Santander has agreed to buy 318 RBS branches for £1.65 billion.

The deal is expected to be completed within 18 months and will consist of 311 RBS branches in England and Wales and seven NatWest branches in Scotland 40 SME banking centres and more than 400 relationship managers and four 4 corporate banking centres and three private banking centres.

However, the deal was criticised by Which?. Its chief executive, Peter Vicary-Smith, said: “A huge opportunity has been missed to inject some much-needed competition into retail banking. Simply moving a large number of customers from one big bank to another isn’t going to improve the market for consumers.