Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Ms Forsythe): I welcome, via Zoom, Bill Megraw, who is the chairman of the board of trustees of Millisle and District Community Association. Bill, you are very welcome. Thank you for taking the time to give evidence on this important inquiry. I will hand over to you to make some opening remarks.

Mr Bill Megraw (Millisle and District Community Association): Thank you, Chair. I am glad to be with you today. I will give you a little bit of an outline about where Millisle came from and where we come in to the access-to-cash scheme. Please stop me if I ramble on too long. We are very much like many other villages across the UK. We did not have a bank to start with. Over the years, we had trouble with people making their way to Donaghadee, which is about two and a half miles away. The larger towns of Newtownards and Bangor are about seven and a half or eight and a half miles away.

There were two cash outlets in the village; there was a post office that was run by an employed sub-postmaster and an ATM in a small, independent SPAR store halfway along the main street. That was really all that we had. There was some history of ATM access being free, but charging crept into the ATM in the independent SPAR store. We had problems sometimes when that ATM was empty and was not refilled regularly or did not work on occasion. In later years, the ATM became such an issue that we spoke to political representatives. We tried to influence the installation of a second ATM in the village. We got one eventually but only after the post office closed. Post office services were transferred to a convenience store with a Post Office counter. That store was refurbished quite nicely, with, I believe, cash from the Post Office. An ATM was installed at that time, and that service was good.

We saw the advertisements for the access-to-cash project, so we went along and told them our story. We told them what we would like to do in the community, which was very much around supporting people who had difficulty getting cash. We have a small charity shop in our community hub, and we wanted to find a way to give people cash on their card by way of cashback. I hope that I am right in saying this, but the law at that stage was that you had to buy something to be able to take advantage of cash advance. That worked well because we had the small charity shop there. You could buy a lollipop or something for 10p and get £10 out in cash quite easily. That system was useful to us, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19, when people were, in some cases, afraid but certainly, in many ways, reluctant to travel further afield to get cash. That certainly worked for us, and we were grateful for the support that we received from the access-to-cash scheme to do that.

As I said, the original post office in the village closed. Unfortunately, in due course, the combined convenience store that took over the post office also closed; indeed, the local independent SPAR closed. Our main street looked pretty disastrous at that stage with all the empty shops. Some would say that it still does. There was then news that a new EUROSPAR was going to open in the village. We had never had a petrol station before; if you needed petrol, you had to drive a bit further afield. EUROSPAR came along with a plan for a lovely new store on the outskirts of the village, maybe a quarter of a mile or half a mile at most from the more populated areas. That was news to us. Of course, there was going to be an ATM there. We very much welcomed that. When we first saw the plans from EUROSPAR, we spoke to them about a "What if —?" scenario, which was whether, if the Post Office franchise, for want of a better word, became available, they would be interested in taking it on. Obviously, they could not commit at that stage, mainly because it was not available; it was not there to say yes to. However, we got pretty good vibes from them that there was certainly space in the store that could be developed for a Post Office service. Eventually, that came along. It is now located in the new EUROSPAR. It works well. We hear good reports about the staff being helpful and cooperative and working with people. There are problems that you sometimes find going along to a post office. If my wife is lodging £17 from her Monday morning fitness class and the money is not separated in bags, there would be a problem with lodging it in some places. The staff in the EUROSPAR are very helpful. A small post office may tend to do such things more than a larger one would; larger ones do things by the book. We are happy with the situation at the moment.

We are aware of the banking hubs that are opening. I know that there is one in Comber, and I think that there is one in Kilkeel. There might even be one opening in Downpatrick; I am not sure. Members will probably be more aware of that than I am. We like the banking hubs. They almost replicate what we hoped to see in the first instance by providing almost a mini bank at the bottom end of our community hub. For all sorts of reasons, including security, cash handling and having volunteers rather than staff, the problems were maybe not insurmountable but were certainly significant. It would have taken quite an investment in people and resources to do that. We would welcome a banking hub. It has never been formally discussed, as far as I am aware, in the village. Donaghadee, which is the nearest small town to us, could be a location for a banking hub, even if Millisle were not. That would make things a little easier. I am not exactly sure what a banking hub does, but, if you can do all of the things that you would do in a traditional bank branch, that has to be a good thing. I suppose that, to whatever extent it covers the need, it is admirable; it is an asset to the location.

