And you thought a transaction fee of £1.75 was bad; The Sunday Times has found one machine charging a ridiculous £10 for the privilege of accessing your own money. The article’s worth reading: apparently the cost of transactions is around 31p, so even a £1.75 charge is taking the piss.

The article also demonstrates the scale of the problem:

Tintagel in Cornwall, for example, used to have branches of Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest and a van containing a mobile HSBC cashpoint, which made regular visits. NatWest and Barclays have closed, Lloyds is open just four hours a week and has no cash machine, and the HSBC mobile unit paid its last visit on Friday. All five machines available in Tintagel and the villages of Boscastle and Delabole charge fees.

“I refuse on principle to pay £1.50 to withdraw my own money,” said Myrna Lester, an artist who lives in Boscastle and says she faces a 34-mile round trip to Wadebridge to use a free machine.

Not only remote areas are suffering. In Speke, a poor suburb of south Liverpool, the last bank branch closed in 1998. There are no free cash machines but seven charging ones in and around the shopping parade.