When 84-year-old Maggie Dodd discovered that the last remaining bank in her town was closing, she began to panic. “I mean I couldn’t sleep that first night when I realised. I thought what am I going to do?”
Maggie has been a customer at the Bank of Scotland in Lochgilphead since 1976. Now her nearest branch is in Oban, almost an hour’s drive – 37.2 miles – away. She’s terrified of banking online. “I’m frightened,” she says. “There’s so much of this scamming business, and I’m always worried that I’ll hit something and press the wrong thing.”
“84-year-old Maggie Dodd panics as last bank in Lochgilphead closes, forcing her to buddy up with a friend to use the post office.”
So she has ‘buddied up’ with her 83-year-old friend Ina Callander to try banking at the local post office. “I’ve been using the post office for years,” Ina says. “Maggie was really upset and I thought, why not help her? Because that’s what friends are for.”
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns the Bank of Scotland, say the branch at Lochgilphead is no longer viable as most of their customers prefer to bank online. But the closure has sent shockwaves through the town. Karen McCurry, who runs the wellbeing centre Snowdrop Argyll, set up the buddy scheme used by Maggie and Ina. “I had people approaching me, telling me they weren’t sleeping at night because the bank was going to close – and that’s massive,” she says. “We can’t change what’s happening outside a lot of the time, but we can help somebody feel a bit better about it, a bit more confident.”
Local businesses are also bracing for impact. Adriano Pia, who runs the Argyll Café, says banks are needed because bank cards and cash machines aren’t always reliable. “Even today we had two people whose cards aren’t working,” he says. “I’ve had times where I’ve had to tell people just to take it, so they don’t go hungry because they’re stuck.”
A few doors along at the Community Shop, manager Scott McBride is worried about the charity’s insurance if they cannot deposit their takings daily. “We either extend our insurance, and that comes at a cost, which ultimately comes with a risk as well, because we’re then potentially holding more cash on-site,” he says.
Lochgilphead is not alone. Figures from the consumer watchdog Which? reveal 742 bank branches have closed across Scotland since 2015. For Maggie Dodd, the personal toll is immense. “I couldn’t sleep that first night when I realised,” she repeats. With no bank left, she and her friend Ina must now rely on each other – and the post office – to manage their money.