FCA: Access to cash coverage in the UK 2021 Q4

The FCA provides an overview of geographical cash access coverage in the UK at the end of the third quarter (October to December) of 2021. This is the fourth in a series of regular updates to monitor coverage over time. On a quarterly basis, the FCA, 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 it has supplemented this information with data on cashback vendor locations. The FCA estimates 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 For the UK, estimates of coverage at 2km and 5km for all access points, including free-to use access points only, have not changed since 2021 Q2. This applies to the UK population overall, as well as rural and urban populations separately. It also applies whether we include or exclude cashback. However, there has been changes in the type of access points available over this time. Between 2021 Q3 and 2021 Q4: * The number of brick-and-mortar branches of the larger banks and building societies providing personal current accounts (PCA) continued to fall, as 82 (1.5%) ceased to provide services. This brings the total reduction in these branches to 573 since 2021 Q1, a reduction of 9.8%. * The share of the UK population living within 2km of a large PCA provider brick-and-mortar branch fell by 0.3 percentage points from 59.6% to 59.3%. The share living within 5km fell by 0.2 percentage points, from 87.4% to 87.2%. Coverage of such branches has consistently declined since 2021 Q1 when it was 61.8% at 2km and 88% at 5km. * There was a small decrease in the availability of Post Office branches (1%) and number of free-to-use ATMs (<1%) between Q3 and Q4, although this had negligible impacts on overall cash access coverage.