Yet more names are about to be lost from the high street, Santander is removing familiar names such as Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley and replacing them with the name of a town in Spain called - Santander.

Left: Oliver and his friends were sure the new mobile bank stopped near here

Whilst at the other end of the spectrum, Norwich Union, a financial giant named after the city of its inception has changed its name to Aviva?? Lloyds has announced the Cheltenham & Gloucester will no longer have a presence on the high street and of course there is the long running saga of the Post Office and its village branch closures.

But a recent advertising campaign has caught my eye which seems to buck this trend of change or closure. NatWest is promoting banking that drives to your village high street and serves you from the back of a van. What a fantastic idea. It has all the hallmarks of times gone by: personal service, regular service, and I bet that if there is a queue, it is friendly and orderly, none of the foot tapping, sighing, watch checking impatience that many bank queues produce.

But can it stand the test of time? I remember as a child, all sorts of vans selling wares to the housewife; veg, bread, pop, books, fish & chips, but these days, you hardly see a milk float, so is it time to be launching van-banking, and will it ever be able to compete with internet banking?

Sadly, I think not, the truth is whilst it is nice to have a branch to pop into and talk to a real person, even better to have them drive up to see you, there is an amount of inconvenience involved on the part of the customer. You have to make the trip or you have to be available at a set time – unlike online banking. Some people may say it’s impersonal, but I don’t know many people who are happy to tell strangers their financial affairs. In fact having worked in a bank, I can say quite honestly, some people are more likely to tell you of their marital affairs than their financial ones, so impersonal may not be such an issue.

The beauty of high street banking is familiarity: take that away and what have you got left? Being a creature of habit, the benefit of online banking for me is that it is impersonal, and therefore least likely to change. There is also the added benefit that I can imagine the online bank to be staffed with people the same age as me, with the same life experiences, an illusion easily shattered by the reality of walking into a bank, regardless of its name or if it has wheels or not.

It appears that now the horse has well and truly bolted, financial policy and regulatory groups would like to nail the stable door shut against high salary multiple, 100 per cent and self certified mortgages.

Left:When Bess overheard the trainers talking about a level playing field she laughed so much she nearly broke the stable door

It is right and proper that failed systems are corrected but what will a tightening of lending criteria mean to the mortgage market?

Regulators are looking to bring back the bank managing styles of the old, careful, steady handed managers that were well known and highly respected locally. But is this possible in today's market?

Bank managers in the 1960s and 1970s were not under pressure to hit targets and those of us around at the time lived in a ‘local' world, unlike the target driven global world we find ourselves in today.

Branches are no longer looking over their shoulder at the bank down the street instead they are competing against internet banks and banks on a national and even international scale.

Generally in the 60s and 70s a combination of a deposit and set income multiples meant that even first time buyers were able to get on the housing ladder. To be fair, house prices were lower then making it easier to save for a deposit and get within the available lower salary multiples.

Will that be the same tomorrow or will the size of the deposit needed exclude many people? If a consequence of stricter lending is that the housing market could be adversely affected because people can't afford to buy, will it ultimately mean that the stable door will actually need to be left ajar to high multiples? Or will shared equity schemes and schemes for key-workers become the norm? 

I suppose an alternative theory could be that the proposed lending constraints, together with the current correction in house prices, will produce even lower property valuations in the foreseeable future and it is this which will help people onto the housing ladder.

Either way, it will be interesting to see how tomorrow's banking system combines responsible lending with the need for profit.

Sylvia Waycot, Publisher - Moneyfacts Group

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee will not lower interest rates below its current 0.5 per cent, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has predicted. With the rate setting committee due to reveal its intentions later today, the business organisation said it believes quantitative easing is now the main monetary tool, making it important that the policy is communicated more clearly, and implemented more forcefully, than has been the case so far. David Kern, chief economist at the BCC, said the Bank had to avoid creating market uncertainties over the strength of its commitment to pursuing quantitative easing transparently, aggressively and over a long period of time.

"The Bank needs to spell out what rate of money supply expansion they are planning to achieve," he added. "In particular, they must aim to increase monetary growth significantly in key sectors, mainly to industrial and commercial companies and individuals. Without a major boost to liquidity, companies and individuals will not borrow, even if banks are prepared to lend."

Shoppers continued to stay away from the high street in March, the Experian FootFall UK National Index has revealed. It was 1.7% lower when compared with 12 months ago, with the hardest hit areas being Wales and the South West. Retail sales have been forecast to contract by 1% in 2009 which if eventually proves to be correct would be the first full-year decline since 1991.

"The plan to increase retail business rates will add considerable cost pressures," Experian added. "The short term benefit to the Treasury of such a tax increase needs to be put against the inevitable social damage to UK towns and cities caused by abandoned high streets, redundancy and large-scale business failure."

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has revealed it is to consult on whether the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) should provide extra protection for holders of temporary high deposit balances in the event of the failure of a UK bank. The current maximum deposit protected by the FSCS is £50,000 per individual per bank or building society. However, the regulator said that customers occasionally have balances in excess of this at a single institution as a result of perhaps selling a house or receiving an inheritance, pension lump sum or personal injury award. "Our proposals will protect people who have little or no choice about holding a high balance for a limited period over the current FSCS limit before they can diversify it, if they wish, between different institutions," said Thomas Huertas, director of the banking sector at the FSA. He added that as the intention is not to protect consumers that keep a high balance for a long period, the extra protection afforded will be time limited.