Age Verified Delivery for Knives and Bladed Items

Since July 2017, the UK Government has been preparing to change the way in which knives or bladed items can be bought online and delivered to your home address.

For as long as Kotura has been in existence, the law has required us to verify your age when you buy a knife online. That’s still the case, but the new law goes a step further. From 6th April 2022, the law makes it an offence to deliver a knife to anyone under 18, at a residential address.

The law in question is the 2019 Offensive Weapons Act - you can check that out at this link. Kitchen products are considered under this Act.

We are writing this update to you all as we have had notification in recent days that it is “commenced” (started) on 6th April 2022. Therefore we need to change how we manage these deliveries.

The purpose of the new law is to ensure that knives can only be bought and delivered to adults. This means that any knife or bladed item which we send to you will have to be handed to an adult - it will be against the law to leave your parcel unaccompanied, next to the bins, or behind the back gate for example. Here at Kotura we support responsible knife ownership, so of course, we’ll be complying with the new law.

What does it mean for my order?

Firstly, don’t worry, you’ll still be able to order from Kotura as normal, and benefit from our 5* customer service and after sales support. Your knife orders will have to be delivered to an adult. We’re fortunate that we have excellent working relationships with all our carriers - Royal Mail, DPD and UPS. Each of these offer age-verified delivery, but none of them offer it for free. We’ve done the maths, and absorbed some of the costs ourselves, but we can’t afford to offer completely free-of-charge age verified delivery.

When you come to check out on Kotura.uk, you’ll see that orders containing knives or bladed items will be automatically sent through age-verified shipping channels. Each age-verified order will now attract a premium of £2 on top of the normal delivery charge. For this, you’ll receive a fully-tracked delivery to your door, handed to an adult at your chosen address.

With the Kotura Age-Verified Delivery service, you can be confident that your purchase complies with UK law and supports responsible knife ownership

As an Employee-Owned Trust, each of us here at Kotura is a part-owner of our company. We’re very grateful for your continued custom, and look forward to serving you into the future.