Halifax closing

Quite by coincidence, just before posting up the ''Naming and Praising'' thread, an email arrived chez Crosswhatfields from san, in which he praised the staff in the Halifax for their being ''unusually helpful and friendly''  in what is a busy branch.

Unfortunately however, praise wasn't his main reason for writing - san was letting us know that the oddly-named Lee Kiff, Regional Director of Halifax Community Bank, had written announcing the closure of the Halifax (93 Deptford High Street) on Friday, November 5th at 2pm.  So that will be a memorable bonfire night for the staff...

I had a quick look online to see whether I could pick up some background on the closures.  The Daily Mail published a mole's revelation back in September, 2009,  that Lloyds was planning a major cull of Halifax Branches.  LloydsTSB immediately leapt into denial mode.  I don't remember this happening very often  but the Mail appears to have got this bit of news spot on.

I also read on a thread concerned about the threat of Halifax closures over at digitalspy from the year before that:

If there's a branch in the same street as a Lloyds TSB one of them will close eventually, and unless the Lloyds branch is in a much worse location/condition, it'll be the Halifax which will close. In other locations they'll probably change name. But your account will continue as usual. 

And yet there is no LloydsTSB in Deptford at all so it's not a question of them having 2 branches in the area.  The nearest LloydsTSB branch is in Greenwich town centre and they're rarely helpful or friendly there.  No, it appears that they're simply quitting the area.  So much for the ''community'' part of their name.

So when the public bailed out Lloyds, it was for Lloyds to return to profitability and shut down Halifax branches.  So the winners of the Best national branch network 2010 get rewarded with redundancy.  The award was sponsored by yourmoney.com apparently.

''Your money dot gone'' might be more appropriate...

Right, now which bookies feel they're missing out on having an outlet in the High Street...?