Popular bank Virgin Money have today (July 20) announced they will be closing three North East branches in a major blow to high street banking.

Durham’s Virgin Money store located on Saddler Street in the City Centre will permanently close its doors later this year.

This comes as the company has announced they will close 39 stores across the UK including Gosforth Centre and Hexham’s branch due to “changing customer demand”.

Read more: Halifax and Barclays to close Durham and North Yorkshire branches

The reasoning behind the closure claims that the number of customers using the branches in person have been on a downward trend since the pandemic, with some stores seeing a 43 per cent decrease in customer transactions.

Sarah Wilkinson, chief operating officer at Virgin Money, said: “The decision to close a store is never taken lightly. But as our customers continue to change the way they want to bank with us, by conducting fewer transactions in-store and adopting the convenience of digital banking, we must respond to that evolving demand.

“For our colleagues, we will pursue all options to retain as many as possible within alternative roles, and have had great success previously with store colleagues moving to other customer operations roles, as their skills are highly transferable.” 

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Following the news, Virgin Money has assured customers they will have at least 12 weeks’ notice ahead of their branch closing for good with written notifications by mail.

Details of other ways to manage money and locations of nearby Post Offices will be given to those who wish to continue managing their money in person.

Virgin Money are now the latest bank to close branches in the North East, with seventeen having already ceased trading this year including Halifax and Barclays.