Lloyds and Halifax branch closures: Is yours next to be axed?

Lloyds Banking Group is shutting 44 more bank branches for good across England and Wales this year, it has announced today.

Looking to ramp up numbers banking online, the group said it was closing 29 Lloyds Bank branches and 15 Halifax sites. 

In a bid to justify the move, Lloyds’ retail director, Vim Maru, said the lender had seen ‘significantly fewer transactions’ at the 44 branches over the last five years.

Banks have stepped up branch closures after many paused restructuring for much of last year to focus on responding to the pandemic. 

Closing: Lloyds Banking Group is shutting 44 more bank branches for good across England and Wales this year

So far in 2021 the group has announced 100 branch closures for this year. Fifty-six closed in March and April and the 44 announced today will shut between September and November.

Mr Maru said: ‘Of the closures the Group has announced today, over a third are branches situated in or around cities and large towns, with another branch very close by. 

‘All closures have been made in line with the Access to Banking Standard and FCA guidance. 

‘In line with previous branch closures, there are no compulsory   redundancies and the Group’s unions, Accord and Unite, were consulted.’

He said the group would ‘continue to invest’ in its high-street presence. This week the lender is opening a ‘new concept’ Bank of Scotland branch in Edinburgh. 

It said: ‘Importantly, we’ll continue to give our customers a choice in how they bank with branches sitting alongside telephone banking, online and mobile banking, our video appointment services, our cashback through local shops programme, our participation in the industry BankHUB cash initiative and 11,500 Post Offices, at which our customers can bank and access cash.’

Shutting: So far in 2021 Lloyds Banking Group has announced 100 branch closures for this year

Mr Maru said  the group had seen its digital banking customers grow by over 4million in five years, to almost 18million, of which 13.6million ‘also choose to be active app users.’ 

‘This means that, like many businesses on the high street, we must change for a future where branches will be used in a different way, and visited less often’, he added.

Union Unite said it had told Lloyds that branches continued to provide an essential service for communities.

‘In recent times LBG has spent significant resource to sell its message of ‘Helping Britain Recover’, Unite national officer Caren Evans said.

She added: ‘Unite seriously question how this decision to walk away from local communities promotes this message at a time when the customers will rely on the financial services sector support more than ever.’

Lloyds said that across all its branches transactions had dropped by 10 per cent a year in the five years to March 2020, and ‘significantly’ further in the year since.

It added: ‘Today, 90 per cent of customers have a branch within 5 miles of their home and over 80 per cent of products are opened online, meaning customers are able to make use of a number of different ways to do their day to day banking.’

Once these closures are complete the group will have 779 Lloyds Bank branches, 560 Halifax branches, alongside 184 Bank of Scotland branches.

The latest closure announcement by Lloyds will spark fears that many vulnerable and elderly people are being left with sparse options for cash access and banking, with some having to travel long distances to get to another open branch.

In March, Santander announced it was closing 111 branches up and down the country. At the time, it said that all of the 111 closing branches were within half a mile of at least two free-to-use cash machines.

Santander branches in New Malden, Marlow, Leatherhead, Sale, Surbiton, Twickenham and Wickford were just some of the swathes being axed.