Bank charges
We have had an account with the Alliance & Leicester for some time but last month they started to charge us for cash deposits. The charge is 50p per £100 over £3,000 per month. Since virtually all our business is in cash this is going to add up to a sizeable amount in the year and amounts to a tax on our sales of almost 0.4%. Considering that all the work involved in our cash deposits is done by our own Post Office through which we make all our deposits, this seems a bit steep.
Does everyone have the same problem or is there a bank that is more understanding of the situation of Community Shops working not-for-profit?
Arthur Grosset
Monks Eleigh Community Shop
I don't know about how your shop is structured Arthur, but as a cooperative my shop is able to access the Cooperatives Direct Plus account from the Co-operative Bank. This gives us free banking. they also offer a broader Community Direct Plus account which your organisation may be eligible for, and which I believe has pretty much the same benefits.
While their online banking service currently leaves a lot to be desired (although they are in process with upgrading this) in general they are no worse than any other bank, and they do have a strong ethical policy which for me makes a big difference.
I echo Graham Mitchell's reply. At Yarpole Community Shop set up under the Industrial & Provident Society rules we, too, use the Co-Operative Bank's Community Direct Plus account and get free banking irrespective of the number of payments in or out. These are handled by our own in-shop Post Office. We haven't yet used any of their on-line services.
Thanks to your recommendations we moved our bank account from the Alliance & Leicester to the Co-operative Bank's Community Direct Plus. On the positive side this will save us about £400 per year in bank charges. On the negative side, with Alliance & Leicester we used to have any cash deposited at our Post Office credited to our account immediately while cheques were credited after 1 or 2 days, with the Co-operative Bank both cash and cheques are taking between 2 and 6 days to be credited to our account. This means that, on average, about £1,500 has been removed from our cash flow. Does everybody banking with the Co-operative Bank suffer from this problem?
Arthur Grosset
Monks Eleigh Community Shop