of a population of more than 10,000 in the town use it as their sole point of banking.
But one customer said: “I simple feel let down by my bank.
“I am a very upset disabled resident and one of the customers who use the Hadleigh branch as their sole point of contact. I’ve refused on more than one occasion to sign up to online banking, simply saying .. ‘If we all banked online your jobs would become obsolete and the branch would close’.
“We lost Lloyds a few years back but thought Barclays would be ok as some of Lloyds customers switched to them. Look how wrong we were.”
Mr Cartlidge said: “It’s very disappointing to hear that Barclays is going to close it branch in Hadleigh. I have had a letter from the regional manager and I am going to try and access what the impact will be through social media to see what people think.
“A lot of people cannot connect to internet banking and the coverage is poor and virtually non-existant for some in what for me is a rural constituency.”
Waveney MP Peter Aldous said he was concerned banks were closing town branches in an “indiscriminate, non-strategic way that will have an adverse impact on the elderly, the disabled, those without their own transport” and he spoke about the issue in the House of Commons recently as MPs called on the Government to support measures to protect access to banking services in local communities.
And Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey has been left “extremely disappointed” at bank closures in Halesworth and Southwold.
Published by the East Anglian Daily Times.