Banks don't change money nowadays

Well, who knew? I assumed that banks still changed coins for other coins ( part of what they are for?)

A couple of years ago we had some friends come to stay with us for a week or so. They brought some spending money in UK notes intending to exchange as they needed it and their Euros had been spent. They could not get a French bank to change them. Eventually I went with him and we tried another couple of banks - then we went to La Poste which had a Bureau de Change sign and also where we bank. That was going to be a bit easier but as soon as I showed my bank card it was simple. They asked could they use my name and address and flagged up my details and did the exchange for him.
As you say - a paper trail.

H often changes coins in our Nat West branch. He can't do it over the counter anymore but uses the machine like you see in supermarkets only difference is it's free in the bank.

They do change them - it's just that you have to pay them in and take the new ones out. I had to do this recently with some old £5 notes - they do need a paper trail

I worked in a bank and we couldn't even swap cash between tills with our colleagues without a paper trail . Even to change 5 pence into 1p coins . There has to be something recorded to check against at the end of the day when cashing up .

The ' new ' coins will have arrived into the bank with paperwork to cover them , therefore a record needs to be created to pass them out though the tills / accounting system too . It would be ridiculous to have allow cash to go in and out of a bank unrecorded .
You could never close off accurately daily , and just as importantly the bank teller who had handled the transaction wouldn't be recorded either . Each teller is 100% responsible for their own tills .

I would imagine that it was always that way but you could go into a bank and change old coins for new and most places had a bureau de change - sometimes you needed to order the currency ahead of time. The tellers had the paperwork to show what they had done. I notice that when I pay a cheque over the counter they clip the form I signed to the cheque.

Sometimes I want to get change for a £20 note but I now have to show my cash card to prove that I have an account with that bank before I can get the change. Once I went to the building society with a £20 note and had to pay it in and take it out again.

NotaGran - Dh's thinking was that the bank started off with 50 x £1 coins and if they'd exchanged with him then they would still have 50 x £1 coins. I presume where that thought breaks down is that the bank would have 50 different style coins that they would then take out of circulation.

It wasn't always that way in the banks I worked in - in the very dim past, of course.

That's it Katek . Also as a teller you can't open the till without a transaction being recorded so couldn't physically get the coins out .
In addition it needs 2 people to get the cash out of the safe , one to sign the paperwork for their till and one to check and witness the correct amount has been removed .
If cash is simply handed over there is no record that the correct amount has been given out .

I didn't know about the £1 coins!! We are going to England next week, we must get rid of our old coins as we are going again at Christmas and don't want to get caught out!!