The Bank of England has announced that its new generation of bank notes will feature wildlife from the British Isles, replacing the current notes that depict famous figures from British history. The change follows a public vote, with the barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee, European hedgehog, and Atlantic puffin selected as the winning designs.
Security reasons behind the redesign
Rhys Phillips, who is set to become the Bank's chief cashier on Friday, October 16, taking over from Victoria Cleland, explained the security rationale during an appearance on the BBC's Money Box programme. He said: "We redesign our notes every 10 to 15 years. That's so we can include the absolutely most advanced security features available, to help us stay ahead of would-be counterfeiters."
Phillips added: "When we do that, we change how the look, how the notes look, their appearance." He was asked whether featuring animals in particular would make the notes harder to counterfeit.
Why animals were chosen
The incoming bank boss said: "The thing that makes the design most secure is the marrying together of the material, the technical features, the holograms, and the like, and the design. So, we need designs that we can print in very fine detail that are distinctive enough so you and I can say, 'No, that doesn't look right', and that can be a setting for us to deploy those security features."
He continued: "Our experts think animals are a particularly good way to do that, partly because they move and they interact with habitats in so many different ways. So, that helps us weave design and security together."
In 2025, the Bank asked the public to choose from six potential themes for the new cash, with nature and wildlife emerging as the firm favourite.
Vote results and timeline
Here is the full list of animals and the number of votes they received:
- Buff-tailed bumblebee - 360,399
- Barn owl - 270,596
- European hedgehog - 259,665
- Red fox - 244,651
- Common kingfisher - 211,277
- Atlantic puffin - 183,137
- Emperor dragonfly - 143,894
- Brown hare - 130,614
- Common frog - 120,382
- Marsh fritillary butterfly - 108,467
- Grey seal - 92,043
- Great spotted woodpecker - 86,839
- Pine marten - 82,773
- Basking shark - 69,699
- Bottlenose dolphin - 48,847
- White-tailed eagle - 46,109
- Atlantic salmon - 45,090
- Eurasian curlew - 44,521
Phillips, who will sign the new notes, said: "It's a real privilege to be doing it now at a point when we're looking forward to designing a whole new generation of notes."
Asked when the new notes will enter circulation, Phillips said: "We're working hard now on all the very large number of things we need to progress. It does take time. So, we're designing, we'll be testing, we then need to print literally billions of these things. So, it'll be around the end of or the turn of the decade before they appear in your hand."
