Sell knives and bladed tools online in the UK: age checks and the delivery rules

This guide is for anyone selling knives or bladed tools online in the UK: cutlers, kitchen shops, craft and garden tool dealers, makers posting a few blades a month. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, a UK ecommerce platform, so weigh the Orbit parts accordingly. The law, the couriers’ rules and the marketplaces’ rules were read at their source on 9 November 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

Can you sell knives online in the UK?

Yes, to adults, including by post. The law sorts products into three groups.

• Banned items cannot be sold: flick knives, butterfly knives, zombie-style knives and machetes, ninja swords, curved swords of 50cm or over, push daggers and the rest of the list on gov.uk (read 9 November 2026).
• Bladed articles are any knife, knife blade or razor blade, any axe, and any other bladed or sharply pointed article made or adapted for causing injury. None may be sold to anyone under 18 (Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 141A). Exempt: a non-locking folding pocket knife with a cutting edge of three inches or less, and razor blades permanently in a cartridge with less than 2mm exposed.
• Bladed products carry the delivery rules: an article which is or has a blade and can cause a serious injury which involves cutting the skin (Offensive Weapons Act 2019, section 41). The Home Office guidance says ordinary cutlery, small utility knives and pizza cutters are unlikely to count; a chef’s knife, a bread knife or a cleaver clearly does.

HMRC registration and VAT work as for any shop: see do you need to register a business to sell online.

What does the law require when you sell a knife remotely?

Section 141A’s defence is that you took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence. Where you and the buyer are not in each other’s presence, section 141B (in force in England and Wales since 6 April 2022) says you cannot rely on that defence unless, as a minimum, you prove four conditions:

1. Condition A. You ran a system for checking that buyers by that method were not under 18, and it was likely to prevent under-18s from buying.
2. Condition B. When dispatched, the package was clearly marked as containing a bladed or sharply pointed article for delivery only into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
3. Condition C. You took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure delivery into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
4. Condition D. You did not deliver the package, or arrange its delivery, to a locker.

What counts as an age check system

The Home Office statutory guidance (updated 27 July 2022, read 9 November 2026) leaves the choice of system to the seller, with the courts as final judge of whether it is adequate. In the government’s view a box the buyer ticks, details typed with no further check, or a payment method that implies an age but does not verify it would not be sufficient. Use a verification service that checks the buyer against records or a document before dispatch, and log each check against the order. The Condition B marking goes on the parcel itself, not on the courier’s handheld device.

What the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will change

Section 32 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 rewrites Condition A for England and Wales. Before the sale the seller must obtain a copy of a passport or UK driving licence and a photograph of the buyer, or take other steps set out in regulations. The parcel must go into the buyer’s own hands. Section 35 makes the person at the door check photo ID and adds offences for collection points. Section 42 adds a duty to report bulk remote sales (six or more bladed articles to one buyer or home within 30 days), and section 29 raises the maximum penalty for selling to an under-18 to two years’ imprisonment (government factsheet, 30 September 2026). None of it applied on 9 November 2026: legislation.gov.uk marks each section prospective and “not in force at Royal Assent”, with no commencement regulations yet.

Can you deliver knives to a home address?

Section 38 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 (in force in England and Wales since 6 April 2022) makes it an offence for a seller who sold a bladed product remotely to deliver it, or arrange its delivery, to residential premises, meaning premises used solely for residential purposes, or to a locker. Premises a business is carried on from, including a home a business trades from, are not residential. The penalty is imprisonment, a fine or both.

Section 40 provides defences. The one a shop relies on daily is this: where you arrange delivery through a courier, it is a defence to prove that the arrangement required the courier to have procedures likely to ensure bladed products delivered to homes are handed to a person aged 18 or over. You must also prove that you took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence over that parcel. Other defences cover bespoke products and sales for combat sports or historical re-enactment. Section 39 adds the courier’s own offence: delivering a bladed product to a home other than into the hands of someone aged 18 or over.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland’s version of section 141A covers hire as well as sale and lets a knife designed for domestic use be sold face to face to someone aged 16 or over, but not remotely: section 141C (in force since 1 January 2021) sets the same four conditions. Sections 38 to 42 have applied in Scotland since 28 June 2022, and a courier’s defence there rests on having been shown a passport, an EU photocard driving licence or another document prescribed by Scottish Ministers (Scottish Government statutory guidance, 24 March 2022). Section 141A does not extend to Northern Ireland, and legislation.gov.uk showed no commencement of sections 38 to 42 there on 9 November 2026: ask the Trading Standards Service first.

Which couriers carry knives, and what happens at the door?

Royal Mail keeps two lists. Prohibited and never carried: hunting, combat and survival knives, machetes, swords, throwing knives, stiletto knives, battle axes, and open or folding razors. Restricted: cutlery and bread knives, trade and hobby knives, butcher knives, felling axes and razor blades, sent only on Royal Mail Tracked with Age Verification, booked through Click & Drop, for UK addresses, once Royal Mail has accepted your application (Royal Mail business customer guidelines, read 9 November 2026). At the door the postie asks the recipient’s year of birth and, if they appear under 25, for identification (Royal Mail Age Verification).

DPD is the opposite case. Its Standard Terms and Conditions of Carriage (effective 11 November 2026, read 9 November 2026) say “the Company will not carry out any age verification upon delivery, unless required to do so by any applicable laws, and it is the Customer’s responsibility to ensure sufficient age verification checks” (DPD terms, PDF). Its prohibited goods list includes “bladed products or articles”, accepted only when DPD agrees in writing. Retailers who describe DPD ID checks on their own pages need such an agreement; get yours in writing, because that requirement is your section 40 defence. Ordinary parcel prices are compared in Royal Mail or a courier.

