Property developer bricks up bank
(No user rating) (from Bridging and Commercial - 29 September 2010)A property developer from Dorset has protested against the high street banks’ lack of lending to SMEs by building a brick wall over the entrance to a branch of Barclays.
Cameron Hope, 59, from Bournemouth, became so angry at the banks’ current lending criteria – which he feels is shutting out SMEs – that he decided to shut them out instead.
With the help of some friends, Mr Hope built an 8ft tall by 4ft wide wall of breeze bricks, and completely blocked the entrance to Barclays bank in Westbourne, Bournemouth, Dorset.
Making their sentiments loud and clear, the protesters put up placards with slogans reading, ‘Robbed by the banks we own’ and ‘Make the banks lend.’
Ironically, Mr Hope and his fellow protesters hadn’t meant to target Barclays, but NatWest instead. However, he became deterred by the police presence there, (due to an unrelated incident), and so opted for ‘Plan B’.
He told the BBC: "It was Plan B and we drove up the road to Barclays – nothing against Barclays at all.”
