Thousands of workers at some of the high street's biggest banks are reported to be facing redundancy this December.

Barclays and Lloyds are both said to have started redundancy consultations with staff and NatWest has said it will be closing more branches, putting staff who work there at risk.

Up to 900 UK jobs could be cut at Barclays as it looks to reduce costs, the trade union Unite has said.

Staff in several back-office divisions, including compliance, finance, legal, policy, IT and risk are now  unsure what the future holds this festive season.

Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, said: "Barclays is disgracefully cutting jobs to further boost its massive profits. This is a mega-rich bank that is already on course to make eye watering profits this year."

Barclays made pre-tax profits of £7billion in 2022 and has already made a staggering £6.4billion in profits for the first nine months of the year. It has handed shareholders £2.7billion in benefits over the last two years.

A spokesperson for Barclays said it was taking action to "simplify the business" and the cuts had been outlined in its third-quarter results in October.

Meanwhile up to 2,500 jobs are under threat at Lloyds, reports the Guardian.

It said inside sources have confirmed consultations are already underway with analysts and product managers, as part of a shake-up.

Jobs could also be under threat at NatWest after it revealed that even more branch closures are on the cards, according to thisismoney.co.uk.

The bank's finance director Katie Murray reportedly told the FT global banking summit: "Branches will always be important but we just don't need anything like the number that we have."

Banks and building societies have been rapidly disappearing from the high street in recent years due to a surge in people managing their money online.

There have been 5,764 branches closed since January 2015, which equates to a rate of around 54 each month, according to Which.

This means almost three-fifths of the network has vanished in the last eight years and more will disappear before the end of 2024.

This year alone more than one in eight UK bank branches have closed according to Financial Times analysis, based on data from ATM provider Link.

It shows that a total of 636 bank branches are due to have closed by the end of 2023 and another 42 have already been announced for 2024.

• NatWest Group, which comprises NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, has closed 1,329 branches. This includes the Natwest branch at St. Oswald's Retail Park. It now only has one branch in Gloucester, one in Cheltenham and one in Cirencester with mobile branches which visit Tewkesbury, Ledbury and Ross-On-Wye.
• Lloyds Banking Group, made up of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has shut down 1,048 sites, including its site in Bristol Road, Gloucester in September. It has one branch in Gloucester, one in Cheltenham, one in Stroud and one in Tewkesbury.
• Barclays has shut 1,120 branches but still has eight branches in the area in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud, Tewkesbury, Ledbury, Cirencester, Monmouth and Evesham.

In Gloucestershire some of the empty banks are being put to use by community groups.

The Lloyds branch in Bath Road, Cheltenham shut in November 2021 and is now set to be transformed into a church.

A few doors down, the former Natwest branch which closed in January is to be turned into a charity shop for Emmaus Gloucestershire.