A MIDLAND politician has handed in a petition to Downing Street in a bid to urge the Government to scrap plans to abolish cheques.

The “save the cheque” petition, signed by more than 1,000 people in the Midlands and over 10,000 other worried residents across the UK, was spearheaded by Solihull Liberal Democrat MP Lorely Burt.

It comes after the UK Payments Council announced last year that it will put a stop to the system that processes cheques by October 31, 2018. It says there has been a rapid decline in their use – with the number of cheque transactions dropping from a peak of 2.4 billion in 1990 to just 663 million in 2008.

Mrs Burt said: “We’re calling on the Government to acknowledge that banks have a social responsibility to serve and protect their customers. Retaining cheques would mean little or nothing to banks but a great deal to millions of their customers who still rely on them.

“For small businesses cheques are an essential method of payment as other methods can be expensive to administer.”