Santander to shut another 111 branches

SANTANDER is axing another 111 branches and closing swathes of office space as it plans to keep thousands of staff working from home after the pandemic.

The UK lender will shut the branches by the end of August – leaving it with 452 across the country. The latest move means it will have closed 470 branches since 2015.

The firm insists customers are increasingly using online banking and had little need for bricks-and-mortar locations.

But critics said the branch network was shrinking ‘at an alarming rate’. As the bank ramps up its cost- cutting drive, it also announced plans to move its headquarters from London to Milton Keynes and get rid of offices in Bootle on Merseyside, Newcastle, Portman House in London and Deansgate in Manchester.

Around 5,000 staff located in those buildings will now be told to work from home or will be offered access to ‘local collaboration spaces’. Santander UK’s chief executive Nathan Bostock ( pictured) said: ‘The pandemic has accelerated the existing trend towards greater flexible working, and our colleagues have told us this has brought significant benefits for many of them.’

The reduction in Santander’s office space will be a blow to local businesses, from cafes to hairdressers, which relied on office workers and commuters to boost their trade. This week Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society, axed three offices in Swindon and told all of its 13,000 office staff that they could work from wherever they wanted in the country.

Santander said that its offices were already only 60pc full before the pandemic, as a result of job cuts and more people choosing to work from home. The separate branch closures, which span from London’s Bethnal Green to Dalkeith in Scotland, will also weigh on thousands of Santander customers who depend on their local branch for basic banking services.

Santander insisted that the majority of closures were less than three miles from another branch, and the furthest was five miles away. But for vulnerable and elderly customers, the extra distance could be a huge inconvenience. The total number of branches across all lenders has tumbled by almost 4,000 since 2015.

Gareth Shaw, at consumer champion Which?, said: ‘The bank branch network continues to shrink at an alarming rate, often leaving entire communities without somewhere to withdraw cash or speak to someone face- to- face about sensitive financial matters. The Government must urgently set out its plans for introducing legislation protecting access to cash.’