Crackdown on ATM charges.

Cash machine providers that fail to alert customers to ATM charges will face fines when new regulations come into force in a month's time.

From July 1, all ATMs must clearly show charges before a consumer inserts their card.

The regulations are being introduced by Link, the industry body that oversees all cash-machine providers.

The move follows the stinging report published last March by the Treasury Select Committee which attacked machine providers for failing to make charges clear.

Typical charges range from pounds 1.50 to pounds 5, but the MPs found some machines charging as much as pounds 10 per cash withdrawal.

Currently, only about 40% of cash machines charge for withdrawals, but it is expected more than half will by this time next year.

Five years ago, virtually all ATMs were fee-free. But as reported in The Journal earlier this year, already in County Durham 211 ATMs charge, compared with 179 which don't. In Northumberland the figures are 128 and 113 respectively.

Hardest hit are undoubtedly rural areas, where many bank, building society and Post Office branches have been closed, leaving people with no easy access to cash. A staggering 75% of all cash machines in these areas now charge users to withdraw money.

But the plague is spreading to towns and cities, where between 40% and 50% of machines now charge fees.

In Sunderland 201 ATMs charge, with just 125 offering a free service. The figure is equally frightening in South Tyneside, where just 50 are free and 72 aren't.

Link is to use NOP, the market research group, to conduct spot checks to ensure providers ( which include banks and building societies as well as independent firms ( comply with the new rules.

It will visit about 2,000 of the UK's 20,000 fee-charging ATMs once every six months.

Howard Aiken [OK], the card-scheme director of Link, says the new scheme should negate the need for Government legislation. "Something did need to be done and we have responded."

It is not known how large the fines levied against providers who break the new regulations will be, but they could run into tens of thousands of pounds. But Link's move has failed to impress Andrea Eagle, one of the MPs who helped compile the Treasury Select Committee report. She has described the regulations as "pretty perfunctory ... inadequate really."

She says the vetting of 2,000 cash machines is not a large enough sample and believes investigations should be held more than every six months.

She has also suggested Link should run a hotline to allow consumers to report ATMs that do not comply with the code.

The Treasury Select Committee has said it will keep a "watching brief" over ATM charges.

Ms Eagle says: "I'm willing to give the industry a bit longer to sort itself out, but not that much longer.

"Cash machine charges hurt some of the poorest and most isolated people."