A BANK in a County Durham town has closed.

The Barnard Castle branch of Yorkshire Bank shut yesterday afternoon.

The bank was one of 30 closures nationwide announced as the first phase of 100 closures by Yorkshire Bank's Australian owners, the National Australia Bank.

The announcement in May left local politicians and business leaders in Barnard Castle angry.

Peter Brown, media relations manager, said the Barnard Castle branch had just under 2,850 customers, compared with the average of 7,800 for Yorkshire Bank.

He said: "The customers will hopefully understand why we've had to take this difficult decision to close the branch.

"Unless the customers have asked us to transfer their account to a different bank, their accounts will be transferred to Darlington."

Including part-time workers, the store had four members of staff.

Although Mr Brown would not comment on what had happened to the staff, he said there had been no compulsory redundancies