Access to cash coverage in the UK 2024 Q2

This is an overview of geographical cash access coverage in the UK at the end of the second quarter (April to June) of 2024. This monitoring forms part of the FCA’s work on access to cash[1].

This is our first access to cash coverage publication using data collected under our new regime. As a result, it is based on data from a slightly different firm population to previous publications. This means coverage analysis for this, and future quarters is not directly comparable to our previous access to cash coverage publications. The Q2 2024 data acts as a baseline against which we will monitor the impact of our access to cash rules.

1. Introduction

As part of our work on access to cash, we publish data on quarterly changes in the UK’s cash access coverage. This includes the locations of cash access points and other information such as temporary closures, opening hours and accessibility. These publications are based on quarterly data from designated banks and building societies on their brick-and-mortar and mobile branch networks, and monthly data covering automated teller machines (ATMs) and the Post Office network. We supplement this information with annual data on both cashback locations and branches of large non-designated personal current account (PCA) providers (see note 1).

This analysis shows the proportion of the population that lives within a range of distances of various types of cash access point. We measure distances as the crow flies (see note 2), consistent with the approaches adopted by LINK and the Post Office, relative to residential addresses (see note 3).

Note 1, 2 and 3

When we started collecting data under our new access to cash regime[2], the firm population changed slightly. This means we cannot directly compare coverage analysis for this or future quarters with coverage analysis covering quarters before Q2 2024.
Relative to analogous travel distance, the approach based on straight line distances is likely to overestimate coverage and underestimate the areas with no coverage. The effect is likely to be more important for longer, non-walkable distances. All computations are performed in the British National Grid (OSGB 1936[3]) projection.
Our current approach measures straight line distances from residential addresses to their nearest access point by type. To determine aggregate coverage percentages, we estimate the total number of residential properties within a set distance of an access point at a certain geographical level, eg Output Area, Local Authority District, Country.

We estimate that for access to designated banks and building societies providing Personal Current Accounts (PCA) and Post Office: all branches, including mobile bank branches:

97.3% of the UK urban population are currently within 1 mile of a free-to-use cash access point offering deposits.
98.0% of the UK rural population are currently within 3 miles of a free-to-use cash access point offering deposits.

We estimate that for access to any bank, building society, Post Office branch or any free ATM:

99.2% of the UK urban population are currently within 1 mile of a free-to-use cash access point offering withdrawals.
98.5% of the UK rural population are currently within 3 miles of a free-to-use cash access point offering withdrawals.

While the statistics in this publication are not directly comparable to past publications, the headline coverage figures remain broadly in line with them. They continue to show more than 95% of the UK population being within the distances set out in the Treasury’s Cash Access Policy Statement[4].

2. Coverage

The data comprises 62,448 reported UK cash access points and 556,857 cashback locations. Table 1 shows numbers by region for 8 types of access point (see notes 4, 5, and 6):

Brick-and-mortar branches of banks and building societies are subdivided into 2 groups. The first group is the branches of the 14 banks and building societies designated under Part 8B of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 for the provision of cash access services (Type A) who we collect quarterly coverage data from. The second group is the branches of some larger non-designated PCA providers (Type B) who we collect annual data from.
Mobile bank branches (measured by stops) are a separate type (D).
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, being typically open for a small number of hours 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, we group the mobile and outreach branches 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 took place in the most recent year of data for relevant cashback provider.

