HSBC to axe branches across Yorkshire in national closure programme

Nine HSBC branches in Yorkshire are to close next year.

Outlets in Settle, Skipton, Ilkley, Whitby, Brighouse, Pocklington, Horsforth, Wetherby and Morley will be shut down. They are among 114 branches of the bank across the UK which will be axed – most of which will close between April and August 2023.

HSBC has blamed the planned closures on fewer people using physical branches to do their banking.

A spokesman for the bank said the number of people visiting an HSBC has fallen by 65% in five years.

He added: “The decline in branch use has accelerated so much since the Covid-19 pandemic that some of the branches closing are now serving fewer than 250 customers a week.”

HSBC UK managing director of UK distribution, Jackie Uhi, said: “People are changing the way they bank and footfall in many branches is at an all-time low, with no signs of it returning.

“The decision to close a branch is never easy or taken lightly, especially if we are the last branch in an area, so we’ve invested heavily in our ‘post closure’ strategy, including providing free tablet devices to selected branch customers who do not already have a device to bank digitally, alongside one-to-one coaching to help them migrate to digital banking.”