A BANK has taken the unusual step of moving its services onto the streets of a Suffolk town today after a fire alarm fault forced bosses to shut the branch to customers.

Russell Claydon

A BANK has taken the unusual step of moving its services onto the streets of a Suffolk town today after a fire alarm fault forced bosses to shut the branch to customers.

Staff at Barclays Bank in Sudbury have been taking cheques from customers on the pavement, taking down their telephone numbers and posting them through the letterbox.

The branch has a hand-written sign on it reading: “Due to unforeseen circumstances we are unable to open until further notice.”

Staff first discovered the problem early this morning as they were due to open up and a decision was taken to not allow customers into building while it was being repaired.

Irene East, a spokesperson for Barclays Bank, said: “We have had technical problems with our fire alarms. Under health and safety without fire alarms in place we do not feel we should let customers through the door.

“We are doing our best and are staff are taking as much banking as they physically can and pointing people to our nearest branch in Halstead. We have an engineer on site working as fast as he can to resolve matters.

“We obviously apologise for the inconvenience to customers, it does not look like it will reopen this afternoon at the moment but hopefully it will open tomorrow morning.”

One customer, who did not want to give his full name, said: “It is bizarre. I would have thought the local library (adjacent) would have hosted a desk for them to do things from.

“If you get an alarm fault quite rightly you have to shut down.”

He said of the situation on the street: “It is no worse than a night safe and they are posting it into their own building. I do not think it is dangerous. It is unusual but I have been able to do everything I wanted to do.”