Bank closures: Lloyds, RBS and Yorkshire Building Society to shut branches

Banking and Borrowing

Updated on 05 December 2017 | 15 Comments

Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Yorkshire Building Society have all announced branch closures across the country in the next year. Is your local branch going to close?

Two banks and a building society have announced that they'll be closing branches, leaving more people without a local bank.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has said that it will be shutting 197 NatWest branches and 62 RBS branches, resulting in around 680 job losses.

RBS said in a statement: "We expect these branch closures to result in around 680 redundancies. We realise this is difficult news for our colleagues and we are doing everything we can to support those affected. We will ensure compulsory redundancies are kept to an absolute minimum."

Yorkshire Building Society is planning to drop a handful of branches as part of its cuts.

Lloyds is also going to close 49 branches across England, Wales and Scotland next year with three of its brands affected: Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. The closures will mean 99 people will lose their jobs.

“Customers are increasingly choosing to use digital and mobile channels for their everyday banking needs,” a spokesman for Lloyds Banking Group said. “As a consequence, the number of customers visiting some of our branches has declined in recent years.”

After the closures 95% of Lloyds customers and 90% of Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers will still have a branch within five miles of their home, according to the banking group.

However, not everyone agrees that the closures are necessary.

“Lloyds needs to halt this unnecessary bank branch closure programme,” says Rob MacGregor, national officer at the union Unite.

“Local communities are making it clear that the closure of their local branch excludes customers who cannot use digital means to conduct their financial transactions. Having returned to profitability LBG needs to stop ignoring its corporate responsibilities.”

Lloyds has already announced plans to turn some of its outposts into ‘micro-branches’ with just two members of staff and no counters as it moves more towards digital banking.

A fleet of nine mobile branches of Lloyds and Bank of Scotland will also be introduced by the end of the year.

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Where are the closures?

NatWest and RBS branches are closing across the country. Is yours listed below?

Closures in the North of England

Midlands and East

South West and Wales

London and South East

Scotland

Here are the 32 Lloyds branches closing, along with 11 Bank of Scotland branches and six Halifax branches.

If you're a Yorkshire Building Society customer, these are the branches disappearing.

Who else is shutting down branches?

A lot of banks are shutting down branches, sometimes even if they are the last physical branch left in a town. 

Which? has an interactive map where you can see the latest closures and other closures that have been recorded since 2015.

What can you do?

The good news is you do have options if your local bank branch is closing down.

One option is to stick with your bank but do your banking via the Post Office. Almost all current account and business account holders – regardless of which bank you are with – can bank via the Post Office.

You can pay money into your account, check your balance and withdraw cash at the Post Office.

Alternatively, you could switch to a bank that still has a branch that is convenient for you. Obviously, you don’t want to switch to find your new bank then closes your local branch too, so choose your new bank carefully.

One idea may be to move to a challenger bank. While the big names are closing branches some of the new kids on the block are expanding and opening new branches. Metro Bank has opened 50 outlets since it launched in 2010, and plans to open another five in the near future, with the aim of having 110 branches by 2020.

Handelsbanken now operates more than 200 branches across the UK up from just 26 back in 2006. It promotes local banking and states it is very important to its business plan.

“Banking as far as we’re concerned is very local,” Mikael Sorensen, UK chair of Handelsbanken, said earlier this year. “Mr and Mrs Smith in Huddersfield still need a bank, and they still need a debit card and a mortgage loan.”

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