Manchester Evening News: Number one for news, opinion, sport & celebrity news [Unofficial]Nearly 250 banks are set to close this year - is your local branch on the list?
Nearly 250 banks are set to close this year - including eight in Greater Manchester
John Mc 𓅛 🍻
%%sitename%% [Unofficial]THE CITY OF LONDON’S EBBING GLOBAL DOMINATION OPERATION: The World’s Most Jaw-Dropping Open Secret (PART 1)
Kit PetersHALIFAX: After 173 years, one of Britain’s most famous bank names is being killed off — and its branches in Swansea and Neath are already on borrowed time
The writing has been on the wall for a while. Now it looks like it’s almost over for one of the most recognisable names on the British high street.
Halifax — the 173-year-old banking brand that grew from a West Yorkshire building society into a household name — is set to be axed by Lloyds Banking Group as soon as this summer, according to industry insiders cited by The Sun, which first broke the story.
The plan, as reported, is simple and brutal. From 1 July, customers will no longer be able to open new Halifax accounts online or through the app. By October, Halifax stops taking on new customers entirely. After that, millions of existing account holders will be gradually migrated across to Lloyds Bank — and the Halifax name disappears.
Lloyds Banking Group declined to comment on any of that. A spokesperson said: “We regularly look at the role our brands play in supporting our customers. Our banking customers can already use any Lloyds, Halifax or Bank of Scotland branch, and see any of their products and services in any of their apps — there are no changes for our customers today.”
Halifax Bank branch in NeathHalifax currently has branches at 22/23 Union Street in Swansea city centre, 31 Queen Street in Neath, and 24/26 Cowell Street in Llanelli.
With the brand disappearing, the Swansea and Neath branches look like candidates for closure — a Lloyds branch already sits just 160 metres from the Halifax on Union Street in Swansea, and another barely 350 yards from the Halifax on Queen Street in Neath.
The case for keeping both open in each town would look thin.
Halifax Bank in LlanelliLlanelli may tell a different story. Lloyds closed its own Stepney Street branch there last year — just 130 yards from the Halifax on Cowell Street. With the Halifax now the only Lloyds Banking Group presence in the town, it could see a reprieve and a rebrand, bringing the Lloyds name back to Llanelli.
The picture gets bleaker still when you add in the Lloyds closures already confirmed in the wider area. The Lloyds branch at Beaumont House on Swansea Enterprise Park in Llansamlet closes on 2 July. The Gorseinon branch on High Street closes on 12 October. Lloyds branches in Port Talbot, Carmarthen and on Oxford Street in Swansea city centre remain open for now — but the trajectory is clear.
But this is happening against a backdrop of relentless branch closures that has already left large parts of south-west Wales with far less face-to-face banking than they once had. Lloyds shut its Ammanford and Gorseinon branches earlier this year.
Gorseinon eventually got a banking hub — but Pontardawe was denied one, despite a Senedd member pushing hard for it. And Barclays has shut branches in Morriston and Tenby and in Gorseinon and Port Talbot.
Nationally, Lloyds announced in February that 95 more branches across its three brands would close by March next year — 31 of them Halifax sites. That will leave the group with just 610 branches across the whole of the UK. The BTU union, which represents 17,000 Lloyds staff, called it “the final nail in the coffin of branch banking.”
Killing off Halifax means reversing a public commitment made by Lloyds’ former chief executive António Horta-Osório, who said in 2011: “We will keep the different brands because the customers are very different in terms of attitude.” It also completes what began in 2009, when Lloyds swallowed up HBOS — the group formed when Halifax merged with Bank of Scotland in 2001 — during the financial crisis.
Halifax itself was born in 1852, when a group of men in the West Yorkshire mill town of the same name founded the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building Society. It was a product of the Industrial Revolution — workers flooding into towns needed affordable housing, and Halifax existed to help them get it.
By 1928 it had become the largest building society in the world, with assets of £47 million. In 1997 it converted to a public limited company in the biggest share flotation the UK stock market had ever seen — creating 7.5 million new shareholders overnight.
The brand became genuinely embedded in British culture through a long-running advertising campaign featuring Howard Brown, a real Halifax customer services representative from Birmingham whose singing and dancing appearances made him one of the most recognisable faces on British television.
