Researchers investigating climate change have used historical tide gauge measurements from all over the world to investigate the changes in sea level that have occured over the last century or so. A high quality tide gauge record can enable such changes in sea level to be estimated with an acceptable level of uncertainty if several decades of data are used. However, such estimates are a combination of any true sea level variations and any vertical movements of the land at the specific tide gauge. For a tide gauge record to be used to determine the climate related component, it is therefore necessary to correct for the vertical land movement component of the observed change in sea level.In 1990, the IESSG and POL started developing techniques based on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for measuring vertical land movements at tide gauges in the UK. This paper briefly reviews these early developments and shows how they led to the establishment of continuous GPS (CGPS) stations at a number of tide gauges. The paper then goes on to discuss the use of absolute gravity (AG), as an independent technique for measuring vertical land movements at tide gauges. The most recent results, from CGPS time series dating back to 1997 and AG time series dating back to 1995/6, are then used to demonstrate the complementarity of these two techniques and their potential for providing site-specific estimates of vertical land movements at tide gauges in the UK.