DEVIZES MP Michael Ancram has joined the protest over the closure of the Portman Building Society offices in Pewsey and Ramsbury and is writing to ask chief executive Robert Sharp to reconsider the decision.

Mr Ancram said he was surprised to learn that the Portman had made its decision without speaking first to its investors. The MP said: "This is another blow to the economic viability of the two villages and I will be taking this up with the Portman."

It was essential to the communities in Ramsbury and Pewsey, said Mr Ancram, that their services are maintained. Just two years ago he met with the chairman of Lloyds TSB in an unsuccessful bid to persuade the bank not to close its branch in Ramsbury.

Pewsey Parish Council members held an emergency meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss the news that the village's only building society branch would close from August 3.

Chairman Coun Colin Lampard said the news had come out of the blue without any consultation with investors who include the parish council which has an account with the Portman in Pewsey.

In a strongly worded letter to the Portman's sales and marketing director Peter Southcott the parish council made the following points:

l No public consultation whatsoever has taken place.

l The building society is a mutual society owned by its members.

l Recently the Portman asked for members' support in fighting off a 'carpetbagger'.

l Can the society provide figures to justify its claims that transactions have fallen when Pewsey has grown by 30per cent since the branch opened 20 years ago.

l What is the society's policy on providing services for rural communities?

Coun Lampard wrote: "Pewsey Parish Council is appaled at this high handed, seemingly thoughtless action.

"How will local people manage who have not got cars or who do not wish to travel to Marlborough(over £4 cost) or Devizes every time they want to carry out a banking transaction or withdraw money,

"This retrograde step will not help a community that has fought hard to regenerate itself, a further act of rural deprivation. Please will you reconsider the decision and carry out a legal consultative procedure?"

Coun Lampard told the Gazette that councillors were so incensed at the Portman's decision and the total lack of any consultation that they had asked their clerk to contact the Swindon based Nationwide and also the Stroud and Swindon building societies to see if they would be willing to consider opening branches in Pewsey.

The immediate past president of the Pewsey Chamber of Commerce, solicitor Peter Waine, said many of its members had business accounts with the Portman and would find it difficult to travel to other branches to make transactions. He said : "I think the way the Portman has acted is symptomatic of the way small business like those in Pewsey are regarded.

Pewsey trader Caroline Dalrymple who organised a protest outside the branch last week and has gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition said: "It's not just the businesses who will suffer, families will, clubs who use the Portman for their banking and in particular the pensioners who have their pensions paid into the building society."

In the Gazette's story last week it was claimed business accounts are not conducted at the Pewsey branch. The High Street bank's business banking manager, Debbie Cooper, said business accounts are conducted from the Pewsey branch where she can be contacted by arrangement.