Elderly residents in Strood are furious as Lloyds announces they'll be closing their doors on the high street next year.
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00:00 The scars of a former bank and yesterday Lloyd's announced that their branch will be closing
00:07 next year and NatWest have already said they're closing their branch in the area.
00:13 Halifax has closed and we come down here all the time to use it and the ATMs are closing.
00:18 I think they're just honest. I don't know, they're trying to make it difficult for elderly
00:22 people and everybody. I'm not happy about it at all.
00:25 What about you, do you use it actually? No, no, my wife does it all.
00:30 But the older generation are worried. They didn't grow up with that technology. They're
00:35 concerned about being able to spot scams online.
00:40 I wouldn't know whether you was being scammed online because every day it's basically getting
00:45 done you know.
00:46 In a statement Lloyd's told us customers can also bank with them through the post office,
00:51 their banking hub or via a community banker. They also have confirmed that colleagues will
00:56 be offered other roles across their businesses. But many of those schemes are not in Strood.
01:04 This morning I put in an application to Link who manage the ATM network in the country
01:09 and cash access and asked them to consider this area because there's no banks on the
01:13 peninsula at all. Strood's just lost two and there's none in Rochester. So we really need
01:18 to look at better solutions and that would mean different banks coming into a central
01:23 location like a post office and it would really help fix this problem of the banking deserts
01:27 that we're getting across the country at the moment.
01:30 But it's not just banks. Wilco closed their doors earlier this month.
01:35 All the shops are going. I mean you go down, if you do go down Gillingham or you come here
01:40 there's not a lot. You think, oh well where's it all gone?
01:44 And as the number of units that remain empty increase, that's putting increased pressure
01:50 on the local economy. Nationwide says they're not moving anywhere.
01:55 They soon might be the only branch in the area. Gabriel Morris for Caine TV in Strood.