When was decimalization in uk

So why did the UK follow neither the examples of its Commonwealth partners or European neighbours in its choice of the pound as the major unit?

The ten-shilling option, as implemented in Australia and New Zealand, was overwhelmingly supported by retail and consumer interests. For this reason the committee opted to retain the pound, and, with it, the problematic halfpenny coin. Every one of us in Britain is familiar with it, we know what it stands for, abroad they know what it stands for. The result was a very British modernisation.

It sacrificed the potential benefits of having a fully decimalised system such as being able to avoid the fiddly halfpenny in the name of tradition and prestige. Creeping Europeanisation played no part at all. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. A major publicity campaign ran in the weeks before D-Day, preparing the British public for the coming change.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes there was an enormous amount of work to be done if decimalisation was to happen smoothly. A great deal of the responsibility fell upon banks. To enable them to change their cash, bookkeeping, machines and systems, they closed at 3. The bank was helped in its preparations for decimalisation by the relatively advanced state of its computerisation programme. These computers were able to undertake much of the branch-level work in the run-up to decimalisation, saving an estimated 6, branch staff from two weeks of intensive overtime.

Staff had to be trained to understand the new currency, and to be as confident with it as they had come to feel in years — or even decades — of processing the old currency. To help with this task, the British Bankers' Association had issued a series of booklets and exercises, plus a quick-reference cribsheet for cashiers.

Three new coins were to go into circulation on D-Day — halfpenny, one penny and twopenny pieces. Despite all the preparations, there were some operations that could not be undertaken until the right moment, during the changeover itself. To keep their strength up, the head office canteen also stayed open all night to provide on-the-spot sustenance.

NatWest faced even bigger challenges. It had not even existed as a single bank when planning began. For these banks, the late s were a time of planning and building a whole new bank, ready for launch on 1 January It also produced a monthly Decimal Currency Digest which it sent to staff, and cashiers had to read four booklets and complete six training exercises to make sure they understood the new systems.

The Royal Mint spent years producing millions of new coins, and these were distributed to banks around the country ahead of the switch. Before and after D Day, shops carried posters with the prices in old and new money. On the day itself, these were switched, so the new prices were shown first. This article is more than 8 months old.