Is UK money safe with Santander?

The above is a question that has been debated on this blog from time to time for several years. Here is a report on the topic from IB Times dated today. The following is a brief quote from that article:

Santander's total customer deposits €632.5bn (£510.3bn) across the world, and in the UK alone it has 26.7m customers for its banking services, including current accounts, mortgages, and consumer credit cards, according to the bank's 2011 annual report. 

It manages £233bn of customer funds in the UK. 

Financial troubles in Santander's home country of Spain led to its creditworthiness being downgraded, as crippling government austerity is enforced in a desperate bid to keep down borrowing costs while cash-strapped banks are begging for recapitalisation.

At the end of the day it will come down to how much one trusts the UK Government as to how you answer the question in this posting's headline. There is a guarantee scheme with a limit that should be sufficient for most ordinary consumers. But having access to your cash without reliance on government intervention or bureaucratic procedures must surely be the main priority for most of us - but which High Street Bank now offers that?