Upgraded Sunderland branch of Newcastle Building Society reopened

Sunderland’s deputy mayor Cllr Harry Trueman has been on site at Newcastle Building Society’s newly-refurbished Sunderland branch to do the honours at its official reopening.

The Newcastle has carried out a seven-week upgrade programme at the Waterloo Place branch, which has been designed to improve the range and accessibility of services to members across Wearside.

Customers were served with cake and bubbly as part of the official opening event, and had the chance to view the new illustrations by well-known North East artist John Coatsworth that have been commissioned for the walls of the branch as part of the refurbishment.

As a thank you for customers’ patience during the refurbishment work, a special Wish Tree has also been placed in the branch on which visitors are being invited to place a wish for themselves or anyone else.

The tree will be on display until Friday June 6, when a handful of the wishes will be chosen by branch staff to be granted.

Steven Beall, manager at NBS’s Sunderland branch, says: “Having seen the new branch taking shape over the last few weeks, it’s exciting to finally be able to share it with everybody, and we’re very grateful to the Deputy Mayor for coming along to carry out our official opening.

“The reaction we had from guests and customers who came along to take a look during the day was really positive and we’re confident the improvements we’ve made will make a real difference to our members’ experience when they come in to see us.

“The Wish Tree is our way of saying thank you for everyone’s patience while this work was carried out and to support our local community. It will give us to opportunity to do lots of nice things for our members, their families or the good causes that they support.”

Jim Willens, chief executive at Newcastle Building Society, adds: “Our branch network remains at the heart of everything that we do, and we are committed to providing the very best facilities for our members.

“We continue to improve our branches and seeing the results of our plans being realised in Sunderland is a wonderful accomplishment of everyone’s hard work.”