Pound worth just 85 euro cents at UK airports as sterling sinks

The pound has sunk well below €1 at Britain’s biggest airports – while the dollar is at parity.

At the ICE desk at Heathrow airport on Tuesday morning, The Independent was quoted £117 for buying €100 – making each pound worth just 85 euro cents.

At Gatwick airport on Monday night, the rate was £1 = €0.90. With commission added to a €100 transaction, the cost in sterling was £116.

The interbank rate at 7am sank below £1 = €1.09, as the downward pressure on the pound continued.

The currency market has marked down sterling as the prospect of a no-deal Brexit appears increasingly likely. At the peak of the holiday season, prices for British travellers will be at a two-year high. 

The best rates for the euro found by The Independent were for “click and collect” transactions at London bureaux de change: €1.08 at branches of Thomas Exchange Global or ICE at Waterloo station.

The interbank rate for dollars was £1 = $1.21, but Moneycorp at Gatwick airport was quoting parity: £1 = $1.

Anyone changing £1,000 into the US currency and immediately back to sterling would lose over one-third of their money, receiving just £648.

At ICE and Travelex at Heathrow airport, the “click and collect” rate was $1.19.

Rates for less popular currencies are extremely unfavourable at Britain’s biggest airport.

The rate for Canadian dollars at Gatwick was C$1.30, compared with an interbank rate of C$1.60.

For the Turkish lira, the rate was TL5.32, 22 per cent worse than the interbank rate.