DOZENS of stores in Swindon are gearing up to accept euros following the continental shift to a single currency in the New Year.

Euro-friendly companies with branches in the town include Marks and Spencer, Dixons, Boots, Virgin, House of Fraser and WH Smith, which has its head office in Swindon.

Marks and Spencer service manager Di Blake explained that the tills at the Swindon branch will soon be re-programmed to accept the new currency and staff will be trained to deal with euros.

"We are still awaiting final details from our head office on how to treat the euro, but customers will certainly be able to use the currency in our stores."

But the costs involved in altering systems to accept the currency mean that many smaller businesses will be slower to embrace the change.

Dan Stabbins, who has run the Old Town Hardware shop in Wood Street for two years, explained: "At the moment, we are planning only to accept the pound over the counter. As a small business, it makes sense to wait and see what happens. If it becomes a case that the larger stores are accepting the new currency and more people start using it, then we will obviously review the situation.

"One thing I am looking at is opening an account in euros because we buy a lot of our stock from overseas."

And a store manager at Deacons Jewellers, Old Town, who asked not to be named, said that the firm already carried out some of its trading in euros when dealing with overseas suppliers.

"As far as accepting it over the counter, we have no plans to do so at the moment but we will see how things develop."

The euro effect will also be felt in the town in other ways with plans to convert public telephones to accept euros.

With 13m tourists expected to spend more than £4 billion in Britain next year, British retailers are keen to court the euro-spending visitors. And high street banks have already said they will provide euro accounts to individuals and business customers. Barclays, Alliance and Leicester and Abbey National already do so.

The growing acceptance of the euro by high street stores is likely to become a key message in the Prime Minister's campaign to prepare the country for a referendum on the issue.

The growing acceptance of the currency, which has become known as euro-creep, follows two pro-European speeches by Tony Blair in which he revealed the new optimism within Downing Street over Britain's chances of entering a single currency.

Although the UK opted out of the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union in 1999, chancellor Gordon Brown has said that the Government and business should prepare the ground to join the single currency, should it wish to, in the next Parliament.

The euro, which is currently worth 62p, was adopted by 11 member states from January 1, 1999 and Greece became the 12th to adopt the euro on January 1, 2001.

But it has taken until now to launch the currency, to allow enough of it to be printed and minted.

The creation of the euro is a huge operation involving an initial print of 14.5 billion banknotes and 50 billion coins.

Piled one on top of the other, the coins would reach a height of 78,870km, nearly 50,000 miles.

Placed end to end, the banknotes would cover a distance of 1.9 million km (30.4 million miles), or five times the distance between the earth and the moon.

Of the banknotes, 10 billion will go into circulation on January 1, 2002 and 4. 5 billion will be kept in reserve.