Coins and notes

Today (30 September) is the final day before paper £20 and £50 notes are withdrawn from circulation, so act now before shops stop accepting them. You can spend the notes until midnight tonight, but after that you'll have to bank them or swap them.

Time is running out to check down the back of your sofa for any soon-to-be-discontinued paper £20 and £50 notes. There are only 100 days left before they become invalid but the latest figures from the Bank of England show there are almost £15 billion-worth of notes still around. 

A new plastic £50 note featuring the inventor and codebreaker Alan Turing has been revealed by the Bank of England today. It will launch into circulation from 23 June and will eventually replace the current paper design featuring entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and engineer James Watt.    

Millions of old-style paper £5 and £10 notes worth over £1.5 billion still haven't been returned to the Bank of England, over a year since the last of them were taken out of circulation.

The Royal Mint will produce a 50p coin to mark the UK leaving the European Union, which will be available from spring 2019. 

The £50 note will stay part of UK currency with a new polymer design, the Treasury has announced. 

James Bond, fish and chips, a full English breakfast and the Loch Ness Monster are all featured on a new collection of 10p coins, which are available from today.

If you've still got any old £10 notes, beware – you only have until Thursday 1 March to spend them before they're officially withdrawn by the Bank of England. Here's what's happening and what you can do if you miss the deadline. Following the launch of the new polymer tenner in September, the older £10 notes featuring Charles Darwin have been gradually phased out and will cease to be legal tender in a few days' time. It's believed that more than a quarter of the old £10 notes, worth a staggering £2.2 billion, remain in circulation - so if you've any old tenners, the last day to use them is Thursday 1 March. After this date, retailers will no longer accept them. North of the border, older Scottish £5 and £10 notes will also stop being accepted on 1 March, but there are no changes planned for Northern Irish banknotes.

Thousands of shops will continue to accept old round £1 coins after they go out of circulation this Sunday - but if you still have the old coins, it's best to spend them or bank them ASAP.

Many parking and self-service machines across the country have stopped accepting the old £1 coin – even though it is still legal tender until the middle of next month.