Santander branch network - inconvenient and unsustainable?

buses7675

Hi All,

Not quite the same but in Liverpool City Centre there were two Abbey branches anyway, along with a Bradford and Bingley, all of which are now rebranded as Santander, as well as the existing Alliance & Leicester.

With Lloyds, there are three Lloyds TSB branches in the city centre and IIRC two Halifax branches too!

In all the cases though, all of them seem to be reasonably busy all the time (possibly exception of the ex B&B one) so any merger would need a bigger place!

Cheers

buses7675

cottager

I was surprised the other week in our local town to come across the old TSB branch still there and open as LTSB. It's really quite close to the main street and the Lloyds branch, but a little way down a side-street I never normally walk down, so hadn't noticed before (and as I don't bank at LTSB I had no need to know). Their merger was years ago, so I thought it would have been long gone.

There's a fairly big branch of Halifax also on the main shopping street (more in the centre of town than the Lloyds one), so what will happen when they're fully merged as well I don't know. Can't see them maintaining three premises indefinitely: although all three are in early 20thC 'historic' type buildings, so would all have limited space for absorbing more staff/functions presumably.

daveyjp

Santander are undertaking a full review of every branch they now have - city centres are now full of them and they know this isn't sustainable. There are staff issues to sort out, but there are also thousands of property leases which will all need reviewing.

They will keep the leases which are the most expensive to get rid of. Many retail leases contain 'keep open' clauses (especially ones in shopping centres), so closing branches isn't an option.

MrTomato

I agree that they should have more suburban branches. Most banks round here have a branch on every main shopping street in the suburbs. But Santander only in town, directly opposite each other.

scott_lithgows

The ex B+B branch in Greenock looks as if it,s being run down.I expect they will close it and open a branch in Gourock or Port Glasgow,they will no doubt do research into which town has the lowest IQ and would therefore welcome shabbey santander

shellylovesshopping

Rumour has it that branches will close in the future when there are 2 or more in the same street however it is the intention to open up more branches in town's where Santander does not already exisit and staff will just be relocated. Some B&B branches were not fully refurbished just had a spruce up so guess they would be the ones closing initially.

wontfallforit

I live in a small industrial town, where there's not a lot of money floating about. However, there have been two Barclays branches within about 300 metres of each other for longer than I've been alive - 25 years.

Neither gets particularly busy, but they have both survived OK. And it's not like Barclays has a monopoly in my town - pretty much every major bank is represented locally. In our tiny town centre - which consists mainly of pound shops, charity shops, chippies and bookies, we have HSBC, Barclays (x2), HBOS, NatWest, YBS and Lloyds...as well as an Abbey and an A+L, which are literally doors apart, and seem to be doing OK.

skaps

In Ilford there are 2 lloyds tsb and 2 santanders and an alliance and leicester which will soon be a santander. I think the a and l will close down as its never that busy and the smaller santander too. Though the lloyds have both been there for years so who knows