You may be hanging on to your rumpled old fivers out of affection for a simpler time when you didn’t have to worry about the meat content of your wallet. But that time is up, folks. You must spend those retro paper £5 notes now or, come May, face the kind of shame usually reserved for those who try to spend Scottish notes south of the border.
On Friday 5 May, your fiver collection won’t be worth the paper it is printed on, as the notes will cease to be legal tender. From then on, retailers and banks need only accept or swap old notes at their potentially sarcasm-heavy discretion.
But don’t panic if you are on holiday around the time of the big day or find a wad of old fivers down the back of the sofa next year because, according to the Bank of England, all withdrawn banknotes “remain payable at face value for all time”. To get your hands on a replacement, you can either pop into the mother of all bank branches on Threadneedle Street, in the City of London – where apparently there is a counter, although it is unlikely you’ll be served by the governor Mark Carney – or post them back.
By May, you will have had seven months to get used to the new washing machine-friendly fiver but, if you still think that is a bit quick, spare a thought for Indian consumers. They were given just a few days notice that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes (worth about £6 and £12) were being withdrawn, leaving many without cash for day-to-day expenses. The UK’s so-called plastic revolution will continue in the summer with the arrival of the polymer £10 note emblazoned with a picture of Jane Austen.
So, what happens to all the old washed-up fivers? Until 1990, notes were incinerated, with the energy used to heat the Bank but, in the early noughties, farmers were given shredded old notes to use as compost. Where there’s muck, there’s brass.
