The Cambridge signs contract to open new Bury St Edmunds store
September 26, 2021
The Cambridge Building Society has signed a 10-year lease on a property to open a new store in Bury St Edmunds.
It will open in the New Year and is the first new branch The Cambridge has launched in a new location in more than 10 years.
“We are committed to offering customers the face to face service they still crave,” said Chief Operating Officer, Lucy Crumplin, who signed the lease agreement last week.
“We’re proud to be bucking the trend for branch closures1 by opening a new branch in a new location – the thriving and bustling community of Bury St Edmunds. For us it is about offering a personalised and flexible customer experience, from an expert our customers can trust.”
The new store will be at 29 Buttermarket and fulfils the Society’s criteria of being in a busy, visible and accessible location with high footfall, which is on average 370,000 per month and was 425,213 in August2.
“We were looking for a location within 30 miles of Cambridge to support our own people, but also to ensure The Cambridge brand resonates,” said Lucy.
“The strength of the economy in Bury St Edmunds was also a deciding factor, with its strong retail sector and community investment in recent years.”
The building is on two floors and will be refurbished before opening to the public. The ground floor will follow the vibrant, open-plan décor of the Cambridge’s recently updated stores in Cambridge, Ely, St Ives, Bar Hill, Histon, Cherry Hinton and Great Shelford. The design updates provide easy access to facilities for less able customers and those with additional challenges.
The second floor will provide state-of-the-art hot-desking facilities, as well as break-out and refreshment areas. The office area will give The Cambridge’s teams the flexibility for hybrid working, to support a healthy work-life balance.
1 Banks and building societies have closed (or scheduled the closure) of 4,299 branches since January 2015, at a rate of around 50 each month. Read more: https://www.which.co.uk/money/banking/switching-your-bank/bank-branch-closures-is-your-local-bank-closing-a28n44c8z0h5 – Which?
2 Bury St. Edmunds BID, ‘Footfall data reports’ August 2021