I noted that, on Facebook and, indeed, at the Finance Minister's banking round-table meetings, there was comment on it costing post offices and that type of provider to provide cash. Of course, it does. If we give cashback through our charity shop, it costs us 1·69% of what we give. We just call that a contribution to the community. It is part of our running costs, and we are not overly worried about it. However, we are restricted by the amount of money that we have in the till. We might have a couple of hundred pounds at the end of a good week, so we might be able to advance that amount, but we have to keep an amount for change and that sort of thing. We are very much restricted by the cash that we have. In the initial stages, we asked, "Why can we not draw some more cash and provide this as a community service?", but you then get into operating almost a mini bank. We played with things. I had my Shrap card — I still have it — from an experiment that the guys did as part of the access-to-cash scheme. It was almost like a coin jar. In many locations in the village, if you went in with your grubby fiver to spend on something that cost only £4·73, you could have the change put on to your Shrap card, which meant that you did not carry as much loose change. It was a quirky system. It worked as a trial, I suppose, but it would have been feasible only if almost every shop in the village and every shop in Donaghadee where you would want to spend your loose change took the card. It was interesting but, in the real world, probably not terribly useful.

I am not sure whether I can add an awful lot to the story. I am more than happy to answer questions or elaborate on any of the points that I have raised.

The Deputy Chairperson (Ms Forsythe): Thank you very much, Bill. I really appreciate your evidence. You and your community association are to be commended for taking proactive steps to address the needs of your community. That is the resounding message here, especially in rural areas. I represent the constituency of South Down, which is quite rural. In Kilkeel, we had the first banking hub in Northern Ireland. There are two others in the constituency: one in Newcastle and one in Warrenpoint. I completely take your point that they do not tick the box for everything that everybody expected them to be, but a key learning from them is that we need to engage with communities to see what their needs are in the same way as you have done. In a few weeks, the Committee will have a tour of the Kilkeel banking hub to gain our own perspective and see it first-hand, which is really important. As you said, there is a lack of understanding about what banking hubs include. Adaptability and engagement are important.

As a community association, you identify your issues, progress them and work forward. When banks are closing, what would be a good forum for local areas, maybe rural areas in particular, to look at those things? Who would be best placed to facilitate it? A council group, a local chamber of commerce or a group like yours?

Mr Megraw: That is a good question. In Millisle, we have a steering group in which we try to bring together all the voluntary organisations, including churches and sports clubs; we already have that. It very much drives what we do, not so much in the community association, but we wear a number of hats. Millisle Regeneration was specifically put together some years ago to drive the bigger projects in the village. I am no spring chicken, I hasten to add, but there are older people on the community association who maybe did not want to take on the legal responsibility, if you like, of bigger projects. To be truthful, we have not yet managed to do very much, but that is still sitting there in the background. Certainly, the steering group of all the village organisations feeds into that to try to get things done. We also work closely with the council. There are other organisations. I am vice chair of County Down Rural Community Network, which works well in bringing community groups together. The Ards Peninsula Villages Partnership literally tries to cover the people on the peninsula. We have various options where we can bring those sort of things to the fore, and it is useful to bring it together in one place like that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Ms Forsythe): You outlined that you never had a bank in the first place. A lot of the time when we are looking at this, we look at the impact on how banks are reaching people in Northern Ireland and the impact of the closure of banks, but you did not have one in the first place. Taking into account the rurality of Northern Ireland is important, as you said. Through the good work of the County Down Rural Community Network, the voluntary and community sector has a really important role to play in consultation, the wider piece and reaching those corners of Northern Ireland.

