Santander is closing its doors to customers at Merry Hill.

It's the latest fixture to announce it's leaving the popular Brierley Hill based shopping centre.

Earlier this month Thorntons also announced that its store in Merry Hill was being axed.

Santander is closing 111 branches after covid affected demand for in-store services.

However, 452 branches will remain open while Santander said it expects to find alternative roles for a significant number of staff affected by the announcement.

Adam Bishop, head of branches at Santander, said: "Branch usage by customers has fallen considerably over recent years so we have made the difficult decision to consolidate our presence in areas where we have multiple branches relatively close together.

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"We will provide every support to customers of closing branches to find alternative ways to bank with us that best suit their individual needs.

"We are also working alongside our unions to support colleagues through these changes and to find alternative roles for those impacted wherever possible.

"We continue to believe that branches have an important role to play and we expect the size of our network to remain stable for the foreseeable future."

A spokesman for Merry Hill said: “We are sorry to hear about Santander’s decision to close and we wish their staff well.

“As we prepare to re-open Merry Hill for non-essential shopping, we are continuing to work hard behind the scenes and we will soon be announcing some exciting news about a number of new stores that will be opening at the centre in the near future.

"This summer, our multi-million pound investment in the centre's exterior is expected to be completed and we're also looking forward to work starting later this year on the arrival of the Midland Metro to Merry Hill, in what is an exciting chapter in the centre's history."