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

Country/ geographical area		England									Northern Ireland	Scotland	Wales	UK Total
Type	Description	East Midlands	East of England	London	North East	North West	South East	South West	West Midlands	Yorkshire and The Humber	Northern Ireland	Scotland	Wales	UK Total
A	Larger banks and building societies providing PCA (brick-and-mortar branches)	217	311	423	136	333	493	302	304	248	123	402	217	3509
B	All other banks and building societies (brick-and-mortar branches)	3	11	37	1	28	19	3	7	2		5	2	118
C	Post Office branches excluding mobile/ outreach	746	1008	752	409	1027	1285	988	847	832	456	1024	672	10046
D	Mobile bank branches	12	12			21	40	53	5	5	13	366	82	609
E	Mobile/ outreach Post Office branches	125	184		97	147	131	268	102	142	25	233	228	1682
F	Free-to-use ATMs	2561	2987	4836	1607	4047	4433	2696	3290	3172	1420	3657	1753	36459
G	Pay-to-use ATMs	606	807	1452	495	1408	1000	650	1057	752	282	954	562	10025
H	Cashback locations	38482	49374	82019	19734	60796	76431	51841	43413	44802	16059	47487	26419	556857
All sources excluding cashback		4,270	5,320	7,500	2,745	7,011	7,401	4,960	5,612	5,153	2,319	6,641	3,516	62,448
All sources including cashback		42,752	54,694	89,519	22,479	67,807	83,832	56,801	49,025	49,955	18,378	54,128	29,935	619,305

Download Table 1 (XLSX)[5]

Notes 4, 5, and 6

The counts in Table 1 are for all known access points. The number of unique locations offering access will be smaller. This is because, for example, a typical branch will have 1 or more internal and/or 1 or more external ATMs, and these are counted separately. This does not apply to cashback vendor locations as only unique locations are counted (see also note 5). There are no mobile bank branches or mobile/outreach Post Office branches in London.
Cashback locations are the unique locations of vendors which have offered cashback at some point in the most recent years on record to customers using either a Mastercard or a Visa card. There could be other merchants offering cashback who are not included in this dataset, either because there was no transaction involving cashback or because the transactions did not involve Visa or Mastercard.
We have made every effort to ensure the dataset is complete and up to date, but there may still be some omissions or discrepancies. This dataset does not include ATMs that were temporarily closed at the time the data was collected. Data on some smaller banking companies may be missing, and not all recent branch closures, openings or other changes may have been reflected. Data from type B firms (non-designated PCA providers with 10 or more branches) reflects their branch numbers at the end of Q4 2024. This is the first quarter of data we collected from them under the new regime. These make up a small proportion of all cash access points and we do not believe key headline figures are significantly affected by the slightly later date of this data. Of the Post Office branches, we included only those classified by the Post Office as active at the time the data was collected.

We have analysed coverage for 15 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 (designated banks and building societies) access points only.
Group 2 adds the non-mobile/outreach Post Office network.
Group 3 includes brick-and-mortar (except type B) and mobile/outreach designated bank, designated building society and all Post Office branches.
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 62,448 recorded 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.
Group 15 includes the same branches as group 3, but also includes type B firms.

Due to substitutability, as outlined above, type B branches are only included in groups 6, 7, 10, and 11, and 15.

Table 2: Groupings of cash access points

Group	Description	Cash access point types included								Number of entries
Group	Description	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	Number of entries
1	Designated Banks and Building Societies: brick-and-mortar branches	x								3509
2	Designated Banks and Building Societies and Post Office: brick-and-mortar branches	x		x						13555
3	Designated banks and building societies, and Post Office: all branches, including mobile	x		x	x	x				15846
4	Post Office, designated banks and building societies providing PCA (all branches), and free-to-use ATMs	x		x	x	x	x			52305
5	Post Office, designated banks and building societies (all branches), and all ATMs	x		x	x	x	x	x		62330
6	All free-to-use cash access points (excluding cashback)	x	x	x	x	x	x			52423
7	All cash access points (excluding cashback)	x	x	x	x	x	x	x		62448
8	Free-to-use ATMs						x			36459
9	All ATMs						x	x		46484
10	All free-to-use cash access points and cashback locations	x	x	x	x	x	x		x	609280
11	All cash access points and cashback locations	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	619305
12	All ATMs and cashback locations						x	x	x	603341
13	Post Office branches excluding outreach and mobile			x						10046
14	All Post Office branches			x		x				11728

On this web page we provide highlights of coverage in Table 3. We present data for groups 3 and 6 as proxies for free cash withdrawal access and cash deposit access for consumers. We provide these figures for Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole split by overall, rural and urban at distances of 1 mile and 3 miles.

