THE taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland has been named the worst in the UK for branch closures.

Finance campaigners said RBS, which includes NatWest, was responsible for one in three of the 1,150 bank closures between 2014 and 2015.

The banking group has also been accused of “abandoning communities” and “creating credit deserts”, with the figures showing 55 per cent of closures where there is only one branch remaining in a particular location are RBS or NatWest.

It has been routinely accused of reneging on a commitment in its customer charter of 2010 to maintain a banking service "where we are the last bank in town".

In response RBS said only nine per cent of transactions took place within branches and that these had dropped by over one-third since 2010.

It also claimed that there had been a massive shift to mobile and online banking in the last five years, with these interactions with customers rocketing by 300 per cent.

In all, the taxpayer-owned bank has shut 385 branches between 2014-2015 of which 165 were the “last bank in town”, leaving those communities without a bank at all.

In total, 301 branch closures were the last bank in town.

Earlier this year RBS announced closures of branches at West Blackhall Street in Greenock, Edinburgh's Goldenacre and Tollcross and Brae in Shetland, along with others in Invergordon, Lochinver and Lybster in the Highlands and Stromness in Orkney.

It comes as the bank released its second quarter figures, which show that its retail section, which owns and operates branches, is running a profit.

Fionn Travers-Smith, campaign manager for ethical banking champions Move Your Money, said: “Closing branches cuts people off from their own money, and undermines jobs and communities by starving businesses of both cash and credit.

“We own NatWest and RBS, so they should work for us. Instead, the bank is abandoning the very communities and people that saved it when it was on its knees, and who rely on its services.

“These (second quarter) figures make a mockery of the bank’s claim that keeping branches open isn’t financially viable.

“Bank branches create and sustain wealth and jobs in rural areas. By abandoning communities RBS is creating credit deserts across the UK, and concentrating even more wealth in London and the southeast."

Jane Howard, managing director of branch banking for NatWest and RBS, said: "Banking has changed significantly over the last few years, for example, branch counter transactions have fallen by 36 er cent since 2010 while online and mobile transactions have increased by more than 300 per cent since 2010.

"Only nine per cent of our total transactions now take place in our branches, compared to 25 per cent in 2010, and more than half of our customers actively use mobile phone and online banking."

She added: "Our branches remain the cornerstone of the service we provide to customers and we will continue to have the second largest branch network in the UK.

"We’ve seen our branches changing from places where customers have to go to complete basic transactions to places where our customers can interact with our staff on the big moments and decisions in their lives such as taking out a mortgage, or starting up their own business."

A backbench debate on the future of the taxpayer’s majority ownership of the RBS is to be held next week, with MPs and campaigners due to call for the bank to be restructured to serve local and regional economies.