More than 250 jobs to go as another 54 RBS branches close

The RBS group, which is 62 per cent taxpayer-owned, said all the branches being closed are Royal Bank of Scotland-branded. Their closure will mean only about 50 Royal Bank of Scotland-branded branches will be left in England and Wales by next year.

The move comes on top of plans announced earlier this year to close 162 branches with the loss of 792 jobs and explaining its latest closures, the group repeated its excuse that customers were spurning branches in favour of doing their banking on the internet and mobile phones, leaving traditional branch counter service transactions down 30 per cent since 2014.

During this same period, there has been a 53 per cent increase in the number of customers using mobile banking.

RBS added: “Customers of Royal Bank of Scotland in England and Wales will be able to use NatWest branches and local post offices for their everyday banking needs.”

The bank also blamed the closures on the collapse of plans to launch a standalone ‘challenger bank’ using the Williams & Glyn brand.

RBS had originally tried to carve out the Williams & Glyn business and develop a new banking platform for the operation but scrapped the plans in 2016 after admitting that the IT challenges had been overwhelming.

An RBS spokesman said: “As we are no longer launching Williams & Glyn as a challenger bank, we now have two branch networks operating in close proximity to each other in England and Wales – NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland. As a result we have reviewed our overall branch footprint in England and Wales and have made the difficult decision to close 54 Royal Bank of Scotland branches…

“We will now focus on investing in our Royal Bank network in England and Wales to make sure customers have a consistent range of products and services wherever they bank, be it Scotland, England or Wales.”

However, Unite the union has branded the latest closures “disgusting”, noting that RBS is still 62.4 per cent owned by the taxpayer, following a government bailout in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.