Access to cash coverage in the UK 2021 Q2

On a quarterly basis, we, together with the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), are gathering and updating data on cash access point locations and other access characteristics, including temporary closures, opening hours, and accessibility, for brick-and-mortar and mobile bank and building society branches, automated teller machines (ATMs), and the Post Office network. This quarter we have supplemented this information with data on cashback vendor locations.

This analysis provides insights on the proportion of the population that live within a range of distances of various cash access points. We measure distances as the crow flies (see note 1), consistent with the approaches adopted by LINK and the Post Office. 

We estimate that for access to any bank, building society, Post Office branch, or any ATM (either free or pay-to-use):

• 95.7% of the UK population are currently within 2km of a cash access point
• 99.7% of the UK population are currently within 5km of a cash access point

For free-to-use access points only:

• 95.5% of the UK population are currently within 2km of a cash access point
• 99.7% of the UK population are currently within 5km of a cash access point

Compared to 2021 Q1, this represents an increase of 0.1% at 2km and no change in coverage at 5km distances. However, this small increase in coverage masks 2 opposing effects. The number of brick-and-mortar branches of the larger banks and building societies providing personal current accounts (PCA) fell by 267 between Q1 and Q2. This decreased coverage by such branches from 61.8% to 60.1% of the UK population at 2km and from 88% to 87.5% at 5km. At the same time, an increase in the availability of Post Office branches and ATMs lead to a small improvement in overall coverage (see note 2).

The rural population travel further to withdraw and deposit cash, which can reflect higher distances to all services. 99.7% of people living in urban areas in the UK currently have access to a free source of cash within 2km. This falls to 77.3% for the UK rural population. 98.3% of the UK rural population are within 5km of a free source of cash. This is an improvement from 2021 Q1 where coverage was 76.6% within 2km and 98.2% within 5km respectively. Overall, we estimate that 99% of the UK rural population have access to a free source of cash within 5.7km.

Including cashback as a source of cash alongside all other access points, we estimate that, either with or without pay-to-use ATMs:

• 99% of the UK population are currently within 2km of a source of cash
• 99.9% of the UK population are currently within 5km of a source of cash

For all sources of cash including cashback, we estimate that approximately 100% of the UK’s urban population are within 2km of a cash source and 99.6% are within 1km. Nearly all (99.9%) the UK’s rural population is within 8km of a cash source, although 0.4% have no known cash source within 5km of where they live and 5.3% have no known source within 2km.

Our analysis of other access characteristics finds that:

• Temporary closures in Q2 were less extensive than in Q1. While the percentages of branches experiencing temporary closures were broadly similar, the closures were substantially shorter. Of bank and building society branches that experienced temporary closures of 1 day or more, a typical (median) branch was closed for 1 day only.
• Second quarter of 2021 saw an improvement in opening hours. Around 89% of bank and building society branches were still operating on reduced hours compared to February 2020. But their opening hours were markedly longer than in Q1 when many branches were closing in the early afternoon. On average, brick-and-mortar bank and building society branches are open 34 hours per week – a 48% increase from 23 hours per week in Q1 for larger PCA providers and a 36% increase from 25 hours for all other branches.
• Of the brick-and-mortar bank and building society branches, 63% of larger PCA providers and 53% of other branches reported that they are wheelchair accessible, have step-free access, and have a hearing/induction loop. 75% of Post Office branches (excluding mobile and outreach branches) have both wheelchair access and a hearing/induction loop.

The data comprises 72,839 known UK cash access points and 429,482 cashback locations. Table 1 shows the total counts by region for 8 types of access points (see notes 3, 4, and 5):

• Types A and B are brick-and-mortar bank and building society branches subdivided into larger PCA providers and all other banks and building societies. Mobile bank branches (measured by stops) are a separate type (D).
  The main distinction between types A and B is substitutability. Type B branches may not offer comparable deposit or withdrawal services compared to branches serving PCA customers (for example, a building society specialising in mortgages or offering savings accounts with some access limitations) or may only be used by a specialised group of consumers (for example, a bank with a single branch specialising in providing services to a specific expatriate community).
• Post Office branches are subdivided into mobile / outreach branches (type E) and all other Post Office branches (type C). The outreach branches are brick-and-mortar but are more similar to mobile branches in that they are typically open for a small number of hours and/or on selected days of the week. For example, these include limited time to serve access points in community buildings in rural locations. For this reason, the mobile and outreach branches are grouped together.
• ATMs are subdivided into free-to-use (type F) and pay-to-use (type G).
• Cashback locations (type H) are all the unique locations where a cashback transaction is known to have taken place in 2020.

Table 1: Number of cash access points by type and geographical area

Download Table 1[2] (XLSX) 

We have analysed coverage for 14 groups of cash access points which we define in Table 2. The groups are constructed by combining the cash access point types and cashback locations.

• Group 1 includes type A (larger banks and building societies providing PCA) access points only.
• Group 2 adds the non-mobile/outreach Post Office network.
• Group 3 includes all brick-and-mortar (except type B) and mobile/outreach bank, building society, and Post Office branches, thus representing all known locations where customers can access banking services beyond cash withdrawals or deposits.
• Groups 4 and 5 include the same cash access point types as Group 3, as well as all free-to-use ATMs and all ATMs respectively.
• Group 6 includes type B branches and contains all free-to-use access points.
• Group 7 includes all 72,839 known cash access points.
• Groups 8 and 9 focus on access to ATMs, for free-to-use and all ATMs respectively.
• Groups 10, 11, and 12 combine free-to-use access points, all access points and all ATMs respectively with cashback locations.
• Groups 13 and 14 focus on access to the Post Office network distinguishing between non-mobile/outreach branches and all branches.

Due to substitutability, as outlined above, type B branches are only included in groups 6, 7, 10, and 11.

Table 2: Groupings of cash access points

Estimated percentages of the UK population living within a given distance from a cash access point are shown in Table 3 (see notes 6, 7, and 8). The estimates are given for the UK regions separately, as well as for England and the UK overall. Estimates for rural and urban areas are also given (see note 9).

The distances considered are 1, 2, 5, 8, and 16 km (approximately 0.6, 1.2, 3, 5, and 10 miles, respectively).

Table 3: Percentages of the UK population that have access to a source of cash within a given distance as of 2021 Q2 (Groups 1-14)