BREAKING: Lloyds plans to shut ANOTHER Gloucestershire bank
By Simon Hacker | 30th January 2025
Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has revealed plans for further Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland branch closures, with 136 high street locations published on a new hitlist – including a branch here in Gloucestershire and many more close to the county's boundaries.
Already hit by a raft of closures announced last January, in which the bank said it would close 45 branches across the UK, amounting to a total of 276 at the time, today's news lands amid the fallout from a new plan, revealed by Punchline-Gloucester.com last October to shut Lloyds' Barnwood HQ, and follows a further announcement last week that the Group was preparing to axe hundreds of jobs in the ongoing quest for bigger profit margins.

The banking giant's latest half-year financial period (to June 30, 2024), showed statutory profit after tax came to £2.444bn.
Charlie Nunn, Lloyds' CEO, has indicated that the target for business banking is to increase revenue by £300m per year by 2026, while across the same timeline LBG's strategic initiative is to boost revenue by £1.5bn per year.
In the last four years in Gloucestershire, we have seen the closures of Lloyds branches in:
● Bath Road, Cheltenham (shut in November 2021).
● Cinderford in January 2023.
● Long Street, in Wotton-under-Edge, after 126 years of business, in August 2023.
● Bristol Road, in Gloucester, in September 2023.
Across banking, 6,000 branches have been closed in rural areas such as Gloucestershire in the last nine years.
The latest LBG site to be culled is the Halifax branch on Cirencester's Cricklade Street, Lloyds having confirmed that banking will cease operation on September 25. The bank currently remains open from 9.00am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday.

The town's Chamber of Commerce greeted the news with dismay.
A spokesperson told Punchline: "Banks have to recognise that while there has been a migration to digital banking for many, we still have several traders in Cirencester who rely upon being able to bank cash. They need that face-to-face contact."
The closure is part of a broader trend which is concerning for the town's commercial health, they added.
"One good thing we do have though is a banking hub for business which is run by Barclays, two days a week, from the former town council premises. Not everyone is into digital banking, and ideally what we would like to see here is all of the banks getting together to provide a joint, physical banking service. It cannot be that difficult for this to be put in place!"

● In addition to the Cirencester closure, LBG will close 61 Lloyds, 60 further Halifax and 14 Bank of Scotland branches from May this year. Banks to be lost near Gloucestershire include Shipston-on-Stour, Ledbury, Leominster and Thornbury.
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