McGrigor gets another letter from Bank of Scotland on reduced Islay service
published this on 12:57 pm, Tuesday, 5th January, 2010Business| Community News| Islay| Politics | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
Lady Susan Rice, newly raised to the peerage – all you have to do these days to get gonged, is to fail – is already too grand to write her own letters. However, the rank of the flunkies delegated to do so on her behalf has risen with her own elevation.
Highlands and Islands MSP, Jamie McGrigor, had written to her earlier and the text of his letter is published under our original article: McGrigor slams HBOS on Islay businesses left beached and in a later story: McGrigor writes to demoted Rice on Bank of Scotland Islay debacle.
The Dalmally-based MSP has now had a response dated 24th December – with a belated apology for the long delay in replying to his email of 30th November.
The gofer delegated to supply the message that the Bank have no plans to change the newly degraded service to Islay is – one of those great coincidentally appropriate surnames, John Penman, Head of Corporate Communications Scotland.
The text of his letter written on behalf of the Lady Susan (curtseys and cap-doffings across Islay) is as follows:
Bank of Scotland and Relationship Manager in Islay
I am writing in response to the letter you sent to Lady Susan Rice. Susan has asked me to reply on her behalf.
Firstly, I would like to apologise for the delay in replying.
You wrote regarding the arrangements regarding the removal of the “local bank manager from Islay”. I am assuming you mean the Relationship Manager for SMEs as we have no plans to remove the local bank manager.
As you mention, this has generated some coverage locally. In the light of that we undertook some work to assess the full extent of concern on the island by contacting a large number of customers. Just a handful mentioned any issues however we take all of our customers’ concerns very seriously.
In his letter to you last month, Donald Kerr, our Head of Commercial Business, said we were currently assessing whether any further support is appropriate for the Highlands & Islands. Although that will not lead to full time representation on Islay, the work is almost complete and we should be in a position to communicate the outcome early in the New Year.
I do not propose to go over all the ground covered by Donald in his letter but will add that the new model we have set up is not intended as a derogation of service; it is recognition of changes in the ways in which customers interact with the Bank and we remain confident that it will succeed.
I will be in touch to communicate the detail of the outcome of the assessment in the New Year but in the meantime please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.
Best wishes
John Penman
Head of Corporate Communications Scotland
The attitude to Islay is ‘take it or leave it’. These are the options. Islay is not, instinctively. a ‘take it’ island.
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January 7th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
From information received, it is unclear which Islay businesses were included in the survey described above by Mr Penman: ‘…we undertook some work to assess the full extent of concern on the island by contacting a large number of customers. Just a handful mentioned any issues however’.
Since we have only heard from businesses which were not among the ‘large number’ contacted we can only assume that that number was skewed towards domestic rather than business accounts. This strategy would certainly have produced the pattern Mr Penman describes.
We note that he does not specify whether (and in what proportion) business account holders we’re among those contacted.