Santander has cancelled plans to buy hundreds of RBS-owned branches.

The Spanish banking giant was all set to purchase 316 branches of the largely state-owned bank and completion was due next February.

However, despite two years of negotiations, planning and preparation it has now pulled out of the deal. This is apparently because it became clear that completion would not happen before the agreed sale date.

People banking at English or Welsh RBS branches, or Scottish NatWest branches, were due to have their banking transferred as part of the deal but will now remain with their respective banks for the time being.

However, RBS has committed to selling 316 of its branches by 2014 so if you're a customer it's possible you will still see your banking moved elsewhere soon.

Read our article The Collapse of the RBS Sale to Santander for more about what's happened and what it means for your finances.

What else is happening?

nPower and Scottish Power have joined British Gas and SSE in confirming their pre-winter energy price hikes

nPower will be increasing the 'per unit' cost of its standard electricity tariff by 9.1% and its gas tariff by 8.8% on 26th November. Scottish Power customers on standard tariffs will pay 7% more for their energy from 3rd December. This could add £100s to the average household's energy bill so check whether you'll be affected and if so whether you could save by locking into a fixed rate tariff.

Government websites Direct.gov and Business Link will be replaced

A new combined resource is coming into service from tomorrow. Once the transfer takes place the official central information hub for government services will be Gov.UK instead.

62 of the UK's most popular websites have been told to clean up their act

An OFT investigation found they weren't honouring consumer rights. Adding previously unmentioned charges at the checkout, forcing customers to return goods in their original packaging (something that isn't actually a requirement) and failing to provide a direct-contact email address were just some of the issues uncovered. All retailers concerned have been told to remedy the issues by Christmas.

A record number of Brits have had to rely on emergency food supplies already this year

The Trussell Trust, a charity that runs 100s of food banks across the UK, has revealed that 110,000 people have received emergency food supplies since April - last year they helped just over 126,000 people in total! Demand is only expected to increase over the next 12 months if food prices rise further and people continue to struggle with the cost of living.

Many O2 customers were left without service on Friday

That's after the network experienced technical issues for the second time this year. The technical fault that left 10% of O2's customers without mobile signal for hours on Friday has now been fixed and the network has offered reassurances that it won't cause problems again. However, unlike last time, those affected will not be offered compensation.