Table 3: Percentages of the UK population that have access to a source of cash within a given distance as of 2024 Q2 (groups 3 and 6)

Group 3 Group 6

Group 3: Larger banks and building societies providing PCA and Post Office: all branches, including mobile 2024 Q2

Region	Rural / Urban	Population, 000's	2km	5km	1mi	3mi
UK	Overall	67,070.30	94.8	99.6	92.4	99.6
UK	Rural	12,046.40	76.2	98.3	69.9	98.0
UK	Urban	55,023.90	98.9	99.9	97.3	99.9
GB	Overall	65,174.80	95.1	99.7	92.8	99.6
GB	Rural	11,337.10	77.3	98.5	71.1	98.2
GB	Urban	53,837.70	98.9	99.9	97.3	99.9
NI	Overall	1,895.50	83.4	98.4	79.2	98.2
NI	Rural	709.3	57.8	95.8	50.9	95.1
NI	Urban	1186.20	98.7	100	96.1	100

Group 6: All free-to-use cash access points (excluding cashback) 2024 Q2

Region	Rural / Urban	Population, 000's	2km	5km	1mi	3mi
UK	Overall	67,070.30	96.1	99.7	94.9	99.7
UK	Rural	12,046.40	80.5	98.8	74.9	98.5
UK	Urban	55,023.90	99.5	100	99.2	100
GB	Overall	65,174.80	96.4	99.8	95.2	99.7
GB	Rural	11,337.10	81.6	98.8	76.1	98.6
GB	Urban	53,837.70	99.5	100	99.2	99.9
NI	Overall	1,895.50	86.2	99.1	83.2	98.9
NI	Rural	709.3	63.7	97.6	56.3	97.1
NI	Urban	1186.20	99.7	100	99.3	100

Estimated percentages of the UK population living within a given distance from a cash access point for all groups 1-15 can be downloaded via the link below (see notes 7, 8, and 9).

We give the estimates for the UK regions and devolved nations separately, as well as for England and the UK overall. We also give estimates for rural and urban areas (see note 10).

The distances considered are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 miles (approximately 1.6, 3.2, 4.8, 8.0 and 16 km, respectively).

Download Table 3 data[6] (xlsx)

Notes 7, 8, 9 and 10

All population estimates are based on 2011 census output area (OA) geographies (small areas in Northern Ireland), mid-2020 estimates of the usual resident population for OAs in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, and for Data Zones in Scotland. We obtained population estimates for OAs in Scotland by proportionally adjusting the 2011 census estimates using the aggregate mid-2021 population estimates for Data Zones. We compute the population estimates for arbitrary areas based on the assumption that population density is uniform over each OA. For ease of reference, columns ‘Population, 000’s’ in Table 3 reproduce these population estimates (in thousands) for all included areas.
While we have tried to get precise locations of all access points, some locations are precise to their respective postcode centroids only. In most cases the locations used in this analysis are those supplied by banks, building societies, the Post Office, the LINK Scheme Ltd, Visa and Mastercard.
All estimates in Table 3 are reported to 1 decimal place precision. For some groups the estimates are very similar or nearly identical, for example those for groups 7 (all cash access points) and 5 (all except type B). This is because many cash access points, particularly bank and building society branches, tend to cluster around population centres.
The definitions used for rural-urban classification differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the case of Northern Ireland, for simplicity, we have reallocated the 165 out of 4,537 small areas originally assigned to a mixed rural/urban category to either rural or urban category based on their band. We have allocated bands A-E as urban and F-H as rural; see NISRA Urban-Rural Classification 2015[7] for more details.

Figure 1 shows the coverage areas underlying the population estimates in Table 3. As in Table 3, the cash access points are those in groups 1-15. In each case the areas shown are those without access to a source of cash within 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 miles. The interactive tooltips show percentages of the Local Authority District population with access to a source of cash within the above range of distances.

