Englishmum

As mentioned before, you just need to open a building society account offshore ie. in the Channel Isles or the Isle of Man. They operate offshore as they're outside the jurisdiction of the Inland Revenue so UK mainland residents aren't eligible to operate offshore accounts; they're meant for overseas residents only. However, they still have to check that new accounts aren't being opened by terrorists or international money launderers, but it's a simple process to open offshore accounts. It is safe to deposit money in a UK offshore account, as your money is protected to a large degree by the UK govt. You need to be careful if opening an account say, in the Cayman Islands.

When we left England we just transferred our Britannia BS savings account to Britannia International in the IoM, and our Lloyds TSB current account to their offshore branch, also in the IoM.

If one moves back to the UK mainland, then the accounts are transferred to a local British branch of ones choice of the 'parent' bank or building society.

Here is a list of some of the UK offshore building societies (just scroll down the page) and then just google them eg. Alliance & Leicester + offshore to get to their website:

http://www.expatinvestor.com/Pages/G...certainty.html

Types of savings accounts:

http://www.expatinvestor.com/Pages/G...f_account.html