The Ramsgate branch of Santander bank will be shut down in April.
The High Street bank will trade until 3pm on April 28 before shutting its doors for good.
Notification from Santander says: “We’ve informed LINK, an independent industry body, about our plans to close this branch. LINK carries out Access to Cash assessments when a bank branch is to close, and they publish the outcome of their assessment and any recommendations they make for new cash access services.
“We’re not leaving, our Community Banker will be available to support you once a week. We’ll confirm the location, date, and time shortly.”
The bank says the reasons for closure is lower face to face visits.
It says: “We last did a major review of our branches in 2024. Since then, our customers are choosing to use mobile, online and telephone banking more, and branches less.
“We’ve now done a more recent review of our branches, looking at where they’re located, how they’re used and the other local banking options available. Within our review, we looked at how the (Ramsgate) branch is being used and how customers are banking in other ways.
“ 90% of our branch customers already use a variety of ways to do their banking. 69% of our branch customers use our Online, Mobile or Telephone Banking services. 21% of our branch customers also use another Santander branch.”
The nearest branches will now be in Canterbury and Folkestone.
The Ramsgate site is one of 44 being shutdown by Santander this year, putting 300 jobs at risk.
“We’re not leaving, our Community Banker will be available to support you once a week. We’ll confirm the location, date, and time shortly.”
Great-so somebody wants to do something on Friday for the weekend & have to wait until the following Wednesday at the library or wherever. Meaningless virtue signalling at its finest.
The using it less is of course a smokescreen-during Covid the banks reduced their opening hours to a few hours, then they started closing a day a week, then they closed on Saturdays-all while only being open for 5 hours or so.
Of course footfall went down-people went to post offices instead as was the intention, so while making bigger profits than ever these greedy swine could close more branches down to make even more.
If you ran a shop that opened Monday to Saturday 9-5, then suddenly you closed on Thursdays & Saturdays & only opened from 9-3 the other four days you would of course see your trade decline by a massive amount. Banks on one of those four days they are/were opening also lose/lost an hour from 9-10, being closed every week for staff training.
Also the hovering staff are/were instructed to direct people away from the cashiers to the self service machines or online-the branch leaders of course so dumb they went along with this making all their jobs redundant, like the saps in the supermarket who do everything to get people to go to the self-service tills, because the directive has come down from some spiv in an office in London so they can sack cashiers.
Agreed.
It is now common practice with banks to (a) reduce their opening hours and (b) direct customers to use ATMs. Thus customers are being manipulated to reduce the over-the-counter transactions – so the bank can then produce statistics to show the branch is under-used and close it.
The staff are complicit in lining themselves up for a place in the queue at the Job Centre.
When paying in cash or cheques, I feel far safer doing so within the branch rather than standing outside on the street trying to manipulate notes into a machine. I have had instances where notes are rejected due to being worn, torn, or in some other way unacceptable to a machine. Then I am forced to take them to a human cashier in any event (where the same notes are accepted without question). I have witnessed others having notes chewed up by the machine which then closes down without crediting the account.
If I am withdrawing cash I again prefer to do so inside a branch where I can then secure the money about my person in relative privacy – rather be seen doing so in the public street and risk being a potential victim robbed by an alcoholic, drug addict or other opportunist.
Another sad day for the high street, but I accept people who are in full-time employment haven’t time to visit bank branches. I never visit a branch now, when online is so convenient day and night. I do understand people who don’t work enjoy visiting bank branches as it’s a way of filling their day and an opportunity to chat to someone.
Why the hell are people still using their phones and online banking services when it is blatantly obvious they are playing straight into the hands of the greedy fat cats? It might seem convenient at the time to do things online instead of visiting a branch, but every online transaction is another nail in the coffin for face-to-face services in the high streets. Please BOYCOTT online banking and self-service tills before we are all consigned to an isolated future.
Indeed & as we have seen the last few years when these massive worldwide/Europe crashes happen due to upgrades/hack attempts etc you will be able to do nothing online. At least with branches they have offline systems they can still do things on. Rather like the idea of paperless offices that has never come to pass due to those issues with servers crashing etc.
A relative of mine banks with Barclays, and her branch wouldn’t let her withdraw money from the counter, directing her to the machine outside instead. And then they closed down.
So it’s not often possible to use banks even when one wants to (and anyway, all the banks here in Birchington and Westgate went years ago!).
Crazy-these people don’t have the brains to realise by following what they are told to do by head office, they are going to put themselves out of work.
Used to get them in Sainsbury’s-lining up minding your own business & one of the hoverers would implore you to go the self-service tills instead, how about you just open another till & serve people, rather than standing around gossiping & trying to put your colleagues out of a job?
