The Bank of England is currently touring the UK to introduce the British public to ‘ The New Fiver ’, which will enter circulation in 24 days.
The BoE is taking its new fiver on a roadshow. The aim is to familiarise the British public with the benefits of the country’s newest innovation in safe and sustainable cash. Yesterday, the new fiver was on show at Adventure Island in Southend on Sea. Next week the roadshow will move around Scotland.
The new fiver will be stonger, cleaner and safer
The new bank note is said to be a stronger, cleaner and safer alternative to the current five-pound bank note. It is printed on polymer, a thin and flexible plastic.
Polymer is stronger than paper, making it more resilient to tearing and scrunching. The material is also dirt and moisture resistant, which will ensure that the new fiver stays clean and lasts longer. The BoE expects polymer notes to last 2.5 times longer than current bank notes.
Printing more sustainable notes will also have an environmental impact, as a longer lifetime of notes means that less need to be printed in total. Therefore, less energy is spent on the manufacturing of bank notes and their transportation, and the material is fully recyclable.
The BoE reports that in 2015 alone 21,835 notes had to be replaced. 10,761 notes were torn, 5,364 chewed or eaten, 2,912 contaminated, 1,800 washed and 997 damaged or destroyed by fire; large numbers which, according to the BoE, will be reduced greatly by the more resilient material of the new five-pound note.
The new note will also be less susceptible to counterfeiting as new design features will make the note harder to copy. A transparent window and a foil Elizabeth Tower, in gold on the front and silver on the back of the note, are all features designed to prevent illegal currency.
Polymer notes with similar security features are already in use successfully in other countries. Australia launched its first polymer bank notes in 1988. It was also the first country to use a transparent window as a security feature on such notes. Today all Australian bank notes are made from polymer.
As per design, the new fiver features Winston Churchill on the back.
BoE Governor Mark Carney stated:
“Winston Churchill was one of the greatest statesmen of all time and is the only Prime Minister to win the Nobel Prize for literature. As he himself said, a “nation that forgets its past has no future”. Our banknotes are repositories of the United Kingdom’s collective memory and are testaments to the outstanding achievements of the nation’s greatest individuals.
Like Churchill, the new polymer note will also stand the test of time.”
New bank notes enter circulation in 24 days
The new fiver will be entering into distribution on the 13th September this year. All paper five-pound bank notes will cease to be legal tender. Any paper five-pound bank note will from then onward have to be exchanged at the Bank of England.
The BoE has also announced that both the ten-pound and the twenty-pound bank note will also be replaced by new Polymer notes in the coming years. The new ten-pound bank note will come into circulation next summer and will feature Jane Austin on the back. By 2020, the new twenty-pound note, featuring JMW Turner on the back, will be distributed.
The Scottish banks are also set to release first polymer notes later this year.
The Royal mint is also set to release a new £1 coin in March next year.
Katharina Fleiner 19/08/2016
