> What about people abroad who only visit England every few years and have some paper notes on them still?

One, this is far from a forefront constituency for the Bank of England. Two, the BoE (in fact, most countries) have a long history of replacing notes [1]. This is expected behavior. Three, I think the BoE will keep exchanging notes that are no longer legal tender indefinitely; this is just for their transactional use and exchangeability at a bank.

[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/withdrawn-banknote...

The article explains how to redeem them by mail. The form is here:

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/banknotes/...

It includes instructions for people outside the UK.

In most countries this is pretty normal. I don’t use more than $50 usd equivalent of cash in a year and haven’t got the last 10 or so. But if there is a major crisis where payment systems don’t work I still want to keep cash on hand. I have to rotate the cash in that little emergency stash every few years just like I rotate the cans of food for one week I keep there.

I have had large denomination bank notes given to me for birthdays become non legal many times over the year. Luckily you can exchange them at the central bank for many years after they stop being usable in stores.

The concept of money just working for 20 years or so, and the knowledge that a bill put in a drawer risks being unusable without exchanging in the central bank in just a few years and completely worthless some years after that, is entirely natural to me.

Then you have an excuse to visit the BoE, which has a very nice museum which is worth seeing anyway.

You can spend them anywhere other than the bank.