Banks make £44bn profits while half of branches disappear from our high streets

HIGH street banks have sparked fresh fury by pocketing record returns as they leave loyal customers in the lurch.

- Giles Sheldrick

Britain's Big Four posted £44.2bn collectively in pre-tax profits last year, swelling their margins with sky-high mortgage and loan charges.

Meanwhile, savers must stomach miserly interest rates amid a brutal regime of branch culls.

Around 6,000 will have been lost between 2015 and the end of next year. But just 31 of promised banking hubs to help fill gaps in services have opened.

The bumper profits posted by Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays and NatWest are up 41% on 2022, largely thanks to record interest rate rises.

Only about 5,000 high street bank branches are still operating.

The shutdown rate around 54 a month will rise this year as lenders continue to pull out of towns.

And communities have been left high and dry as only a handful of the trumpeted banking hubs are open to help. Twenty-one are operational in England, seven in Scotland, two in Wales and one in Northern Ireland according to the Post Office, which operates them on behalf of the banks.

That's half the number promised originally. Campaigning Labour peer George Foulkes, who co-chairs Parliament's All-Party Group on Age and Older People, said: "Once again, the bloated bankers have put shareholders' profits ahead of the interests of customers.

"Older people are particularly disadvantaged as they rely more on cash and find travelling more difficult." The acute problem is evident up and down the land, including in Haslemere, Surrey, where three for mer bank branches - Lloyds, Nat West and HSBC-stand empty.

Banks insist demand for inbranch services has fallen as more people prefer to conduct business remotely.

They point to the hubs run by the 11,635-branch Post Office, in a deal with 30 banks and building societies to carry out basic functions.

The one-stop shops were billed as "back to basics" banking, where you meet could staff, deposit Anger... cheques, withdraw cash, pay bills and top up utilities.