You may be right @wheels , but the banks tried to remove costly cheque books and they are still there...
That kind of implies that the banks tried and failed. In reality they had their legs cut out from underneath them before they'd got started.
Around 2008/09 the government of the day announced that they were going to allow cheques to be phased out by 2018. Then in 2011,
SEVEN YEARS before they were due to be phased out, the government bottled it, decided that not enough progress had been made on making sure suitable alternative options were in place, and announced that they would no longer be phased out.
Cheques are only still a thing because the government legally requires it. Had they not bottled it, cheques would be abolished, and we'd have a (likely) much better, certainly less expensive, and less hassle alternative than passing around a bit of paper, for those rare circumstances when card or electronic transfer just won't do.