Closed at a stroke! Darlaston swimming club left without bank account days before Christmas

Glenys Allison has been the driving force at the club since 1988 and was awarded the British Empire Medal for her service to the club.

Last year she attended the King's Coronation Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in recognition of her charitable efforts.

Glenys said she was sent a letter by Barclays on Wednesday telling her they were closing the club's account immediately and were sending her a cheque for the balance of nearly £2,600.

But they sent the cheque to Darlaston Swimming and Fitness Centre rather than to Glenys' home address in Willenhall where the account was opened.

She said the cheque hasn't arrived and an important insurance payment was due to go out over the weekend which she will now have to pay because the account no longer exists.

Glenys said: "I went with Barclays around seven years ago as they are one of the few banks or building societies now who offer such accounts for small organisations or clubs.

"There has never been a problem before , you could say it was going swimmingly but I just got the letter out of the blue this week saying the account would be closed immediately and with no explanation.

"Apart from the inconvenience of having to pay things without them coming straight out of the account there are other direct debits – most of the parents pay their subs that way because it is convenient."

During her time at Darlaston Swimming Club, Glenys has subsidised hundreds of children's lessons and was the only one on the team to work on a voluntary basis.

She said: "This has always been a labour of love, that of swimming and a big belief in the worth of teaching youngsters to swim – hopefully that will continue and the club can stay afloat with the banking relations restored because there are fewer and fewer options these days.

A spokesman for Barclays said: “As part of our ongoing responsibility to help prevent financial crime, and to meet our regulatory obligations, we are required to keep up to date information regarding our customers’ accounts.

"We share a series of communications asking customers to supply us with some important information relating to their Barclays Business account.

“In this instance, repeated attempts were made by the bank between September 2022 to September 2023 for the important information we had requested to be provided. As a result of not receiving the necessary information relating to the business account, we were left with no alternative but to close the account.

“We fully understand the issues this can cause customers, and while we do not accept there has been any bank error, as a gesture of goodwill we have offered to re-open their account to allow more time for the information we have requested to be provided.”