Annabel Yates drives 94 miles to deposit 900 Hmrc Cheque
Annabel Yates drove 94 miles to a Lloyds branch in Truro on May 14, 2026, to deposit a £900 HMRC cheque after the bank stopped allowing cheques to be paid in through the Post Office. The Cornwall resident said the cheque would not scan in Lloyds Banking Group's app because it lacked perforated edges.
Yates said she did not want to use the freepost deposit service for such a large sum. “I did not want a cheque in the post for such a large amount of money when you are not sure it would actually reach its destination,” she said.
Crackington Haven to Truro
Yates, who lives in Crackington Haven, said the bank change left her with a long drive for a routine payment. Lloyds Banking Group customers could no longer pay in cheques through the Post Office as of January 2026, a change that also applied to Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers.
Yates said the switch to app-based banking did not fit every customer. “I think the bank's theory is everything could be done on an app and that's just not always the case,” she said. “It's very backwards thinking.” She also said, “Back in the day, Lloyd's ethos was to make banking easy. I think this is a reversal of that.”
Marshgate Post Office
Joanna Bickersteth, the postmistress at Marshgate Post Office near Boscastle, said local customers had felt the change since January. “Many customers are frustrated by the loss of cheque deposit services at the Post Office since January,” she said. She added that cheques are “still used a great deal” in her area.
Bickersteth also said the policy had reduced the options available to customers. “the facilities available to customers have been reduced by taking away the post office element,” she said. A new banking hub in Bude cannot cash cheques because of the same policy, leaving fewer places for rural customers to handle paper payments.
Cheque Use in 2024
Lloyds has said cheque use has fallen over the long term and pointed to industry figures showing cheques accounted for 0.1% of all UK payments in 2024. For customers in places such as Cornwall, the practical result is less about the national share and more about distance, branch access and whether a cheque can be deposited without posting it.
