Halifax could disappear from UK high streets as Lloyds assesses branding strategy

The banking group revealed plans to shut another 136 branches weeks after the cross-branch policy was announced. Lloyds will operate 610 branches in total across the group, once previously announced closures are completed, including 238 under the Halifax branding.

Axing Halifax would mean getting rid of one of the most recognisable and historic lenders on the UK high street.

Halifax traces its origin to 1852, after the Industrial Revolution drew workers into urban centres, including Halifax. Housing shortages and overcrowding prompted the founding of the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building Society, which allowed members to earn interest on deposits, and borrow funds to buy or build their own home.

It financed housing schemes across West Yorkshire, and eventually grew into a UK-wide institution that, by 1928, was the largest building society of its kind in the world. The Halifax would end up being a key player in national housebuilding schemes after the firstand second world wars.

Decades later, new legislation, brought in through big bang City reforms of the 1980s, allowed building societies to demutualise. In 1997, Halifax members voted to ditch its mutual status, turning the lender into a publicly listed, shareholder-owned entity that at the time marked the largest-ever stock flotation in the UK.

Halifax later merged with Bank of Scotland in a £28bn deal, creating what became known as HBOS in 2001, and made waves in the early noughties with an advertising campaign featuring the Halifax bank employee Howard Brown.

However, by 2008, a series of bad business decisions put HBOS at risk of collapse, forcing the UK government to broker a deal that would result in Lloyds rescuing the lender with the help of a £20bn taxpayer bailout.

Bosses of HBOS were later accused of a “colossal failure of management” by the parliamentary commission on banking standards.

Lloyds was also left to handle the fallout from one of Britain’s largest banking scandals, as it emerged that HBOS was embroiled in major fraud at its Reading branch that led to business customers being pushed to failure by rogue managers in the early 2000s. Lloyds is still dealing with the aftermath, with an independent review – led by the former high court judge Dame Linda Dobbs – still determining whether the bank tried to cover up the scandal.