There used to be a time when you knew exactly where your bank was. It sat at a familiar corner on the high street, a solid, slightly imposing building with a counter queue and a security guard who nodded at regulars. The statistics make it difficult to dispute the fact that that world has virtually vanished. In 2010, there were more than 10,000 bank and building society branches in the UK. Less than 5,000 were left by 2023. The slide hasn’t stopped, according to most counts.
You’ll see the gaps if you stroll through a mid-sized British town today. Former bank buildings turned into coffee chains, charity shops, or just sitting empty with paper taped over the windows. In some areas, researchers have started using the term “banking deserts” — places where at least one branch closed for every 10,000 residents. There are now 41 of them across the country. That figure, drawn from industry research tracking closures between 2016 and 2025, doesn’t feel abstract when you’re the person who’s just driven twenty minutes to reach the nearest open branch.
The closures aren’t slowing. Earlier this year, about 52 branches were supposed to close in one month. By the end of next year, the Lloyds Banking Group, which consists of Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland, had already promised to close at least 168 locations. Barclays, which has closed 1,236 locations since 2016—more than any other bank—has promised not to close any more locations until 2026. This seems more like a pause than a reversal. With 1,536 closures during that same period, NatWest Group leads all banking groups when Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank are taken into account.
The causes are not enigmatic. Challenger banks, such as Monzo and Revolut, have drawn millions of clients who find it perfectly acceptable that they have no branches at all. Contactless payments, mobile apps, and the broader cultural shift away from cash have all chipped away at the foot traffic that once made a local branch financially viable. In parts of central London, it’s genuinely difficult to find somewhere that still accepts cash. The need for a branch nearby decreases as cash use declines. Reduced foot traffic and margins make the math cruel.
However, it’s interesting to see what some of the surviving branches have evolved into. According to reports, a London branch near a professional services office no longer manages savings at all. When you walk in, you’ll see that it’s almost exclusively used for mortgage discussions; additionally, a coffee shop operates there to help pay the rent. It’s a strange sight, the kind that makes you pause. Depending on how urgently you needed to discuss your ISA with someone, it may or may not be pragmatic.
Entire brand names are being folded away. TSB, now absorbed into Santander UK after Sabadell’s sale, is likely to be phased out. The Co-operative Bank, acquired by Coventry Building Society, is expected to lose its name in time. Virgin Money’s brand is anticipated to follow its transfer to Nationwide earlier this year. According to reports, Lloyds may abandon Halifax, which has been on the high street for 173 years, as part of new restructuring plans. These are not merely closures. They are erasures.
After public pressure increased, the government started a “Access to Banking Services” review, which shockingly acknowledged that there are currently no legal safeguards for in-person banking access. Given the rate of closures, critics point out that the review is not expected to be finished until autumn. By the end of this Parliament, 350 banking hubs—shared areas where several banks operate on different days—will be part of the proposed solution. Whether that’s enough to fill 41 deserts, and counting, remains genuinely unclear.
The political discourse seems to be lagging behind reality. For the majority of people over forty, the high street bank branch is no longer truly dying. For large parts of the country, it’s already gone.
