A businessman from East Lancashire has spoken about the importance of physical, in-person banking while appearing on Good Morning Britain.

Dave Fishwick, from Sabden near Burnley, appeared on the ITV show on Thursday, February 9 for a debate alongside former The Apprentice candidate Joanna Jarjue.

Fishwick founded Burnley-based Bank of Dave as a community bank aimed at helping local businesses and projects.

With many high-street bank branches closing down and moving to online services, he wanted to reiterate the importance of in-person banking.

Speaking on the show, he said: “We need community banks, run by the community to benefit the community. They are not theme parks, they are where people go to do very serious activities.

“I’ve got elderly people, young people, middle-aged people, lots who don’t have thousands of pounds for an iPhone or thousands of pounds for a computer or an iPad to be able to do online banking.

“Lots of people can’t afford the monthly fee for the internet. Lots of people up north I’ve been speaking to just recently don’t have the internet. Some people just don’t.

“People need to be able to speak to people.”

Fishwick was challenged by Jarjue who said that people can instead use banking hubs and that even though big branches are closing down, people have alternatives such as hubs and post offices for simple transactions.

He responded: “Post offices sell stamps, postage things, birthday cards. They take a little bit of money and they do some of the services, but they don’t do the big loans, you can’t go and speak to them about a problem, you can’t get financial advice.”

Jarjue, a digital marketing manager from Manchester who appeared on series 13 of The Apprentice, feels as though banks use up spots on high streets that could be put to better use.

She said: “This is definitely a supply and demand issue and as much as people are tweeting and making comments that this isn’t something they want, I think they’re showing the banks that this is what they want through their actions.

“If more of us were actually going out and using the banks the this wouldn’t be an issue. We’re using prime real estate in towns and city centres that we can use to reopen public libraries.

“If all bank branches were to close tomorrow it’s not like there’s no opportunity to do anything physically.”