Britain’s vanishing High Street banks: Lloyds and Halifax announce plans to axe 40 more branches later this year

 Another 40 bank branches will be lost from the UK’s high streets after Lloyds and Halifax announced yet more closures.

Lloyds Banking Group is to close 18 Halifax sites and 22 Lloyds branches between April and June this year, with all but one of the closures being in England.

The new closures will bring the total number of Lloyds outlets in the country to 693, and Halifax branches to 518.

The group said the branches selected for closure have seen visits drop by about 60 per cent on average in the last five years.

The move is yet another hammer blow for Britain’s beleaguered high streets, with banks and building societies having closed or planning to close more than 5,000 branches since January 2015, at a rate of 54 each month on average.

Britons are also continuing to grapple with a cost of living crisis brought on by sky-high energy prices and an inflation spiral that is only just starting to abate.

Responding to the announcement, Age UK’s charity director Caroline Abrahams said elderly customers risk being ‘cut adrift’ from banking services and banks should be doing ‘everything they can’ to ensure ‘essential’ services continue to be provided...<<<Read More>>>...