From what I understand their tank doctrines were different. The German tank units were isolated and operated separately from infantry. Often times the German tanks were the spear head that was in turn supported by mechanized infantry. I emphasize mechanized infantry support because although the British had a tank division, they were not as effective as they didn't have infantry support. Lastly, German tanks were equipped with radios and therefore could be more synchronized in attacks.

British doctrine dictated that infantry were to be supported by tanks if you catch the difference. Their role was exploitation while the infantry went about their business. This lead to the development of their heaviest tanks, such as the Churchill. They tended to move slowly to keep with the advancing British infantry and were relatively easy targets for anti-tank rounds. Actual tank destroying was left to specific tank destroyer vehicles such as the British Archer or American M18 Hellcat

A last point I have to make is on the M4 Sherman. Although it was an American made tank, the British did use it in the variant called a firefly which had a larger 17 pound gun. It is classified as a medium tank and as such has thinner armor from 30 - 60 mm by the end of the war in contrast with german heavy tanks which had 120 mm such as the tiger I.

Overall, the British tanks were not made to engage heavy German tanks because their home countries doctrines differed.

Thank you to /u/Springbok87 for pointing out additional details and whoever is reading this should definitely read his response as he has more specific details!

Source: I'm a history undergrad.

Lol, jk, I have real sources:

Frieser, Karl-Heinz (2005). Greenwood, John T., ed. The Blitzkrieg Legend. The 1940 Campaign in the West. Naval Institute Press.

Chris Bishop, The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War Two (2002).

Cheers

An excellent source on this, from a technical point of view, is 'The Great Tank Scandal' by David Fletcher.

British tanks were always rubbish, and even when they were at their best compared to their counterparts, and looked okay on paper, they were hamstrung by fundamental problems like inability to fire high explosive rounds, and lack of reliability.

This was never really dealt with in large part because Churchill, as a conservative prime minister, tended to let tank manufacturers, not soldiers, inform his views about how good the tanks were. Another issue was that in the 1930s the British were genuinely trying hard to avoid war, and their industries were civilian. This meant, for instance, they had no decent tank engine (because such an engine had no application outside tanks), and did not learn to electrically weld tank armour. Their tanks were too small, which led to constant problems as the need for better guns and so on appeared in the middle of their development. A narrow railway gauge in England limited what could be transported by rail.

It is instructive to consider the approach of the Germans- who loved making weapons and who had a militarised society- to the first discovery of the T-34 and KV-1: a delegation representing the ministry, weapons branch, and tank design companies was sent to the front, examined the tanks and talked to the soldiers, and went away with instructions to come up with something quickly (resulting in the Panther about 18 months later). The British couldn't get their 17 pounder gun into a tank of their own until late 1944, the Cromwell only came into service before D-Day, and their first good tank, the Comet, in early 1945. The Churchill was newly-issued to units in Tunisia who were about to come up against the Tiger.

Doctrinally, the British had a number of problems that were compounded greatly by poor high command decisions in the later 1930s.

In the British Army the tanks secured their own separate identity, as the Royal Tank Regiment, very early. Unfortunately, in the austerity of the 1920s and 30s, this meant members of the RTR were busy defending their independence within the army, and getting a share of the military budget, distracting them from developing armoured theory (which they also did with great skill and imagination).

By the mid-1930s the Independent Force and other exercises had proven the future of the tank. Unfortunately, the promotion of armour by enthusiasts such as PCS Hobart had alienated many who stood to lose in a tank-mechanised army, especially the cavalry which had traditionally enjoyed an elite status in the British Army. It was also in the cavalry that resided the most conservative and reactionary elements of the high command.

But seeing the horse actually had no future in warfare and that peacetime would not last forever, in the late 1930s the British set about mechanising their cavalry (and many other) units. In this were the seeds of many of the failures of the Second World War, because cavalry officers were generally speaking militarily inept, devoted little time to solving real military problems. Compared to the RTR men who had resolved the technical problems of building and deploying tanks, controlling them with radio, and combining them with other arms, the cavalry officers had no idea and few of them got much better even after years of warfare. On top of this, the best RTR commanders were sidelined (Hobart) and cavalry officers took over the tanks... and it had been a matter of culture that they hated tanks until only a couple of years before the war.

Another problems was the regimental tradition, especially strong in cavalry and Guards units, which fostered competition between regiments... and a British armoured division would generally include three brigades drawn from different regiments, and each brigade would itself be a mix of battalions (infantry, artillery including anti-tank weapons, and tanks). But there was no real divisional identity, and limited training as a division.

General Claude Auchinlek was one of Britain's best commanders, he was from the (British) Indian Army which had a semi-separate identity and was notably more 'practical' than the home army. He was saddled with incompetent sub-commanders in the desert, and spent much time trying to get them to even talk about tactics in a precise and meaningful way, without using terms like 'swanning'. Time and again these leaders would charge German positions and ignore the need for all-arms co-operation. They would destroy their units and stagger back, unaware of what had gone wrong.

Auchinlek lost his command pretty much entirely due to the ineptitude of those under him, and was replaced by Montgomery. Montgomery's 'genius' was in amassing numbers, having Shermans that could fire a decent HE round, and in battle plans that gave his regimental commanders minimal scope for executing half-baked idiotic plans.

The German panzer division included a Panzer regiment of several tank battalions, and a Panzer grenadier or armoured/motorised infantry regiment also of two or three battalions, and these could be massed as a group, or broken up so a battalion supported another battalion, and so on. This also applied to other services in the division (engineers, artillery, anti-tank artillery, reconnaissance). Always, the overall identity was to the division and units performed well as a group however they were combined.

Now, against this, the British division did not have this ability. An infantry battalion could come from anywhere and be 'dropped' into a armoured division. It might have little ability to fight with the infantry battalions of other brigades in the division, it might not have familiarity with its tank battalion, and so on.

Given enough time together and an imaginative, professional commander, British armoured divisions performed extremely well. The performance of the 11th Armoured Division during Operation Bluecoat is an outstanding example. Its commander, General Roberts, was a RTR man who was promoted due to his skill as a tank commander, but such appointments were exceptional.

A macro issue is that Britain in the 1930s was peace-loving nation determined not to repeat 1914-18. Nazi Germany was a nation where mass worship of uniforms, the military, battles and weapons were normal. World War II reflected this, in that the Germans had the best military but everyone else had better industries and economic management, and that's what counted in the end.