Bank to close 49 branches including in Watton, Lakenheath and Chatteris – putting 1,230 jobs at risk

The banking giant said 1,230 jobs will be cut across its branch network and some central functions as part of the move.

It said it hopes to redeploy affected staff where possible, with compulsory redundancies a 'last resort'.

The group is also creating 925 roles elsewhere in the business and insisted the overall job losses would be 305.

Lloyds pledged to expand its mobile branch network by another seven to 36 to help offset the branch closures.

Among those to face the axe are the branches at Lakenheath, Watton, the University of Essex, Clare and Chatteris.

The move follows a pattern of banks closing high street branches with customers moving to online services.

The branches will close across its Lloyds and Halifax banking brands between July and October this year.

A spokesman for Lloyds said: 'These branch closures are in response to changing behaviour and the reduced number of transactions being made in branches.'

On the job cuts, he said: 'The group's policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the group.

'Since 2011, over 90% of role reductions have been achieved through a combination of natural attrition, redeployment and voluntary redundancy.

'Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, we will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort.'

The group said the new roles being created comes as part of its pledge to invest £3bn on technology and training staff under a new three-year strategy.

Lloyds last year said it would shut 100 branches with hundreds of jobs being impacted, while in February, it announced another 465 roles were being cut.

The group recently unveiled a 24% surge in bottom line profits to £5.3bn for 2017 and revealed it handed boss Antonio Horta-Osorio a £6.4m pay package, up 11% on 2016.