Thanks so much for your replies and for sharing your experiences/ideas.

Well, I’ve done it, I’ve cleaned them out. But I’ve recorded all the amounts so we know who owns what. DH and I will have a think about exactly what we want to set up for them and when. I figure we’ve got a few years thinking time before they really understand how money works and we’ll have something organised before then. In the meantime their money is working hard for us as a family reducing our mortgage.

DH is absolutely adamant that we will not be doing what our parents did for both of us (and what we had been previously doing for them) just chucking it all in an account. He reckons that by the time they’re old enough to use it, inflation will have wiped it out.