‘I’m down to one option’: bank customers left frustrated by latest closures

Apps intended to replace branches have been hit by outages, as a poll finds most Britons want high street services

With its windows blanked out, a poster pinned to the door of the Staines branch of Lloyds Bank tells its customers they can do their “everyday banking with our mobile banking app”.

But not today. On Wednesday, when the Guardian visited Staines, they wouldn’t have got very far because the Lloyds group was battling an IT outage that left thousands of its customers unable to make payments or send money.

And telling customers to use the app is not much use to Patricia Payne, who takes a near four-mile bus ride from Chertsey, where she lives, to Staines to access a bank. She admits she struggles with online banking and seeks out a branch to make withdrawals and for help with transactions. “I find it hard,” she says. “My son has showed me how to use the app, but I’m useless.”

Physical banks have “all gone” from her local high street, which, like some other places in Surrey, has become a banking desert.

Staines was one of two Lloyds closures in the county this week. The other, in West Byfleet, was that village’s last remaining bank branch. And the Lloyds in Redhill, Surrey, shut down on 28 May.

“There is a post office, but you have to queue up, and a cash machine in Sainsbury’s,” says Payne of Chertsey. In Staines, she could use the Lloyds or its nearby sister brand Halifax. “I’m now down to one option,” the 78-year-old says.

The Lloyds branch – one of almost 150 outlets that its parent, Lloyds Banking Group, intends to shut by March 2027 – closed for good on Monday.

On a very wet Wednesday morning, not everyone has got the memo, with pensioners and tradespeople, clutching important bits of paper, among those still pitching up at the locked door.

It is a familiar story. Getting on for 7,000 bank branches in the UK have closed since 2015. The rate of closures peaked in 2017 but it continues to be a regular occurrence, with Lloyds and Santander announcing fresh rounds this year.

Banks justify the reduction of their networks on the grounds that customers are spurning traditional counter services in favour of banking online and via mobile phones.

A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson says it offers customers “more choice and ways to manage money than ever before. In addition to our app, customers can use any Lloyds, Halifax or Bank of Scotland branch or their local post office to manage their money, and deposit cash at PayPoint locations. We’re giving our customers the flexibility to bank wherever and whenever they need us.”

The consumer champion Which? is keeping score, and reports a total of 6,795 branch closures since January 2015. This represents 69% of the branches that were open at the start of 2015, it says.

The government has started to pay attention and last month announced an independent review to “protect access to face‑to‑face banking”. It will gather evidence on the “real‑world impact of branch closures, identify who is most affected, and assess where further action may be needed to protect access to banking services”.

The review comes as a YouGov poll reveals that three-quarters (76%) of Britons say access to a physical bank branch in their local area is important to them. The survey of 6,400 consumers was commissioned by the Payment Choice Alliance, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns to ensure the right to use cash.

Ron Delnevo, the chair of the campaign committee at the organisation, says the survey made it “crystal clear that the UK banks’ desire to move their previous bricks and mortar businesses online is totally at odds with what their longsuffering customers want”.

On Staines High Street, Radhe Mali’s colourful fruit and veg stall looks out on the now empty shop. The stallholder says “banks closing is a big problem” for small businesses like his.

As a customer, Lynne Bulmer, fills up her basket, she says she is worried about bank branch closures. “So many people don’t get it, and sometimes I’m one of them,” says the 78-year-old of online banking.

Unlike other Surrey towns, Staines still has several banks and building societies on its high street, including a Barclays, Santander, Halifax and Nationwide. Indeed, a prominent poster on Nationwide’s wall declares: “Staines, we’re staying put.”

Bulmer says: “We’ve switched to Nationwide because they have undertaken not to close their branches. I don’t know how long it will keep that going.” (Another sign promises “all 605 of our [Nationwide] branches will remain open until at least the start of 2030”.) She finds online banking “a pain. It is so lovely just to speak to someone.”

Delnevo says the decision to investigate the negative impact of bank branch closures is “more than a decade late”. However, he adds that “all is not lost” and that “banking hubs” – where lenders share a single location to make up for local branch closures – can replace lost bank branches.

The hubs operate in a similar way to a standard branch, with a counter service run by Post Office staff where customers of almost any bank can withdraw and deposit cash, make bill payments and carry out regular transactions.

However, hubs are being opened at a slower rate than the closure of individual bank branches. Delnevo says a minimum of 1,200 hubs are required. At the last count there were 236.