Checksfield, Yes so much for customer service . I’m also with Barclays and shared the same experience as your relative before they closed the Ramsgate branch which was their last branch open in Thanet and now the nearest branch is at Canterbury and Ashford ! Hmm
Not a chance of boycotting online banking, its brilliant.
As someone who works it was impossible to get to the banks as they close the same time most people finish work !!
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Mr X, one day you might retire from work and you might not find internet banking to be so brilliant after all. By then it will no longer be free at the point of use and you will be expected to retrain yourself every few weeks to fight off cyber attacks and you’ll be spending a fortune buying the latest smartphone simply to remain compliant with your bank’s rules. Maybe we need to boycott banks altogether and revert to bartering and community time banking
i do not use online banking , and i have no intention to. this is another nail in the coffin that is Ramsgate , i shall take out any money i have with Santander and go elsewhere , the Nationwide next door have said they have no intention of closing – so that will do for me
It has nothing to do with individual branches-the order is made by the bosses & then they close the branches. Your local staff/manager may well believe their jobs are safe, the reality might well be different.
The staff at Lloyds in the Centre in Margate went in on the Wednesday morning for their staff training before opening & instead were told the branch was closing in a few months. Eventually there will be no banks/building societies the next decade or so-they have seen a way to make even more money & to hell with the customers.
They are closed on a Wednesday.
Santandar. A spanish bank bought abbey national. Abbey national was a popular non profit making building society (like nationwide today) then under thatcher was changed to a profit making bank was sold off to foreign companies like many privatised utilities. The rest is history.
Mr Lewis – successive governments of all parties have done nothing to reverse these decisions. Mrs Thatcher had her views etc, Gordon Brown sold us down the river with gold reserves, Labour Blair lead us into wars by lies, and the present Government discussing bunch of liars and thieves! Politicians of all parties are dreadful. No good living in the past however!
Should read, ‘ disgusting bunch of liars’
I’m going to close account my account
I’m pleased it closing as ramsgate is a no go area most days a dangerous place to visit
All the more reason for having an open bank branch where you can go inside to conduct your business – rather than having to stand in the street to pay in or draw out cash from a machine.
What irresponsible rubbish!
Last night (Wednesday) councillors at Ramsgate Town Council had a presentation from officers at TDC on the latest funding project for Ramsgate, Pride in Place. We heard that the preparatory public engagement showed that the public want a vibrant town centre. Today we learn that Santander, ironically probably one of the busier banks in the town centre, is to close due to more people banking online than going into the branch. Apart from the fact that £20m over 10 years (at £2m per year) won’t actually go very far in the real world, this latest closure has made the hill that Pride in Place has to climb just that little bit steeper, and certainly not at the fault of TDC.
National research shows that town centres that are thriving in the new economy are those that have adopted an approach of becoming more like social centres than retail, with cafes and entertainment and activity centres replacing retail. Particularly post-Covid which pushed more people into shopping online out of necessity, many of whom have not wholly returned to in-person shopping. Small towns with small stores, such as Broadstairs, that were once seen as quaint and old fashioned, are now the new way forward.
Ramsgate Friday market helps in Ramsgate, and I’m pleased to have been part of the push to get that reinstated post-Covid. But it won’t be enough. Free parking is not a silver bullet; there is no such thing as a free lunch. The maintenance costs still need to be covered for the car parks and that will either be borne by the tax payer or by the businesses (as it is at WWX).
And although WWX is blamed for the decline of our town centre(s) the reality is that the bigger stores, such as M&S, WHSmith (as was), River Island, Next, and the larger supermarkets such as Tesco, etc, were already pulling out of the town centres with their relatively small footprint retail units, in favour of larger footprints available elsewhere. WWX actually kept those stores in Thanet, if not in the traditional town centres, and brought back shoppers into Thanet who were otherwise choosing to shop elsewhere, in Canterbury, Bluewater, etc.
One of the larger empty shops in Ramsgate High Street is currently being fitted out for a new store to open. I’m not sure if the identity of the store is public yet, but it looks like it should be ready to open quite soon. It will only survive if the public use it.
In the meantime, at Ramsgate Town Council, the Town Promotion team (and the rest of the Council) will continue to do what it can to support making the town centre as attractive a destination as possible.
After a lovely visit to The Tunnels and a nice meal at the harbour, my better half and I were waiting for a bus in King Street on Monday afternoon. Two threatening-looking youngsters with vicious looking dogs walked past smoking stinking joints the size of cigars. This would never have happened in Westwood Cross. So, without better policing and/or security, NO new shops are going to bring people back to the town centre.
