BANK TO MAKE WITHDRAWALS FROM CITY AND COUNTY
SANTANDER is shutting seven bank branches in the city and county and cutting space at its corporate offices in Narborough.
The closures are part of plans to shut 111 branches by the end of August, blamed on a year of lockdowns for accelerating a shift towards mobile and online banking.
Even before the pandemic, the bank said branch transactions had fallen by a third over the previous two years. They declined by a further 50 per cent in 2020, it said.
Almost two-thirds of transactions are now digital.
The business said it is closing its offices in Merseyside, Newcastle, London and Manchester, with plans to consolidate its office sites into six main locations and set up an HQ in Milton Keynes.
That will see it reduce the volume of office space at its Carlton Park corporate site in Narborough – a legacy of the former Alliance and Leicester bank it bought during the financial crisis in 2008.
Its Triton Square and Ludgate Hill sites in London, and Teesside sites, will also be streamlined.
Santander said about 5,000 staff based at closing or consolidating sites will be offered new “dual location” working arrangements, combining working from home with access to local spaces designed to enable team collaboration.
Santander said most of the branches being closed are less than three miles from another branch, and the furthest is five miles.
The closures will leave a network of 452 branches, while Santander said it expects to find alternative roles for a significant number of staff affected by the announcement.
Adam Bishop, head of branches at Santander, said: “Branch usage by customers has fallen considerably over recent years so we have made the difficult decision to consolidate our presence in areas where we have multiple branches relatively close together.
“We will provide every support to customers of closing branches to find alternative ways to bank with us that best suit their individual needs.
“We are also working alongside our unions to support colleagues through these changes and to find alternative roles for those impacted wherever possible.
“We believe branches have an important role to play and we expect the size of our network to remain stable for the foreseeable future.”
The Communication Workers Union said it had reached a groundbreaking agreement with Santander on new ways of working which will preserve jobs and avoid compulsory redundancies that would otherwise have been “inevitable”.
National officer Sally Bridge said: “Recent membership surveys have indicated a desire from a large majority of those currently working from home for flexibility to continue after the pandemic, and this agreement achieves that for the majority of employees affected.
“Ultimately, however, faced with the proposals of site closures and consolidations, the deal we have negotiated has avoided compulsory redundancies by giving individuals genuine options, crucially protecting our most vulnerable members for whom dual-location arrangements were not suitable on account of their exceptional circumstances.
“Santander deserves credit for recognising its responsibilities to its employees. I hope other employers follow the moral lead the bank has taken in what is likely to be one of the first of many far-reaching corporate readjustments to the post-Covid world of work.”
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