Tyler Redway
THE Bank SA Kingston branch will remain open for now after Westpac and Bank SA overturned the initial decision to close it permanently.
Kingston District Council chief executive officer Nat Traeger said they were notified back in February the branch would be closing on May 12 due to a large number of reasons.
“We heard a few reasons, it wasn’t viable with the emerging online world, lack of traffic into the local branch as more customers were using online services but we say this was never substantiated with any relevant local detail,” Ms Traeger said.
“We felt there would be significant welfare and economic impacts on our customers and we felt it could force customers to travel long distances to physically access their bank which could incur further costs of living.”
Ms Traeger said the council hosted a meeting back in March with 80 residents attending as they brought up critical issues which might have come from the branch closing.
She said the ideas from the meeting were then compiled into a six page Senate Inquiry.
“We had about 511 sticky notes around some certain issues and used it to compile our inquiry into regional bank closures in Australia,” she said.
“Since then they announced their stay of closure which meant they were postponing it until the outcomes of the Senate Inquiry.
“This week they contacted us to say they had removed the stay and are keeping the branch open indefinitely.”
Ms Traeger added 41 per cent of Kingston residents were over 60 while 50 per cent of the town’s population did not have “digital literacy”.
She added due to this, a large portion of people in Kingston were not able to access online banking and therefore relied heavily on face-to-face interaction.
“Kingston is unfortunately renowned for some long term blackouts so obviously in that situation you wouldn’t be able to access online services or banking,” she said.
`Ms Traeger mentioned the face-to-face service given to businesses was also another important aspect which could have been lost with the closure.
She also expressed concerns the council had about how it would affect sporting clubs and employment for the town.
“We were also very concerned with the access to cash for community sporting clubs and loss of jobs for employees so if they weren’t able to find alternative employment then they could move away,” she said.
“Older people are more concerned about their security and of course there is always an issue with the economic impact for businesses using the bank.”
