THE DECISION to close a Cotswold Barclays branch has been called "absolutely ridiclous" by a concerned resident.

Barclays has said it will be closing its Chipping Norton branch on 15 High Street on July 6 as part of planned closures which are affecting 14 other branches.

Susan Marston, 73, resident of Little Rissington, uses the Chipping Norton bank as her local branch after other locations nearer started to close.

She said: "It is absolutely ridiculous, this bank is an important location for many in the surrounding area.

"There are a lot of people who do not use online or mobile banking and rely on these locations to organise their finances.

"It is not a big location so I cannot beleive it costs them a lot to run. I already have to travel around 20 minutes to get to the bank and once this branch closes I do not know what I am going to do."

READ MORE: Cotswold Barclays bank to close amid UK changes

The decision to close 15 branches brings the total number of branches closing this year to 84.

Affected customers have been told they can make cash and cheque deposits, check their balance and withdraw cash at their nearest Post Office.

A Barclays spokesman said the decision had been made in response to “visits to branches” continuing to fall.

He said: “As visits to branches continue to fall, we need to adapt to provide the best service for all our customers.

“Where there is no longer enough demand to support a branch, we maintain an in-person presence through our Barclays Local network, live in over 200 locations, based in libraries, town halls, mobile vans and our new banking pods.

“We also support access to cash with our cashback without purchase service, 24-hour deposit-taking ATMs and by working alongside the Post Office and Cash Access UK.”

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Barclays also has 200 pop-up sites across the UK and they have “banking pods”, which are semi-permanent sites which can be moved to different locations according to demand.

Tobias Gruber, Chief executive of the London-based financial institution My Community Finance, said the closure of high street banks was becoming “increasingly common” as “more customers shift to online and digital banking methods”.