Those locations will be replaced by ‘Community Bankers’, who will offer support and money management advice in person to customers who need it.
There will also be reduced opening times for 36 branches, which will be open on either Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or Tuesdays and Thursdays, depending on the location. The new hours will be 9.30am-3pm for the branches affected.
As well as the changes, 18 branches will have no service available at the counter and will only have machines for banking transactions. This will leave 290 full-service branches for customers to have face-to-face customer service at the counter.
Alongside the closures, Santander will continue investing in ‘Work Cafés’ – spaces where both customers and non-customers of the bank can set up to work.
The closures mean 750 staff members have their jobs at risk should the plans go ahead with no disruption or delay.
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As with all of the branch closures from firms including Lloyds and NatWest, the reason for doing so is due to the growing number of customers moving to digital-only banking.
Financial transactions completed in Santander branches have dropped by 61% since 2019, while 89% more banking app transactions were made by customers in that same time.
‘We must move with customers’
A Santander spokesperson said: “As a business, we must move with customers and balance our investment across all the places where we interact with customers, to deliver the very best for them now and in the future.
“Closing a branch is always a very difficult decision and we spend a great deal of time assessing where and when we do this and how to minimise the impact it may have on our customers.
“However, we believe that the introduction of our new Community Bankers and the exciting plans we have for our remaining network of 349 branches and Work Cafés, alongside the rapid and innovative improvements to our award-winning mobile banking app, will provide the right balance of digital banking and human interaction when required.”
The move will come “as a real blow” to many customers, according to Jenny Ross, Which? Money’s editor.
Ross said: “Schemes introduced by the banking industry to protect these services, such as banking hubs, are a good start in plugging gaps left by closing physical branches, but they must be rolled out much more quickly if consumers are to feel their benefits.
“The Government must hold banks’ feet to the fire to ensure the commitments they’ve made to set up 350 hubs by 2029 are met – and should be prepared to review the target upwards if necessary.”
The banking provider noted that customers can still use the 11,000 Post Office branches and 112 banking hubs open in the UK. The 95 closing branches will also all be within a mile of the nearest Post Office, the bank confirmed.
New banking hubs confirmed
Following the announcement, cash network LINK confirmed 19 new banking hubs will open across UK high streets to soften the blow for customers who use bank branches. This will be in addition to the 139 banking hubs currently on UK high streets.
Customers of any bank can use these hubs, which provide a place to withdraw and deposit cash, pay bills and carry out other ‘regular’ banking transactions.
For more complex issues, there will also be bank staff from a range of providers on hand to offer expertise.
They will be located in:
- Bexhill-on-Sea (East Sussex)
- Billericay (Essex)
- Dover (Kent)
- Droitwich (Worcestershire)
- Dunstable (Bedfordshire)
- East Grinstead (West Sussex)
- Holyhead (Isle of Anglesey)
- Ilkley (West Yorkshire)
- Larne (Antrim, Northern Ireland)
- Maldon (Essex)
- Morley (West Yorkshire)
- North Walsham (Norfolk)
- Redcar (North Yorkshire)
- Saffron Walden (Essex)
- St Annes on Sea (Lancashire)
- Turriff (Aberdeenshire)
- Uckfield (East Sussex)
- Urmston (Great Manchester)
