Johnston Carmichael publishes independent review of Royal Bank of Scotland branches earmarked for closure.
Royal Bank of Scotland announced in December 2017 that it would close a number of branches across the UK. In June 2018, we were asked to conduct an independent review of 10 of the Bank’s Scottish branches which had been scheduled for closure as part of this programme.
Our remit was to consider, based on a variety of factors, if each of those branches should remain open or close as planned. It was very important that this review was independent and took proper account of how a closure might affect the surrounding community.
We have been granted access to anonymised customer and branch data, and our team has spent time in each of the ten communities within the scope of this review. During that time, we have spoken to branch customers, staff, elected officials, groups representing a range of people including those with disabilities and other vulnerable customers. We have gathered opinions and insight from more than 1000 people.
It was critically important for this review to be objective, balanced and an accurate reflection of the range of banking services both required and available in each of these communities. This included a thorough appraisal of alternative banking services available to each community in order to properly understand the likely impact to customers should a branch close.
We believe we have achieved our aim of delivering an independent and informed report and would like to express our gratitude to those communities we visited during our review and for the many constructive contributions we received as part of the process.
Our report was provided to Royal Bank of Scotland this week and can be accessed here.
Enquiries:
For any further customer enquiries about the review or banking services available, please contact Royal Bank of Scotland directly:
UK: 03457 24 24 24
Overseas: +44 131 549 8888
Minicom: 0800 404 6160
For media enquiries for the Royal Bank of Scotland, please contact the RBS Media Relations team on 0131 523 4205. The media team can only deal with enquiries from journalists.
For media enquiries for Johnston Carmichael, please contact Bryan Garvie at the BIG Partnership on 07863 208045