They were probably on the way to visit M.M Rees who thinks Ramsgate is absolutely wonderful!
I’m probably going to Ramsgate again later this morning (hopefully Howling Sounds will actually be open). Do they still have a weekly market? It’s been 2 or 3 years since I walked the entire length of the High Street.
You heard it from the Councillor-people want a choice of 20 ‘vibrant’ cafes in a ‘community hub’ all selling the same thing, not shops where they can buy things they need-don’t support local businesses, just go online & give your money to Billionaires Bezos & Blackrock instead & between that the sky high rents TDC charge them they can put them all out of business!
Want to buy decent stationery-go online, or head off to formerly known as WH Smith, because the high streets no longer have any stores, yet you can visit 30 different ‘art hubs’ to stare at doodles & junk piled up on the floor or stuck to walls & in the Centre at Margate alone you have multiple cafes on the same block.
She also blames the companies & the public for stores moving to Westwood-not their insanely greedy high business rates-that covers all parties that have been in charge of TDC-Tories, Ukcrap, Labour & no doubt the incompetent at every level Reform will, with the same people who spent 14 years screwing up the country for the Tories, before Labour took over the baton of corruption & incompetence, when they kick this lot out.
Really can’t wait to get rid of Liebour at all levels, if Stalin Starmer doesn’t just cancel all elections of course.
How nice it must be for the remaining shops in Ramsgate & elsewhere in Thanet to hear that people making decisions about the area like Helen thinks they are dinosaurs that should be extinct & that Starmer’s ‘Pride In Place’ is only interested in more junk food outlets, art galleries that bleed money, coffee shops that you can’t move 20 feet without finding one of all selling the same things on top of each other-a recipe for long lasting success!
How long were toilets closed in Ramsgate? 16 months wasn’t it? Why will you not say how much taxpayer cash you are wasting by paying the bouncers to do the job the police, town wardens, PCSO’s & shop security are already paid to do-but clearly aren’t & why they are still employed when they aren’t bothering? Please stop using the cretinous art world buzzword vibrant-it is as meaningless & annoying as calling everything in Thanet a hub.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
I didn’t notice any security today, despite a small but surprisingly good market (great fruit & veg stall). Unfortunately, I made the mistake of getting off the bus at Boundary Road, and was totally shocked by how many closed shops (around 9 in 10) are not only boarded up but look close to collapse! Still, I cheered myself up by a nice spending spree in Howling Sounds (some great CDs on Adam Faith, The Coasters and Lonnie Donegan, amongst others).
Security were around today, along with police, who arrested a man after some kind of altercation near Poundland which involved a number of people. In the course of it, one of the market stalls was knocked into/over. You just mis-timed your visit …
Blimey! And there was me thinking Ramsgate was starting look a bit more civilised (apart from the rotting hell-hole that is most of King Street).
My mother banked with Nat West. When she died, I went to the branch in Margate to inform them and close the account. They were incredibly helpful. So much so, that I switched over to them from Barclays (who I’d been with since I left school.
The switch was painless. All my dd’s and standing orders have changed automatically.
Supporting local businesses who aim their businesses at local people and employ local people is the way forward.
I wonder if banks and the like would alter their plans if people started to take their business elsewhere?
No-the plan is to close all banks within the next 10-15 years. They are making more money than ever, but like all greedy millionaires & billionaires want more.
Covid was a godsend for them-they only opened for a few hours, then when things went back to normal they cut the hours down permanently, closed on Saturday & then one day in the week & instructed the staff to direct people away from the cashiers-then said the footfall had decreased greatly-well no poop Sherlock-most went to the Post Office that is actually open six days a week for proper hours, so they can close the branches.
Another miserable vape shop on the way or fake barber shop …. whot a shame there is 0 hope for Ramsgate town just a lot of drunks and drudealers whot a shame
Fake Barber shop-like Monty Python, or like certain shops locally that never seem to have any customers as they sell nothing anybody would want from tiny premises-like a former clothing shop on Margate seafront, or arty farty nondescript places that appear to be a front for something else?
Take away the Bank, take away the cash, take away the jobs, take away the service, do everything yourself, online, and pay the price later.
I refuse to even do self-service at supermarket check-outs. I blame motorists though: they set a precedent by accepting self-service at petrol pumps 50-odd years ago.
I’m moving my account to Nat West i been with Santander for over 40 years i dont do internet as people who can get information of your bank details it all ways there these bank keep closing on day the Internet will go down then what will happen then I mean to many use the Internet ie nhs ,doctor when that has gone down doctor are stuff can not do any thing for you as they need the Internet Internet is worst thing for everyone