Barely a week goes past without the high heid yins at Royal Bank of Scotland being engulfed in some new financial scandal.
If it’s not bankrupting the country, then it’s rigging the Libor rate or not managing to run its cashpoint machines reliably or misleading a parliamentary commission investigating the bank’s deliberate ruination of its own corporate clients.
Shame follows shame follows shame.
Under these circumstances, you might expect the former capital colossus to hang its head. Or at least to try keeping a low profile for a while.
Not a bit of it
RBS has applied for listed building consent to announce its presence in new ‘330 cap height’ gold letters over the front door of iconic premises at 35–36 St Andrew Square (Ref. 14/04727/LBC).
‘In terms of proposed advertisement signage for the building,’ say agents GVA Grimley, ‘the current branch is poorly signed and branded. Therefore, these features require to be updated in line with the new branding of the bank’.
RBS also proposes:
- some internal upgrading and improved wheelchair access
- refurbishment with new gold lettering of a plaque on the periphery gate
- replacement of existing plaques on the front elevation with new gold and bronze ones featuring the company logo
- two additional plaques on the front elevation pointing at the night-safe and indoor-sited ATMs
- a new vinyl stuck to the window to show opening hours
- new ‘heritage style’ brand signage above the main entrance, with a brass-coloured aluminium daisy wheel logo measuring ‘470 x 470’. You can see roughly what is intended here.
The proposed colour of this signage, says the accompanying justification, 'complements the existing adornment at the top of the building' (see above). What it doesn’t say is that the adornment in question originates from 1794 when the building served as the Excise Office. In those days it meant something: the magnificent gilt grandeur conveyed that institution’s strength, stability and probity, none of which qualities spring to mind when one thinks of RBS shamelessly photobombing the structure today.
‘The proposals,’ say GVA Grimley without the faintest trace of a smirk, ‘are part of a programme to update and refresh existing RBS branches in order to ... guarantee a high quality customer experience’.
We suspect it will take a lot more than a lick of paint and some heritage-style brass-neck to achieve that.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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@theSpurtle Pity they haven't sought consent to adorn the bank with golden reindeers & gilt Santas, to be more in keeping with its environs.