Yorkshire Building Society to shut Sheffield branch next year as part of national closures

Yorkshire Building Society’s Penistone branch on, Market Street, has been ear-marked for closure following the business’ decision to permanently shut a dozen of its locations next February.

Jobs are at risk at the 12 branches across the country, as the firm seeks to make changes to reduce its high street network that they claim will ‘improve value for its members’ and deliver ‘greater efficiency’.

The locations set to shut in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, West Sussex, Tyne and Wear, Middlesex, London and Lancashire, are allegedly in highly concentrated areas with Yorkshire Building Society branches between one to nine miles from each other.

Face-to-face mortgage advice will also be unavailable in branches from next year.

Director of Retail Distribution at Yorkshire Building Society Group Gary Fowler said: “We are a strong and financially sustainable mutual which members have trusted with their money for more than 150 years.

"We have evolved in that time from a small local building society into a secure and reliable contemporary provider that exclusively focuses on mortgages and savings, serving more than 3m people across the UK.

“The locations we have chosen have seen falls in transaction and customer levels for a number of years for savings and mortgages.

"In addition we are seeing lower footfall across branches and declining face-to-face mortgage applications, which now represent just 5% of all our customer mortgage applications.

"Like all businesses, to remain relevant and competitive in today’s market, we must continue to evolve.

“The proposed changes will enable us to deliver better overall value for members by operating in a more cost-effective way, with the savings we make being reinvested in the business.

“Face-to-face service will continue to play an important part of what we offer.

"We will still have more outlets than the vast majority of high street financial services providers for a business of our size.

"In the past few years, we have opened face-to-face services in towns and cities where we previously didn’t have a presence and we’ll continue to look for more opportunities in underserviced towns and cities.”

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