Walked across the street to HSBC and all they needed was a letter from my employer and I had my account in a few hours.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...
Sadly, Boris fixed this for the UK.
Not sure I see a difference?
In most cases, unless you bounced a check (There is a separate system banks use on checks. It not tied to credit agencies.) you can get an account by walking in with any check, or money, though.
Many of our poor are stuck with Payday, with their outrageous fees.
Some homeless shelters offer p.o. boxes. Very few sadily.
All the Covid fun money blown out of tee shirt bazokas to fraudsters, and big healthy businesses; none went to people without an address. None.
ChexSystems is a credit agency. They just specialize in one data point (as of now).
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/basic-bank-account...
The effect? Less than ten thousand basic accounts existed in 2020, two years after their introduction. (source in Polish: https://serwisy.gazetaprawna.pl/finanse-osobiste/artykuly/14...)
Things are a lot easier now with IBAN though, and a bank account is less of a hard requirement than it was 15 years ago.
This is a direct consequence of there being no official central registration of one's address in the UK, unlike in many other countries. You might call Austria bureaucratic for example, because you have to register within 3 days of moving (and another registration is necessary within 4 months), but then you get official papers that prove your address, so this never becomes an issue here, unlike in the UK.
I just checked, and for healthcare you don't actually need it in the UK. In other EU countries you usually have to pay health insurance for yourself if you are not working (sometimes a LOT of money), but not in the UK.
I also helped a friend who just arrived in the UK. The procedures are completely circular. You need a proof of address to open a bank account but you need to have a bank account to do anything that will give you a proof of address.
As for natwest their account opening procedure involves printing a blank pdf form, filling it by hand and going to the branch with it. Welcome to 1999!
Don't take this personally, every Barclays customer experiences random error messages as an everyday benefit of banking with Barclays. The only good thing I can say is that they still have physical branches where you can walk in and talk to a person who is usually nice and helpful.