In many respects, Wokingham has a model high street.
Unlike countless other town centres across the country, there are few – if any – boarded up shops with ‘to let’ signs emblazoned on the windows.
It’s awash with Tudor buildings, independent restaurants, a florist and even an organic food store.
When I visited the Berkshire market town last week, there are still plenty of charity shops and pubs lining the pavements, but plentiful small businesses. It even boasts city favourites Gail’s coffee shop and gift store Oliver Bonas.
The only thing missing? Bank branches.
Wokingham has seen an exodus of brank branches in the past four years
Banks have been shutting their doors across the country in droves in recent years, a trend the Mail has long campaigned against.
Since January 2015, 6,609 branches have closed, figures shared with Money Mail by consumer watchdog Which? show.
It means more than two-thirds of the branch network – 67 per cent – has been destroyed in just ten years as providers shut up shop in favour of online services, which typically cost less to run.
The worst offender is NatWest, which also owns the Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank. Between these three providers, some 1,431 branches have shut.
Lloyds Banking Group – which comprises Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax – has closed its doors in 1,252 spots between January 2015 and the end of 2024.
Meanwhile some 1,230 Barclays branches have closed as well as 477 Santander locations. HSBC has shut 743 branches – in August last year it promised to announce no new closure programmes until at least 2026.
This year, 381 branches have already closed while a further 51 are scheduled. Some 71 closures are already pencilled in for 2026.
And it seems even Wokingham’s thriving high street can’t escape the soulless drive towards digital banking in order to cut spending and boost profits for shareholders.
Three of the major banks have closed their doors to loyal customers in the past four years, leaving many of Wokingham’s population with no access to a local branch.
The Santander branch left the high street in 2021 while Barclays closed in 2023 and Lloyds followed last year.
Remaining is HSBC (with no counter service), Newbury Building Society (which doesn’t offer current accounts), a Post Office, and a Nationwide.
Kayleigh Hopkins, branch manager of Nationwide who has worked for the mutual for almost 20 years and at the Wokingham branch for five – is keen for me to see just how important branches are to Wokingham residents.
Branch manager Kayleigh knows many customers who pop in by name
When I visited Wokingham, I saw all age ranges in the branch, from young adults through parents with children and elderly couples.
There’s a range of services on offer – whether that’s using the ATM, making a deposit, using iPads to set up an individual savings account (Isa) or speaking to staff as part of the scam checker service, where customers can come into a branch if they are unsure a payment they are making is to a legitimate payee.
While I’m at the branch, the staff intervene and stop an elderly man sending tens of thousands of pounds to a scammer.
Kayleigh is understandably scant with details but says: ‘If we hadn’t seen that gentleman, he would have been able to send that £50,000. We could tell by his tone and body language something was amiss and then we asked an extra question.’
The staff see it often – because of their relationships with the customers they can usually tell if something isn’t quite right or out of character.
Reporter Lucy Evans visited Wokingham – and found big banks had abandoned the high street
For example, a regular customer Jane* thought she was making a savvy investment.
The 68-year-old retiree is recently widowed and came across a fake investment scam impersonating Martin Lewis.
Jane – who Kayleigh calls financially savvy – took out a £25,000 loan via the Nationwide app to send it to the scammer.
However, the payment didn’t go through. When she visited the branch to ask why, the team were able to see the payments system blocked the payment and had to break the news she was being scammed.
Because the team knew her normal behaviour, they were able to explain to the financial crime team that this is out of the ordinary and Nationwide has now resolved the issue.
‘If we weren’t here, someone would have to make the judgement without knowing them. If there is no branch, how can you build those relationships?’
The strength of the branch is even attracting customers from a rival too.
As the HSBC branch a few doors down doesn’t have a counter service, Kayleigh has noticed their customers switching to Nationwide.
‘People are scared they are going to be left without a bank. There are a lot of customers we still see that are not yet Nationwide – they will still come to us.
‘They have nobody else to turn to. For example, we are the only ATM in the whole of Wokingham that is indoors. From a safety and anti-social behaviour point-of-view there is nowhere else to withdraw your cash safely.’
