Oldham community centre faced shock bank account closure

Springhead Community Centre chair Barbara Beeley said the centre’s Barclays bank account was closed with ‘no warning’ and ‘no reason’ in June 2023.

The group only found out when the group’s treasurer, Roy Smith, saw payments hadn’t left the account. After getting the account reinstated, the issue happened again in October, with payments again not having gone out.

This time, Barbara said Barclays said it would be closing the account and sending them a cheque for the balance.

She said: “We found out because payments hadn’t gone out and people were beginning to question it, obviously.

“Roy and I got together and submitted an application to Virgin Money to open an account, but in the meantime, at the end of November, we got all the groups to pay their fees in cash.

“That sort of, more or less, kept us afloat. It was just things like standing orders that weren’t being paid. Roy had to keep ringing these people to explain what was going on.”

Without access to their bank account, which Barbara says contained around £35,000, the duo had to put in their own money to keep the centre afloat.

She continued: “We should be paying out things like fuel, rates, refuse collection, all the other things that you need to keep a community centre going – but we can’t. In fact, at one point Roy was paying some out of his own personal account, which we do not like doing, and I paid some out of mine.

“The fact the groups paid in cash has kept us afloat. It’s just ridiculous, it really is.

“If Roy and I hadn’t stepped in with our own personal money at a couple of points then we would have just had to say ‘sorry, we haven’t got the money, we can’t carry on, we can’t pay the bills’.”

The parish councillor has been left angry at the group’s treatment by the multinational bank, which she says should be ‘held accountable’.

The issues began after the group tried to change the name on its account from Springhead Management Company Limited to Springhead Community Centre (CIO).

The group banks with Barclays. Image: Tim Goode/PA

A letter from the bank in December apologises to the group, saying it has reopened the account and restored funds – though notes a requirement to change to a charity account.

The letter, signed by a senior customer relations manager, says the bank agrees with the group’s complaint, and that it would ‘like to apologise for our failure and for the inconvenience caused’.

Barclays offers compensation

In a press statement, a Barclays spokesperson said: “As part of our ongoing responsibility to help prevent financial crime, and to meet our regulatory obligations, we are required to keep up to date information regarding our customers’ accounts.

“We write out to customers asking them to supply us with some important information relating to their account.

“In cases where we do not receive a response with up to date account information, we are required to proceed with closing the account, so it is very important that account holders respond to these requests from their bank.

“Following a further review of this case, we accept that, on this occasion, more could have been done to help our customer through the process and as a result we have agreed to reopen the account.

“We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience and as a gesture of goodwill we have provided the customer with £350 to acknowledge any stress and disruption caused.”