SPANISH banking giant Santander has sent bank statements for up to 35,000 customers to the wrong addresses.

The group, which has its UK head office in Bootle, said a printing glitch led to customers being sent the first page of their own bank statement – but pages two and three of another customer’s.

The statements included customers’ names, account numbers and details of transactions they had carried out, although Santander insisted this was not enough information to enable someone to commit fraud on their account.

Despite that, it has written to all affected customers informing them of what has happened.

Santander customer Neil Stockley, of Wavertree, said he was “horrified” when he opened his bank statement and realised he had been sent another customer’s details, and to be told his details had likewise been sent to the wrong customer.

The 43-year-old electrician said: “At first I thought my bank card had been cloned because there was a transaction in euros I had never made. Then I realised I was looking at the bank details of a completely different person.

“It is a shocking breach of privacy and now I am seriously thinking about moving my account elsewhere.” A Santander spokesman said: “Due to a technical error at our printer’s, a number of current account statements dated December 18 have printed incorrectly.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused and have taken immediate steps to correct this. We take the security of customer and account information extremely seriously so any incident of this nature is treated with the highest priority.

“We want to reassure customers the risk of fraud on their account has not been increased because of this error, and it is a one-off.”