Business Bank Account for a Parish Council

frogga

Hello All,

Not sure if I am allowed to ask this question as it is not personal banking, it is about a business account. 

I am a Parish Council Clerk for a small village. We currently bank with HSBC but we are now being charged £5 for the facility of the bank account, and 40p for every cheque. I have not been happy with HSBC for a while as they would not enable us to do online banking in the way that we need to so we still have to use cheques. As Clerk, I am not a signatory on the cheques, that has to be done by two other Councillors. HSBC insisted that I would have to be a signatory/authoriser with only one other which does not work for the Parish Council set up.

I am looking for a business account that will not charge, and that will set up a facility for two other authorisers of our payments. I need to be the person who sets everything up, and I need two others who can log on and authorise payments.

We bank with Barclays for the Village Hall Charity, and this works brilliantly, but Barclays will not take on any new customers.

Can any of you tell me of an account that will work for us?

Thanks in advance

eskbanker

There have been a number of threads about how to avoid the new HSBC charges, so probably worth reading through some, such as https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6292373/new-charges-on-charity-bank-accounts-with-hsbc/p1, which also links to the MSE editorial piece about this.

frogga

THANK YOU X That's very kind x

[Deleted User]

Is it usual that a Parish Council gets free business banking? 

penners324

As a charity, yes.

Barclays, Metro a few others.

Grumpy_chap

Is this Parish Council a church PCC (Parish Church Council) or a formal administrative Parish Council as a statutory local authority operating at the third tier of local government?  If the latter, then banks may well deem the organisation only eligible for business banking and not charitable accounts.