Wood Green is to be the site of a protest today aimed to shame money shops offering no credit check short term loans to local residents, it has been recently revealed.
Stating that it is sick and tired of having to see high interest rate short term loans on offer at the region’s money shops, the Haringey, Islington and City Credit Union has put the call out to its members to mobilise and march in protest against instant cash loan providers. The Government needs to take action against these cash shops, the credit union’s members say, in order to exert some control over these runaway interest rates by instituting legally binding rate caps.
Martin Groombridge, the credit union’s manager, remarked that the core goal of the protest is to bring embarrassment and shame to the payday lenders in the area in addition to bringing attention to the importance of instituting governmental caps on interest rates. The area of Wood Green is a particularly bad one, Mr Groombridge added, as the concentration of instant cash loan shops in the region is quite high.
Members of the credit union will be standing outside several of the shops located in Wood Green in order to inform any prospective customers exactly how much they will be paying in interest if they were to take out an instant cash loan from one of those providers. The union, which is led by members of the local community, has hopes that its efforts to educate local residents about the pitfalls of payday lending will lead more people to become members, as the loans offered to credit union members are infinitely more affordable than those offered by a payday lender.