Mr Megraw: The other thing that, I perhaps should have mentioned, we encouraged was the establishment of a branch of an existing credit union in the village. To some extent, it has been a little disappointing, because it only opens for a couple of hours one day a week, but that is very much down to supply and demand. If there were a demand for more of its services, it would probably be prepared to open more often. Although the Millisle office is open for, I think, only two hours on a Friday, there is a Bangor office that opens, I believe, four days a week for maybe six hours a day. Again, there is a challenge of how you provide some sort of banking service in the absence of banks. To us, the credit unions seem to address a desire that we had to run almost a mini bank in the back end of the community hub. It seemed that credit unions were almost there already to do that, but there was kind of no point in reinventing the wheel.

Ms Forsythe: Do any other members have questions for Bill? No?

Thank you very much, Bill. That was very informative, and, again, I commend you on the good work that you have done for the people in the community of Millisle to reach out and establish their needs on access to cash.

Deirdre Hargey wants to come in.

Miss Hargey: Sorry for coming in a bit late. Bill, thanks very much for your presentation. It is really heartening to see communities organise around these issues. You are showing leadership on it, and it is key that, as part of the inquiry, we hear the voices of the grassroots.

I want to ask about the capacity of your organisation and the support that is needed for some of the initial trial around access to cash. You seem to be a pretty organised group, but were there capacity issues that, if you were to do it again, you would put in place? If so, what are they? You talked about the new one-stop shop petrol station that opened. Are you picking up on issues to do with if it were to go or with its viability and when you are engaging through your own shop in trying to provide that support? I see some of the work on access to cash at Westminster in relation to certain sections of the population, such as older people, those from lower-income backgrounds and those with disabilities and even the rural spread. Obviously, in the North, we have more rural than urban communities. Are you seeing those challenges to access to cash at the local level? Have you seen any changes to trends in the people who use your services?

Sorry, that was probably a couple of things. I am just really keen to hear your perspective on them.

Mr Megraw: That is OK. Certainly, in terms of capacity, like many voluntary organisations across the Province and, I dare say, across the entire islands, we struggle getting people. We struggle with succession planning. Those of us who have been involved for maybe 20 years are not getting any younger. It can be difficult to bring other people on, especially into areas of responsibility. Again, harking back to the possible establishment of something in the back end of the hub, even to start looking at banking licences, increased security and volunteers handling cash would have been a nightmare, but, essentially, I suspect that that is where it might have to go.

I share your view. The petrol station and Post Office counter work well. I worry that, some day, it will not be viable for whatever reason — the costs are too much, or there is not enough footfall. That is one of the issues that were highlighted in the Comber banking hub. The post office in Comber was obviously doing a good job in its customers' eyes and appreciated the footfall that gave it that extra business, but, to my mind, it almost ended up advocating against the banking hub, which was effectively run, as I understand it, by the Post Office at corporate level. It looked strange to me to be almost advocating against that. Many of the clientele — obviously happy clientele — of the existing post office were saying, "Yes, we love our post office. We will not go near that place". To me, that is a huge dilemma in the setting up of hubs or indeed any alternative operation, be it something that we might do or something that a credit union might do, if the law allowed it to do that. It is about customer perception, what customers want and what, they feel, meets their needs.

You mentioned trends. I do not think that any trends are developing as such. We probably saw more cashback usage when COVID was more rife and people were less happy about going out. I looked at the most recent statement that we got. We had somewhere between three and six transactions a day. They averaged from £1·50 — that was obviously just somebody buying something in our charity shop — up to around £17, which could have been someone buying half a dozen items in our charity shop or one item plus £10 cash. I do not have that sort of breakdown with me, unfortunately. I suppose that the thought is that there is probably less use of cashback now because the ATM and counter facility at the EUROSPAR seem to be working pretty well, but, as, I think, your question hinted, what happens when that goes wrong?

Miss Hargey: That is great. Thanks very much for that, Bill.

The Deputy Chairperson (Ms Forsythe): Thank you, Deirdre. Anyone else? No.

Thanks very much, Bill, for joining us. We really appreciate your taking the time to give evidence to our inquiry.

Mr Megraw: Thank you, Chair. I am happy to have spoken to you.