Despite all of this, Lloyds has recently invested in its Trinity Road office in the town of Halifax in West Yorkshire. The brand may be going. The jobs, at least for now, are staying.
No formal announcement has been made, and Lloyds declined to comment on the reported timeline. But if The Sun’s sources are right, one of the most familiar names in British banking will be gone from the high street before the year is out.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
Lloyds Bank to close Ammanford and Gorseinon branches in 2026
The closures that have already reshaped banking across south-west Wales.
New banking hub confirmed for Gorseinon after branch closure announcements
How Gorseinon secured a banking hub after its Lloyds branch closed.
Senedd member speaks out on ‘deeply disappointing’ Lloyds response on Pontardawe bank closure
Pontardawe’s fight for banking services continues.
Blaze TrendsLloyds Bank customers in the UK are facing a 90-mile hurdle for simple deposits. After the bank ended its Post Office agreement in January 2026, app failures are forcing rural residents back onto the road. #LloydsBank #UKBanking #RuralLife #Finance
https://blazetrends.com/lloyds-bank-customer-forced-into-90-mile-round-trip-as-app-fails-to-scan-hmrc-cheque/?fsp_sid=13356
https://blazetrends.com/lloyds-bank-customer-forced-into-90-mile-round-trip-as-app-fails-to-scan-hmrc-cheque/?fsp_sid=13356
Major UK bank announces new £5k deposit mortgage aimed at 'helping renters onto property ladder'
MUMBLES: Banking Hub opens today — and Pembroke Dock confirmed for June
Banking services are returning to two more communities across south and west Wales – with Mumbles opening its new banking hub this morning and Pembroke Dock confirming its hub will open in early June.
The Mumbles Banking Hub opened its doors for the first time today at Unit 6, Castleton Walk Arcade, Newton Road, Mumbles, SA3 4AX.
The hub will be open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm – with community bankers from Barclays attending on Wednesdays, Lloyds Banking Group on Thursdays and NatWest on Fridays. Monday and Tuesday schedules are still to be confirmed.
Mumbles County Councillor Will Thomas, who confirmed the opening, said it was great news for the community and described it as returning banking services to the village.
The Mumbles hub was first recommended last year after high street banking services continued to disappear from the area, leaving residents and businesses without face-to-face banking locally.
Meanwhile in Pembrokeshire, Pembroke Dock Town Council has confirmed that its new banking hub will be sited in Pembroke Dock library, with an opening date expected in early June.
The council said the exact opening date would be shared in due course and urged residents from across the county to make use of the service.
Banking hubs are a national initiative designed to replace lost high street bank branches with a shared facility, where customers of multiple banks can carry out everyday transactions and speak to their own bank’s community banker on a rotating schedule.
The model has been rolled out across south-west Wales in recent months – with Morriston, Gorseinon, Porthcawl and Ystradgynlais all receiving hubs following community campaigns.
Not every community that has applied for a hub has been successful. Plaid MS Sioned Williams challenged cash access company Link over Pontardawe’s exclusion from the programme – a decision that angered local campaigners.
Banking hubs are operated by Cash Access UK and are recommended by Link, the cash access network, following an assessment of local need.
The assessment takes into account the number of bank branch closures in an area, the availability of alternative cash access points, and the demographics of the local population.
Mumbles and Pembroke Dock both qualify on the grounds of multiple branch closures in recent years, leaving communities without convenient access to in-person banking services.
For Mumbles residents, the hub on Newton Road is open from today. No appointment is needed for general counter services.
For Pembroke Dock residents, further details on the opening date and schedule will be published by the town council in the coming weeks.
#bank #BankingHub #Barclays #CllrWillThomas #LloydsBank #money #Mumbles #Natwest #PembrokeDock
Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦A few years ago my default assumption would have been "oh, someone thought they could save money on their IT budget by firing all their experienced IT folk and contracting out to a company that uses cheap fresh graduates in India"
Now I may have to modify that assumption and allow for the possibility that they thought they could save money on their IT budget by firing all their experienced IT folk and using AI to write their code.