Download underlying data for Figure 1 maps (XLSX)[8]

Figure 1: Access to cash coverage in the UK in 2024 Q2

Group 1: Larger banks and building societies providing PCA: brick-and-mortar branches

View the maps in Tableau Public[9]

3. Other insights

3.1. Temporary closures

We cannot give precise figures for temporary closures because a high proportion of branches did not provide this information. Of type A branches that provided this information (73%), 6.3% were temporarily closed for at least 1 day.

We do not have equivalent information for Post Office branches.

3.2. Opening hours

While external and stand-alone ATMs are always accessible, in-branch cash withdrawals and deposits and other banking services are only available during branch opening hours.

Figure 2 shows the percentages of branches open at a given time between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday (see note 11), by branch types defined in Table 1.

Figure 2 Percentages of branches open at a given time by branch type

[10]

Download PDF version of infographic (PDF)[11]

3.3. Accessibility

For some consumers, being able to use branch services depends on accessibility.

Table 4 shows percentages of branches that are wheelchair accessible, have step-free access and/or have a hearing/induction loop available for the 3 types of bank and building society branches (see note 11). The step-free access characteristic does not apply to mobile branches (see note 12).

Of the brick-and-mortar bank and building society branches, 93.4% of type A (designated banks and building societies) and 73.7% of type B (large non-designated PCA provider) branches have all 3 features. Excluding the branches for which some values are unreported, these percentages become 97.4% and 73.7% respectively.

In this publication, we do not have equivalent information for Post Offices.

Table 4: Percentages of branches with common accessibility characteristics by branch type

		Wheelchair accessible			Has step-free access			Has hearing/ induction loop available
Access point type	Sample	Yes	No	Unreported	Yes	No	Unreported	Yes	No	Unreported
A: Larger banks and building societies providing PCA (brick-and-mortar branches)	All data	94.3	1.7	4.0	94.4	1.6	4.0	95.6	0.4	4.0
	Excluding unreported	98.2	1.8	x	98.3	1.7	x	99.6	0.4	x
B: All other banks and building societies (brick-and-mortar branches)	All data	83.9	16.1	-	81.4	18.6	-	100.0	-	-
	Excluding unreported	83.9	16.1	x	81.4	18.6	x	100.0	x	x
D: Mobile bank branches	All data	71.1	28.9	-	-	100.0	-	100.0	-	-
D: Mobile bank branches	Excluding unreported	71.1	28.9	x	-	100.0	x	100.0	-	x

Notes 11 and 12

Mobile stops and outreach branches are typically open for a small number of hours on specific days, so the overall proportions of these branches open at a given time are generally low.
Proportions given in the ‘excluding unreported’ rows in Table 4 are unbiased estimates of the respective true proportions where there is no connection between the non-reporting and the value of the specific characteristic. Proportions given in the ‘all data’ rows represent worst-case scenario bounds. For example, if all the 4.0% of larger bank and building society branches (type A) for which step-free access is unreported are, in fact, step-free accessible, the overall proportions will be 98.4% and 1.6%. If none of them is step-free accessible, the overall proportions will be 90.4% and 9.6% for yes and no respectively.
Symbols ‘x’ and ‘–’ in Table 4 denote ‘not applicable’ and ‘none’ (ie, exactly zero) respectively. In some cases, the percentages do not sum to exactly 100% because of rounding.

4. Attributions

As well as the data from banks, building societies, and the Post Office, the analysis uses other open data and data licensed under the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement:

Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
This product contains data created and maintained by Scottish Local Government.

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1. Introduction

Note 1, 2 and 3

2. Coverage

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

Notes 4, 5, and 6

Table 2: Groupings of cash access points

Table 3: Percentages of the UK population that have access to a source of cash within a given distance as of 2024 Q2 (groups 3 and 6)

Notes 7, 8, 9 and 10

Figure 1: Access to cash coverage in the UK in 2024 Q2

3. Other insights

3.1. Temporary closures

3.2. Opening hours

Figure 2 Percentages of branches open at a given time by branch type

3.3. Accessibility

Table 4: Percentages of branches with common accessibility characteristics by branch type

Notes 11 and 12

4. Attributions