Staff at TSB are preparing to take legal action against a new office attendance policy introduced by Santander following its £2.65 billion acquisition of the high-street bank in May. The Spanish lender is requiring TSB employees to work from the office at least three days a week, reversing the flexible home-working arrangements that were in place before the takeover.

Under Santander’s existing policy, staff are expected to be in the office for an average of 12 days per month, calculated over a three-month period. The bank has said this approach allows "significant flexibility" to accommodate individual circumstances. However, TSB employees and their representative union, the TBU, have raised concerns that the forced office attendance could adversely affect some workers with family or health-related needs.

The TBU union, which is not formally recognised by TSB and thus excluded from official negotiations, has indicated plans to challenge the policy at an Employment Tribunal. The union contends that the new mandate disregards employee needs and undermines the flexible working arrangements introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

TSB staff were previously permitted to work from home full-time under policies established during the pandemic. In contrast, Santander implemented its three-days-in-office rule at the start of 2024. A TSB spokesperson confirmed that the policy change would take effect from April and that exceptions would be made for employees requiring personal or medical flexibility.

The dispute at TSB forms part of a broader trend of resistance among UK workers to employers’ post-pandemic efforts to reinstate traditional office routines. Other major firms, including PwC and JP Morgan, have faced pushback when enforcing office attendance mandates. PwC began monitoring employee attendance last year and warned of disciplinary measures for insufficient office presence. At JP Morgan, thousands of staff signed a petition opposing a five-day in-office requirement, prompting a sharp rebuke from CEO Jamie Dimon. Compounding the issue, it was revealed that JP Morgan’s UK offices lacked the capacity to accommodate the full return of their 22,000 employees.

Santander employs roughly 18,000 people in the UK and expects to make about 130 redundancies at TSB as part of the integration process. The bank currently operates 175 TSB branches across Britain and plans to phase out the TSB brand, folding the business into its broader UK operations. Following the acquisition, Santander has become the UK’s third-largest high-street bank, with a combined customer base of approximately 19 million—from TSB’s five million and Santander’s 14 million accounts.

TSB has a long history, tracing its roots back to the establishment of the Trustee Savings Bank in 1810, originally created to assist poorer parishioners in Dumfriesshire with savings during difficult times. The present-day TSB maintains 218 branches nationwide, while Santander runs 244 full-service branches after closing 44 earlier this year.