High street banks in the region could soon be extinct as more banks across the county close their doors, writes Zahra Borno.

Barclays Bank has just announced that a further two branches are to close in April.

Customers who bank at branches in Horsefair, at Banbury, and Middleton Cheney over the county border in Northamptonshire have also been told they will have to change their banking habits.

Lloyds/TSB's city centre branch, in Broad Street, Oxford, is also due to close on March 24. Inevitably, more closures mean further job losses and several of the staff at the branches face redundancy. But bank bosses say the closures reflect a change in the way people are banking today. Major technological advances of the past decade have led to the development of telephone and Internet banking.

Millions of people already complete all their financial transactions without visiting their local branch. Already more than a million of Barclays Bank customers pick up the telephone to pay their bills, set up standing orders or shift money from account to account. And about 650,000 Barclays Bank customers have set all fears about on-line security aside and signed up to do their banking over the Internet.

Research shows that up to 70 per cent of cash withdrawals are made from cashpoints rather than over-the-counter in a branch and bank bosses say by closing local branches they are responding to current trends. But while young people feel happy using cashpoints and computers, many older people are more suspicious.

Pensioners fear they could be an easy target for muggers watching cashpoints and prefer to withdraw money in the safety of a bank.

A large proportion of older people do not have access to the Internet - even if they felt satisfied that nobody would be able to hack into their account.

Spokesman for Barclays Bank Andrew McDougall says: "The way that people use their branches is changing.

"We are hoping that people can embrace technology and use services such as on-line and telephone banking to help make things more efficient." He warned here was no guarantees that more branches would not close.

He added: "I cannot image a time when Barclays Bank does not have high street branches, but there role is evolving."

The use of cashpoints may be convenient but high street banks have come in for criticism for exploiting customers. A leaked report, compiled on the orders of Chancellor Gordon Brown suggests the industry rakes in millions by charging customers up to five times the real cost of transactions. A Government investigation found that the real cost of a cash withdrawal is around 29p. However some banks currently charge customers a 'disloyalty fee' of as much as £1.50 if they take cash from another bank's machines. And customers say they are losing out because they don't have access to a cashpoint owned by their bank. Today, high street banks are due to vote on whether to impose charges which could range from between £1 and £5 to use machines across the entire network of 26,000 cash machines.

Barclays is the driving force behind the campaign to impose the charges and although it will continue not to charge its own customers to use the machines a fee will be levied for non-account holders who want to use its service.

Gone are the days when the local bank manager was known as a pillar of the community. New technology means that times have moved on and we are being steam-rollered into accepting the changes. There is no opportunity to resist - unless we revert to keeping our savings in a shoebox under the bed.

Story date: Monday 28 February

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.