Yahoo Finance '55 bank branches a month' are disappearing from UK high streets
Over 3,000 bank branches have disappeared from UK high streets since 2015 – and more will be lost yet.
Data from Which? found 3,312 bank and building society branches have closed in the UK since January 2015 – or about 55 per month.
Another 100 branches are already scheduled to close in 2019.
READ MORE: Nationwide Building Society pledges to retain branches
RBS Group, made up of Natwest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, alone accounts for 1,094 of the closures. Natwest has shuttered 638 sites.
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has closed 569 branches. Lloyd’s Bank accounts for 404 of these, Which? say.
Barclays declined to provide exact figures, but at least 481 closures have been made, with the real figure believed to be much higher.
READ MORE: Which is the best bank for you?
Branch closures peaked in 2017, with 868 made over the course of the year – or 70 each month. This dropped only slightly, to 794 closures in 2018.
Closures have slowed significantly in 2019, with just 325 made between January and August – a similar rate to 2015 and 2016, when a total of 600 to 700 branches were lost.
So far in 2019, RBS has closed the most branches, at 277, while Barclays has closed 243 and Natwest has closed 197.
READ MORE: RBS reveals full list of bank branches it will close
Which? data shows Brits in the north-west has been hit hardest, with 424 branches being lost since 2015.
Scotland and the and south-east are faring almost as badly, at 396 and 400 closures, respectively.
Wentworth and Dearne in Yorkshire is the only constituency so far to lose all of its bank branches.
