High street banks to shut

FOUR branches of Lloyds and Halifax banks in the West MIdlands are to shut.

Lloyds in Quinton and Sedgley and Halixfax in Kenilworth and Rugeley have all been earmarked for closure later this year.

The move is part of a wider cull which will see 29 Lloyds and 15 Halifax sites close across England and Wales, bringing the total to 100 branch losses for 2021.

About a third of this latest batch are situated in or around cities and large towns with another site “very close by”, according to parent company Lloyds Banking Group, which says there will be no compulsory redundancies as a result of the plan.

In March and April this year, 56 branches were closed by the group while the sites affected in this latest round will shut between September and November. It will leave the group with 779 Lloyds, 560 Halifax and 184 Bank of Scotland branches across the UK.

Vim Maru, retail director for Lloyds Banking Group, said:

“Over the past five years, we’ve seen customers carry out significantly fewer transactions at these locations.

“We’ve also seen our digital banking customers grow by over four million in five years, to almost 18 million, of which 13.6 million 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.”