Abysmal NHS

To be fair, I worked for a bank many, many years ago.

Did you know cheques were meant to be completely phased out by 2018?

These things just always get pushed back and back for various reasons.

The idea would be that everything would be done via electronic bank transfer or cash. The industry was fully set up to phase them out, but it was cancelled after a final consultation. From what I remember of the results there were strong concerns that a lot of the older generation would be disproportionately affected. As they still rely fairly heavily on cheques and are not used to using online/electronic banking. It would make them especially vulnerable to scams, as cheques at least have a clearing period where you can cancel them. The Faster Payments system, which is the most common method of electronic transfer, is near instant and it can be difficult to get money returned.