BOURNEMOUTH’S MPs are being urged to help stop cheques being phased out as a method of payment.

The town’s council has agreed to lobby them over the 2018 cut off date.

A Labour motion was passed with all party support at full council on Tuesday night.

Cllr Beryl Baxter said the plan is a real problem small businesses and charities She said Age Concern and Help the Aged get 71 per cent of their donations by cheque.

She added: “Many older people do not use direct debits because they don’t want to run the risk of going overdrawn.”

And she noted that her own bank had already stopped routinely sending out chequebooks, cutting consumer choice.

She came up with the motion after the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee re-opened its inquiry into the future of cheques.

Fellow Labour member Dennis Gritt said he was concerned about the effect on vulnerable, elderly people, at a time when post offices and banks were also closing.

“The costs of keeping cheques are minimal compared with the huge profits the banks are making,” he said.

Several Conservative members, including council leader Peter Charon, spoke in favour and the motion was passed.

Taxi proprietor Cllr Chris Mayne said: “I still use cheques myself for business and fully support it.”

Cllr Allister Russell remarked how Labour’s Ed Balls had introduced the policy.

He then mocked it with a ribald play on the former chancellors’ last name.

The council will now request that MPs Conor Burns and Tobias Ellwood write to the treasury committee to request cheques are still used as a method of payment until a “suitable alternative” is in place.