Catalogue description Savings Certificate Office and Division

Savings Certificates

The Chancellor of the Exchequer presented proposals for additional vehicles for savers on 15 November 1915. The first savings certificates came on sale on 21 February 1916. Savings certificates were first introduced on 19 February 1916 as a wartime measure on the recommendation of a Committee set up by the Government to enquire into the possibility of attracting the savings of the small investor. They started as War Savings Certificates with a purchase price of 15s 6d and their value increased to £1 6s after 10 years, representing compound interest at the rate of over 5 percent. By the end of the 1914-1918 war, £207 million had been raised by their sale and their popularity had won a permanent place in the field of investment. On 22 November 1920 their name was changed to National Savings Certificates.

Through the years as it became necessary to change the interest rate, fresh issues of the certificates were placed on sale and in 1932 there was a Conversion Issue in exchange for certificates of the First Issue. There has never been any obligation on the holder to encash his certificates and certificates from 1916 can still be, and are, held

The Savings Certificate Office

The Savings Certificate Office was originally formed in the Money Order Department of the Post Office at Holloway in 1916. From February 1943, it came under the control of the Post Office Savings Department (POSD). Large sections of work and the staff were evacuated to Morecambe during 1939 and 1940; almost all had returned to London (Manor Gardens and Somerset Street) by late 1947. Beginning in June 1963 the entire Office was dispersed to Durham City and the Office was moved to a new building in Durham in the period 1963 to 1970.

In 1969 responsibility for the Office passed to the newly-created Department for National Savings when, under the terms of the Post Office Act of that year, the Post Office became a public corporation.