RBS to shut branch in Wolverhampton city centre

The branch in Princess Street, next to the Duke of York pub, is among 54 RBS branches to be closed and follows 162 that were announced in May including Walsall, Stafford and Kidderminster.

There will be 258 redundancies in the new wave of closures with seven jobs going at Wolverhampton.

Since 2012 the way in which people use Wolverhampton branch has changed, according to RBS, with 75 per cent of customers already banking in other ways locally.

Transactions at Wolverhampton have reduced by 53 per cent since 2012 with only 37 customers now visiting the branch on a regular weekly basis.

The closures follow a review of the RBS branch network in England and Wales as a consequence of the network being reintegrated back into the core RBS bank now that the divestment of the business is no longer taking place.

RBS said it was now in a position where the size and shape of its branch network across NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland will be stable until at least 2020.

The bank said it was doing everything it could to support those affected and would ensure compulsory redundancies were kept to an absolute minimum.

The Royal Bank of Scotland in England and Wales and NatWest retail banking business in Scotland was due to be divested and launched as a separate ‘challenger bank’, under the brand name, Williams & Glyn.

This divestment is now not going ahead so the Williams & Glyn business, including its branch network, are being reintegrated back into the core bank.

The RBS retail banking business in England and Wales has essentially been run as a standalone bank for around eight years and this status as a 'business-for-sale' meant that it diverged in a number ways from the customer offerings, products, services, branch automation and online banking capabilities of the core bank.

The vast majority of impacted RBS branches are in close proximity to either another RBS or NatWest branch. In Wolverhampton there is a NatWest in Queen Square.

An RBS spokesperson 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.

"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. 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.”

Since 2014, branch transactions across RBS in England and Wales are down 30 per cent and during this same period, there has been a 53 per cent increase in the number of customers using mobile banking and mobile transactions have increased by 74 per cent.

Customers in Wolverhampton can choose from a range of digital, face-to-face and local banking options.