‘My pub takes less than 50p a week in copper coins. They're not worth my time'

Telegraph

4 hours ago

Pub owner Tom Archer is examining a two pence piece with the kind of fascinated curiosity you might expect from someone who's found an ancient Roman coin in their back garden. He's put a few aside on the bar from the last time someone paid for a pint with a few coppers in The White Horse Inn, Essex.
'Honestly, we get less than 50 copper coins a week these days,' he says. 'I don't even put them in the till any more – they're not worth bagging up. So they just accumulate here and we dump them into charity boxes every so often.'
It seems faintly ridiculous that Archer would rather lose money on the price of a pint than cash the full sum up. But he reckons it actually costs him more to process copper coins than they're worth.
'Think of it this way,' he says. 'You have to allow for the time it takes to count up coppers and bag them up. Then I've got to go to a bank and pay them in – and the banks are shutting everywhere so it's a fair old route to find one.
'So if the minimum wage is £12.21, that's over a pound for every five minutes of effort. See what I mean – it genuinely is costing me more to pay someone to count a pound of coppers than they're actually worth. Just get rid of them, I say; I don't think anyone would truly miss them.'
Of course, contactless payments are largely the root cause of the decline in use of cash, and last July no new coins of any denomination were ordered by HM Treasury from The Royal Mint. Officials decided there were enough coins – an estimated 27 billion – in circulation. But while no one was suggesting pound coins were on the way out, the move caused enough debate for a Treasury spokesman to have to stress that they were not scrapping coppers.
But are they more hassle than they're worth? Archer's experience in The White Horse Inn is being repeated across the country. The Pavilion Cafe in Didsbury Park, South Manchester is a vibrant, popular place for coffees, lunches and summer ice-creams, a genuine community hub. Its duty manager Ayesha Malik takes time out from making a cappuccino to show me the till.
'See the 1ps and 2ps in there,' she points. 'They've literally not been touched for two weeks. I can't think of the last time anyone actually paid in coppers, and we've not given any change out in them either.'
Unlike Tom Archer, it's not that taking coppers to the bank is an added irritation for Malik and The Pavilion Cafe. It's that they just don't need to very often anyway. They just sit in the till as an unused float.
Malik rummages in the tip jar on the counter. 'Look, there's only one copper in there as well,' she says. 'People just don't have them in their pockets any more.'
What's interesting about the Pavilion Cafe's experience is that they're run by a charity called Didsbury Good Neighbours, set up specifically to offer support to older people in its community. The presumption might be that this particular age group would be put out by any changes to denominations – or indeed the move to a more cashless society.
'Far from it,' says Malik. 'We know our customers, and I'd say only 10 per cent of them use cash now anyway. They tell us it's far easier to use a contactless card rather than fiddling around trying to find the right coins. And for those that are happier using cash, we're pleased to welcome them – but it's higher denominations than coppers they tend to have anyway.'
All of which begs the question, who is actually using the millions of copper coins – which are actually made of copper-plated steel – currently in circulation? Archer's make their way to charity donation boxes, and Malik talks fondly of the museums that make a game out of rolling two pence pieces into a collection area. But even some charities are seeing copper use dwindle.
Caroline Tomlinson is CEO of award-winning Standish-based charity My Life, who work with people of all ages and abilities who need support. 'We are really fortunate to have great backing in the community for what we do,' she says. 'And we've always been really clear that our operating model wouldn't be reliant on charitable donations as people need our person-centred services to live their lives to the full.
'Still, we have collection boxes, and they've been used as a way to support and enhance still further what we do. They used to be full of copper coins. Now it's noticeable how much emptier they are.
'That's not just because of the cost of living and pressures on people's money – as acute as they are. My instincts are that people just don't have spare coppers in their pockets as much as they used to.'
Of course, one place you will still see copper coins is on the famous twopenny shove machines at traditional seaside resorts. Oddly, every arcade operator we speak to is reluctant to go on the record about their copper use. Perhaps they don't want to lift the veil on just how many 2ps it will take to tip the balance and shove a punter's precious stake back into the black.
'We must be keeping the Royal Mint in business,' jokes one employee of a traditional arcade in England's North West. 'What's telling is that you used to have people coming in with their own 2ps to slot in the machine. Now they have to ask us for a pound's worth, because they don't have many themselves.
'For a business like ours, we're used to having a high turnover of coppers so it's not really an issue to be banking them. But I don't use them in my local shop, either.'
Ultimately, then, any pang for copper coins is largely driven by nostalgia for those two penny slots or one penny chews. Go into any high street shop and it's striking that the days when, say, a £4.99 price point would be used as a psychological marketing tool to get something for under a fiver are well and truly over. Everything has been rounded down or up into multiples of five or ten. A pint of milk is 85p. The RPI for a loaf of bread has been at £1.40 for over a year now, rather than £1.39 or £1.37 as it was in the past. So the 1p and 2p are effectively redundant as change.
'Prices for pints in pubs now are in multiples of 20 pence,' confirms Archer.
The UK isn't alone in seeing a decline in the use of smaller coin denominations. Three weeks ago, the US treasury confirmed the end of the penny after Donald Trump had told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in February to stop minting the coins, calling them wasteful. It transpired that they cost more to produce than they were worth. Might the UK now follow suit?
An HM Treasury spokesman said that while they continue to monitor the amount of coins in circulation, they were confident there were still enough in the system to meet demand.
' Cash continues to be used by millions of people across the UK,' the spokesman said, 'and we have no plans to change the denominational mix of coins.'
Of course, it's the Royal Mint who ultimately manufacture coins in response to demand from the industry. What do they feel about the future of coppers?
'It's not unusual for some denominations not to enter circulation in certain years,' said a Royal Mint spokesman.
'The existing 1p coins will be replaced with those bearing King Charles III's effigy over time as they become damaged or worn and to meet demand for additional coins. Ensuring that cash circulates effectively and is readily accessible across the UK is essential, and we're always looking at ways to support this.'
All of which means Tom Archer is likely to be popping coppers in an Essex charity box for a while yet. Even he, though, maintains cash still has a place.
'I'd say about 20 per cent of our income is in cash now, and actually it is useful; it means we can pay our casual staff – legally of course – that way,' says Archer. 'And also, you do have the issue of what happens when you have a power cut or a payment system blackout.
'So it's important that you do have both – it's just the denominations are wrong at the moment.'