Our Age Verification service

As you may be aware, certain provisions of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 (OWA) will come into force shortly. One of the main outcomes of the OWA is to prohibit the online sale and then delivery of blades to people under 18 years of age. Under the OWA, both a seller who sells certain bladed items remotely and the courier company delivering such blades will, in certain circumstances, be criminally liable if those bladed items are delivered into the hands of an individual who is under 18 years old. Full details about the new legislation can be found here . 

In response to this new legislation, and to help our customers to continue to send parcels that contain certain bladed items (for example, knives, blades or axes), we are launching a new bespoke Age Verification service. This will include a number of features designed to help ensure these bladed items will be delivered into the hands of someone who is 18 or over. 

If you currently send any bladed items falling within the scope of OWA, for you to continue to send them through us, you will need to discuss our Age Verification service with your Account Manager prior to sending any further bladed items. We will be able to advise you of the details of the service, how it works and what is required to set the service up.

Below are some features of this service: 

• all products requiring Age Verification must be clearly identified and advised to us at the time of despatch;
• we will adopt the Challenge 25 approach to conduct Age Verification checks whenever we deliver such items; and
• we will always check ID (passport or driving licence) for anyone who we feel is under 25 years of age;

Please note that from the 1st November 2019 we will be banning the sending of blades across the UK network, unless the Age Verification service is used.

Please find attached the Age Verification T&Cs here

If the new legislation affects your business, and if you have not already done so, please speak to your Account Manager for more details. We will be happy to discuss the new service with you.