Andrew George MP statement on Lloyds Bank Penzance branch closure

Commenting on the announcement that Lloyds Bank will close its branch in Penzance in January 2026, local MP, Andrew George said: 

“This decision is especially disappointing for Penzance, where the old bank has been a predominant presence in the market house in the heart of town for 100 years.

“A large proportion of especially single older people who are already digitally excluded, will be made even more isolated by this and other decisions.

“As usual, large multinationals with remote head offices are unreliable friends to our community. This can only have a detrimental impact on our local economy and commercial morale in the town.

“I fear our country is fast reaching ‘peak app & digital’ and is overly dependent on electronic communication which has already shown itself to be excessively vulnerable to increasing levels of cyber-attack and espionage.

“I’m not a ‘Luddite’ and recognise the many improvements and efficiencies which IT can provide. But it’s wrong to set up systems which favour the digitally enabled above those who are not. Indeed, even those who successfully navigate the dehumanised systems often struggle, and when those systems fail, customers are locked out with without any means of resolving their issue. Or they’re met with FAQs which don’t address their questions, ambiguous systems which only mean something to those who set them up, or resorting to automated telephone handling systems which operate as if they are deliberately designed to frustrate and take hours to navigate.

“If banks want to withdraw from our larger towns like this, then they need to do more than offering extremely limited services through the few Post Office branches which have survived the widespread closures of the past decade and the extremely limited provision of a few banking hubs.”

Andrew will be writing to Charlie Nunn, CEO of Lloyds Bank about the bank’s decision.