Geographic and temporal access to universal banking through post offices in Wales

The provision of so-called 'universal banking services' via the Post Office network has been an objective of all UK governments over the last twenty years. These universal banking services cover basic financial services such as making transfers or depositing cash. They are designed to ensure that, despite shrinking commercial bank branch networks, all citizens of the country, including small businesses, can participate in the financial life of society. Various policies and mechanisms have been put in place to ensure universal coverage of access points while increasing the financial sustainability of the network. One such mechanism is represented by six official criteria for post office accessibility, expressed as a percentage of the UK population living within one mile, three miles, and six miles of a post office. However, the exact method of calculating compliance with these accessibility criteria is not published. Nor are granular results published, only an annual declaration that the criteria are supposedly met. In a recent article published by Jun.-Prof. Dr René Westerholt (RAM) in collaboration with Andra Sonea (University of Oxford and University of Warwick, both UK) in Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy (Springer), geographic and temporal access to post offices is studied to understand the territorial coverage of the network and the impact on the provision of basic banking services. The area studied is Wales, for which the official government access criteria are reviewed. Using the Post Office Ltd website, an up-to-date record of the locations and opening hours of post offices in Wales is collected. In addition, a detailed population grid is combined with calculated areas of equidistant geographical access, known as isochrones, to determine the number of people who have access to the post office network. The isochrones are based on the Welsh road network and are calculated for different travel modes and thresholds using a powerful routing engine. The results show that the official access criteria are largely unmet in Wales. In addition, and in contrast to previous studies, an urban-rural divide is shown in terms not of spatial access alone, but in the combination of spatial and temporal access. The findings are of both practical and theoretical value and will hopefully inform policy makers.

Full reference to our work published in Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy:

Sonea, A. and Westerholt, R. (2021): Geographic and temporal access to basic banking services in Wales. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, volume and issue pending. DOI: 10.1007/s12061-021-09386-3.