https://www.noxia.co.uk/field-notes/sixty-eight-per-cent-of-branches · printed from noxia.co.uk · sources checked 24 September 2026
Field note · What we found
Two thirds of bank branches have closed. The rule that replaced them.
Cash is 9% of payments and 5% of adults are heavy users, which is the argument for letting branches close. Among digitally excluded adults it is 24%, which is the argument against — and the rule that arrived is about neither.
- What we found
- Access to cash
- Banking
- Vulnerable customers
- FCA
The short answer
Around 6,700 bank and building society branches have closed in the UK since January 2015 — 68% of those open then — and the number of ATMs has fallen by 40%. There were 225 banking hubs operating in March 2026, against roughly 11,700 post offices. FCA rules in force since September 2024 require a firm to assess an area before closing a service and find that closure would not affect withdrawal and deposit provision.
On this page · 6 sections
The scale is the part that resists intuition. Not a decline — a two-thirds reduction inside a decade.
Alongside it the number of ATMs fell by 40%. What has not moved is the post office network, at roughly 11,700 in 2025 and broadly stable for fifteen years — which is why so much policy now quietly rests on it.
The numbers that justify it, and the number that complicates it
Cash was 9% of all payments in 2024, and only 5% of UK adults were heavy cash users. On those two figures alone the closures look like a business responding to demand.
The third figure is the one that makes it a policy question. Among adults who are digitally excluded, 24% were heavy cash users — nearly five times the general rate.
That distinction is the whole of the argument, and it is the same shape as the vulnerability finding elsewhere on this site: an average across a population conceals the group for whom the average is irrelevant.
What the rule actually says
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 gave the FCA responsibility for cash access, and the rules took effect in September 2024. A bank must not close services unless it has assessed the area and found that closure would not affect withdrawal and deposit services.
Read it carefully: it is a duty to assess and to conclude, not a duty to maintain a branch. Where the assessment finds a gap, the remedy has generally been a banking hub — 225 of them by March 2026 — rather than a reprieve.
Why a professional firm should care
Three reasons, none of which is about your own banking.
Your clients' assumptions have changed and yours may not have. A firm that still says "pop into your branch" is giving directions to a building that closed.
The digitally excluded are over-represented among the people who need you most. If a quarter of them are heavy cash users, a process that assumes online-only contact is selecting against exactly the group a regulator asks you to consider.
This is what a "duty to assess" looks like in practice, and you will meet the pattern again. It is the same construction as the Online Safety Act's risk assessment and the Consumer Duty's outcomes monitoring: the obligation is to look, conclude, and be able to show the working. The FCA found 180 firms mostly could not.
What this does not tell you
It does not tell you whether the closures were right, which depends on values rather than figures. Nor does it capture what a hub actually provides, which is narrower than a branch — cash and basic transactions rather than advice or lending.
And the figures are national. Access is a local question, and a national average of adequate coverage is consistent with a town having nothing. The FCA's rule is framed around local assessment for exactly that reason, which is the most defensible thing about it.
If you want the related arguments: what happens when the only remaining channel is a phone nobody answers, and the arithmetic on that, which can tell you to buy nothing. Our work with regulated firms keeps arriving at the same place: the group the average hides.
Questions people actually ask
How many bank branches have closed in the UK?
Around 6,700 bank and building society branches have closed since January 2015, equivalent to 68% of those open at that date. The number of ATMs has fallen by about 40% over the same period.
How many banking hubs are there?
There were 225 operational banking hubs as of March 2026, providing shared physical access to banking services across multiple providers, and Cash Access UK, which delivers them, listed 237 open when we checked on 24 September 2026. For comparison, there were roughly 11,700 post offices in 2025, a network that has been broadly stable for fifteen years.
How much is cash still used?
Cash accounted for 9% of all payments in 2024, and only 5% of UK adults were heavy cash users. Among digitally excluded adults, however, 24% were heavy cash users — nearly five times the general rate.
What do the FCA access to cash rules require?
In force since September 2024, they require that banks must not close services unless they have assessed the area and found that closure would not affect withdrawal and deposit services. It is a duty to assess and conclude rather than a duty to keep a branch open, and the usual remedy where a gap is found has been a banking hub.
Sources
- Cash Access UK, home page, read 24 September 2026: “We currently have 237 banking hubs and over 140 deposit services open across the country”. cashaccess.co.uk ↗ — primary; the company that delivers the hubs, counting its own re-checked every 30 days
- House of Commons Library, “Access to cash and banking services” research briefing CBP-9453, read 23 September 2026: “Around 6,700 bank and building society branches have closed since January 2015 in the UK. This is equivalent to 68% of branches that were open in January 2015”; “The number of ATMs has also fallen, by 40% since 2015”; 225 operational banking hubs as of March 2026; cash was 9% of all payments in 2024; 5% of UK adults were heavy cash users, rising to 24% among the digitally excluded; approximately 11,700 post offices in 2025. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 gave the FCA responsibility for cash access, and the rules “came into effect in September 2024”, requiring that “banks must not close services unless they have assessed the area and found that the closure would not impact withdrawal and deposit services.” commonslibrary.parliament.uk ↗ — primary for practical purposes; a parliamentary research briefing, neutral and sourced, though not itself the underlying statistics. Last updated 8 July 2026 when we re-read it re-checked every 6 months
- The reading that a service used by 5% of people and 24% of those without an alternative is concentrated rather than minor, and the three reasons a professional firm should care, are ours. — our own argument, labelled as such
Checked 24 September 2026. Next scheduled check 24 October 2026. Numbers that move — leaderboards, live indices — are re-checked every 30 days; annual datasets and rules in force every six months; dated research once a year. If something here has gone stale before we got to it, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.
Cite this note
Noxia, “Two thirds of bank branches have closed. The rule that replaced them”, Field notes, 23 September 2026; sources checked 24 September 2026. https://www.noxia.co.uk/field-notes/sixty-eight-per-cent-of-branches
The group the average hides is the one a regulator asks about.
Every outcome measure a firm reports is an average, and every average has a group inside it for whom it is wrong. We build the capture that lets you cut any measure you already publish by the group you are worried about — which is the evidence most firms find they cannot produce.
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