66 branch closures announced today
The closure of 48 Lloyds and 18 Halifax branches has been announced today by Lloyds Banking Group with the closures scheduled between October 2022 and January 2023.
No colleague will be placed at risk of redundancy, a position which Accord fully supports.
This is a significant change in LBG’s approach to branch closures that in our view, indicates a desire to redeploy impacted colleagues. There is a job for every impacted colleague whether that’s in a branch or another part of the Group.
But every branch that closes, however small, has an impact on our members and the bank’s customers.
For our members, there’s the possibility of disruption to working hours, location, and work-life balance as well as possible increased commute costs and time spent travelling.
We’ve worked hard to ensure that no colleague will be out of pocket by securing a commitment from LBG to finance any reasonable additional travel costs associated with changing to a different base branch.
Previously, colleagues were excluded from financial assistance if the move was less than an additional 10 miles one way. This restriction will be removed from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022 and reasonable financial assistance will be paid as a travel cost allowance for a period of up to 2 years.
Any Accord member who faces working hours / pattern changes or impacts to work/life balance that they can’t work through locally will have our full support to find a mutually acceptable and fair solution.
For customers, there is of course the inconvenience of changing to the nearest Post Office / branch and the loss of trusted relationships with LBG staff formed over many years.
We understand that demand for high street branch banking is reducing, accelerated by the pandemic as customers increasingly moved to phone and app-based banking. But the scale with which customers return to branches is becoming clearer and LBG has committed to making decisions based on properly thought through and robust evidence on which we’ll be consulted.
Supporting members
We’ll be contacting our members who are impacted by the closures to offer support and guidance.
Any more general enquiries should be referred to [email protected]