And as banks have deserted the town in recent years, it has only been good news for Nationwide, which has seen its customers skyrocket.
In fact, after the Lloyds Bank branch closed in July last year, the staff saw 33 pc more current account openings than the month before.
I bump into Karen Davies, who works in pharmaceutical research in Wokingham, near the market who tells me she would be ‘pretty stuck’ without a branch here.
While she does prefer to make transactions and check balances online, she knows its handy to have a branch near to her workplace.
The 51-year-old says: ‘I am with Nationwide and I am happy to have a branch here. I recently had to go into the branch to set up an individual savings account (Isa) – if it wasn’t here I would be pretty stuck.’
Karl Abbott* tells me he ‘doesn’t like’ the exodus of bank branches from Wokingham’s high street.
The 35-year-old says: ‘If you want to put cash into your bank account, how would you go about doing that? You would have to travel to Reading and that would cost more money – it is out of the way and I don’t know the local people there like I do here.’
Karl, who works at a restaurant, is a Nationwide customer so doesn’t have to travel to access a branch. ‘It’s very personal when I come in here – they all know my name. I don’t like online banking.’
It’s not just the life-long Wokingham residents which pop into the branch. Martin James, 54, visited the branch for the first time last week.
He has only lived in the town for around 12 weeks and comes into a branch around four times a year to keep an eye on his savings.
Martin James, 54, prefers a ‘face-to-face’ touch for important money decisions
Martin, who works for a software company, says: ‘I prefer to speak to a real person – I use online banking all the time for making payments and checking balances but if I need to do something with my savings or a mortgage or any of these big decisions I’d rather have that face-to-face personal touch.
‘I’ve recently moved house so my finances have changed. I hadn’t looked at my portfolio of savings for a while.’
Martin now has an improved rate of interest. The savings accounts he has for his two children, who are at university, were also upgraded to a better interest rate.
‘There’s only one large bank and another building society on this high street.’
‘What I like about Nationwide is that there’s no shareholders or partners – and I got the Fairer Share payment this year. It’s for my benefit and not shareholders, and I love the availability of branches.’
And if there was no Nationwide here? He admits he would probably be forced to change providers.
But luckily Martin doesn’t have to switch his accounts anytime soon – the branch is going to stay until at least 2030.
The mutual has extended its Branch Promise by two years.
Originally locked until 2028, the pledge means Nationwide will keep its branches open until at least that year.
Mandy Beech, director of retail services at the building society, tells me the decision to extend the promise is about a ‘commitment to the customer’.
‘We talk to customers all the time and branches do matter. There’s a variety of customers that come in. Supporting the more vulnerable and elderly groups is vital but all age ranges use this branch.
‘There’s a vibrancy here. The decision was driven by the need for branches.’
But surely the pledge needs to be financially worthwhile for Nationwide too? ‘It makes good business sense. Some 33 per cent of current accounts are opened in branch and 25 per cent of savings accounts too,’ Mandy says.
Mandy beech, of Nationwide, says the decision to extend the branch promise is about a ‘commitment’ to the customer
And where Nationwide has become the last branch in a town, current account openings were up by 29 per cent last year – and cash machine use at these branches soared by 25 per cent.
There is so clearly a need for in-person financial services – and consumers are so desperate they are willing to change their provider to have easy access to a branch.
Kayleigh says she is ‘excited’ about the news. She says any concern about branch closures have always been about what would happen to their regular customers.
‘We’ve got customers we send Christmas cards to. I just wouldn’t want to think about the people that need our help who have nowhere to turn. If this wasn’t here I think a lot of people would feel isolated and there would be a massive gap.’
So Kayleigh and her team will remain on Broad Street in Wokingham serving customers like Karl and Martin until at least 2030.
But here’s hoping Nationwide’s branches stay open beyond this – and other providers start to take note too as it’s clear customers value popping in on their lunch break and being reassured by staff.
But other households who bank with other providers haven’t been so lucky.
If the big banks choose to desert thriving market towns like Wokingham, what hope does anyone outside a city have of being able to pop into a branch to chat through some of the most important money decisions in their life.
*Names have been changed
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