Packaging, marketplaces, insurance and your product pages

Marketplaces. eBay’s UK knives policy (read 9 November 2026) says knives and other bladed products are generally prohibited and bans most kitchen, carving and cake knives, pocket and folding knives, multi-tools and craft knives. It allows a short list of exceptions only with an 18-plus confirmation at checkout, UK-held stock and in-person delivery, never to a collection point, PO box or locker. Amazon keeps its rules for sellers of bladed products inside Seller Central behind the seller login. eBay and your own shop covers running a marketplace alongside your site for accessories and clearance.

Packaging, insurance and words. Fit a blade guard on the edge, hold the knife so it cannot cut its way out, and put the Condition B marking on the outside of the box. Ask a broker about product and public liability cover. On the product page say clearly that the item is age-restricted, describe the delivery (an age check at the door, no safe place, no lockers), and present each knife as a tool, never a weapon.

Setting up a knife shop on Orbit

Products and custom fields. Each knife is a physical product, lengths of one pattern are variants with their own prices, and every product carries a weight and a shipping class. Custom fields hold the facts a knife buyer reads first: blade length as a decimal with a minimum and maximum, steel as a pick-one list so every alloy has one spelling, hardness in HRC, and a file field for the care sheet. A storefront switch per field shows the specification on the product page through the Custom Field element and keeps supplier codes private.

The age gate. Settings carry a storefront age gate, off by default: you set the minimum age (18 by default), a yes-or-no question or a date of birth, how many days a successful answer is remembered on the visitor’s device (30 by default), and every line of its wording. Orbit calls it self-declared (security and compliance): it states the rule to every visitor before they browse. The verification service you run before dispatch does the legal work for Condition A and the courier’s check at the door does it for delivery, so say so in the gate’s wording.

Delivery. Give the blades a shipping class of their own with a checkout label such as “Age check at the door (18+)”: the label heads the knives’ delivery at checkout and on the order emails, and shoppers never see the class name. Add a method named for the courier service you have been accepted onto, such as “Royal Mail Tracked 48 with Age Verification”, and price it for that class. The advanced shipping rules guide covers conditions on the shipping class and the rate tester. Royal Mail books Age Verification through Click & Drop, so buy those labels there and mark the order fulfilled.

Your first ten orders: five habits

1. Place two test orders, one to a home and one to a business address, and check the age-checked method appears on the knives alone.
2. Verify the buyer’s age before dispatch and save the result against the order.
3. Put the 18-plus marking on the outer box and book the age-verified service with every safe-place, neighbour and locker option off.
4. If a parcel comes back because nobody could prove their age, re-deliver by the same route or refund. Never switch to an ordinary service.
5. Keep one file per order (check, label, tracking, proof of handover), watch for six or more knives to one buyer in 30 days, and follow the ordinary returns rules in what UK law actually requires.

Where Orbit fits

Everything in the set-up section runs on every Orbit plan, from Solo at £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly). That covers physical products with variants and custom fields, the self-declared age gate, shipping zones, classes, methods and delivery estimates that stamp a ship-by date on every order, labels from Royal Mail, Evri, DPD, Yodel, Parcelforce, FedEx UK and GlobalPost bought from the order, the review queue and gift cards. The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for a kitchen and cutlery shop and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard.

Read next: selling home-brew kits and alcohol online and selling toys online and the safety rules.

Questions people ask about selling knives online

Is it legal to sell knives online in the UK?

Yes, to adults. Selling a bladed article to anyone under 18 is an offence under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. A remote sale in England and Wales must also meet section 141B: an age check system likely to stop under-18s, a parcel marked for an adult only, reasonable care that an adult receives it, and no lockers.

Can I post a kitchen knife to a customer’s home address?

Only with an arrangement that gets it into an adult’s hands. Section 38 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 makes delivering a bladed product to a home, or a locker, an offence after a remote sale; the section 40 defence is a courier arrangement requiring an 18-plus handover plus your own reasonable precautions. Business addresses are outside the rule.

Is an “I am over 18” tick box enough for selling knives online?

No. The Home Office statutory guidance says a tick box, details typed with no further check, or a payment method that implies an age but does not verify it would not be sufficient. Use a verification service, log each check, and use an age-checked delivery service.

Which couriers will deliver knives in the UK?

Royal Mail carries cutlery, bread, trade, hobby and butcher knives, felling axes and razor blades only on its Tracked service with Age Verification, booked through Click & Drop, and refuses hunting and combat knives, machetes, swords and open razors. DPD’s terms say it does no age verification at delivery unless the law requires it, and list bladed products as prohibited unless agreed in writing.

What does the Crime and Policing Act 2026 change for knife sellers, and is it in force?

It replaces the point-of-sale check with a copy of a passport or driving licence plus a photograph of the buyer, or other steps set by regulations, and requires the person delivering to check photo ID and hand the parcel to the buyer. It raises the maximum penalty for selling to an under-18 to two years’ imprisonment, and requires reports of bulk remote sales. On 9 November 2026 legislation.gov.uk marked each section prospective, with no commencement regulations yet.

The 14-day free trial, no card required, is long enough to set up the products, the age gate and the knives-only delivery method before a customer places an order.