LONDON (Reuters) - The British government has reduced its holding in Lloyds Banking Group PLC (>> Lloyds Banking Group PLC) to less than 1 percent, putting the lender on track to be in full private ownership within weeks.

UK Financial Investments Limited (UKFI), which manages the government's stake, resumed share sales in October, having halted them for almost a year due to market turbulence.

It said on Friday that its stake stands at 0.89 percent.

The government spent more than 136.6 billion pounds rescuing some of Britain's biggest high street lenders at the height of the financial crisis, including Royal Bank of Scotland (>> Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc)and Lloyds, but has so far only managed to recoup half of that money.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Rachel Armstrong)