Lloyds TSB and Halifax customers locked out of online banking

Bank says normal service has resumed after morning outage

Many customers of banks Lloyds TSB and Halifax had problems accessing their online banking accounts this morning because of a service failure.

The banks, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, were criticised by customers who took to Twitter to vent their frustration.

One customer tweeted: "Anyone else notice Lloyds' bank systems are down, no timeframe to being working again, shades of NatWest."

At the end of June, a payment glitch affected the computer systems of NatWest, Ulster Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and customers of Halifax and Lloyds TSB may have feared for the worst, as it took weeks to bring some NatWest customers' accounts back to normal service.

Lloyds TSB responded to its customers on its Twitter feed at 12pm saying: "Thanks for your tweets; we're pleased to advise that normal service has been resumed. We're sorry for any inconvenience this morning."

In a statement it said: "For a short period this morning, some of our customers experienced a slower service than normal when accessing their accounts. Service has now been fully restored."

Lloyds Banking Group declined to comment further on the type of IT glitch that occurred.