Rural shops to ignore round pound deadline

RURAL shops could ignore the deadline to stop accepting £1 coins because their customers cannot get to a bank to change them, business associations have warned.

Isolated communities struggling to cope with the closures of local banks, will be hardest hit and stores may see it as in their best interest to help customers who cannot get to a branch, the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has said. The deadline for spending old coins, of which there are around 500million still in circulation, passes on Sunday. Some national stores, including Tesco and Poundland, say they will still accept the round pound after Sunday, although they are banned from giving it out in change. The coins can be exchanged for the new version at banks and Post Offices.

Chris Noice, the spokesman for ACS, said: “Some retailers will have a decision to make on whether they will still accept them. Where there are stores in rural or isolated areas where customers will be looking to spend older coins, and just have the local shop, it may be in their interest to keep accepting them for the next couple of weeks.

“There is more of a case to say businesses could still accept older coins in those areas as they might be nowhere near a bank or a Post Office.”

The Confederation of British Industry has already advised its 170,000 members to continue taking the old pounds as a “useful community service”. Thousands of parking and vending machines are not yet ready to accept the new coin, and it is feared that there will be confusion when it ceases to be legal tender.