Earlier this week Lloyds Banking Group announced they would be closing 49 branches and cutting 665 jobs across the country.
On the Isle of Wight, the bank have announced the closure of the Cowes, Bembridge and Sandown branches.
The bank say they will be closed by the end of April 2017, with Newport, Ryde, Shanklin and Freshwater being the only branches remaining on the Isle of Wight.
A spokesperson for the bank told OnTheWight,
“We can confirm three Lloyds Bank branches will be closing on the Isle of Wight. The Cowes, Bembridge and Sandown branches will close by the end of April 2017.
“We have made the difficult decision to close these branches. They have been identified for closure because of the changing way customers choose to bank with us, which has resulted in customers using these branches less often. The majority of customers also now regularly use alternative branches or use other ways to bank such as online and telephone banking to complete their banking needs.
“We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause and have informed customers of the closest alternative branches.
“It’s our intention to try to redeploy everyone currently working at a closing branch to alternative Lloyds Bank branches.”
Mobile branches
Lloyds say that nationally they will be launching a fleet of mobile vans intended to visit communities “knocked by the disappearance of high street outlets”.
The Lloyds spokesperson added,
“One of the new mobile branches will visit Cowes, Bembridge and Sandown.
“Full details of the mobile branch service will be available in advance of the new service becoming operational.”
Background information
Lloyds have shared the following Isle of Wight data:
- 71% of our personal customers in Cowes, around 64% in Sandown and about 66% in Bembridge, use other branches and other ways to bank such as online and telephone banking.
- The number of personal customers using these branches are going down each year by 9% in Cowes, about 31% in Sandown and over 16% in Bembridge
- The Cowes branch has 36 regular weekly personal and business customers, Sandown has 41 and Bembridge has 29.
- A Post Office is a short walk away from each of the three branches and we will be proactively talking to customers about the service they offer.
- There are free to use ATMs a short walk away from all three branches.
- Cowes branch customers will have their accounts realigned to Newport Isle of Wight around 5 miles away, Sandown customers will have their accounts realigned to Shanklin which is just over 2 miles away and Bembridge customers will have their accounts realigned to Ryde which is under 6 miles away. There will be no other impact to the way they manage their accounts.
Thanks to Linda Bassett from the Isle of Wight Community Information Facebook Group for the heads-up.
Source: The Guardian
