Prohibited and restricted items

Most parcels are unremarkable. A few contain something a parcel network cannot legally or safely carry, and the sender rarely knows it. This page is written for the moment before you buy the label, while the box is still open and there is still a decision to make.

1. Why this list exists

A parcel does not travel on its own. It is tipped onto a belt, read by a scanner, slid down a chute, stacked in a cage with several hundred others, driven overnight and, on some routes, flown. Something that is harmless on a shelf behaves differently in that environment: a pressurised can heats up, a battery shorts against a set of keys, a bottle of thinners leaks into the parcels below it. The rules on this page exist because of what happens to the parcels either side of yours, and to the people handling them.

There is also a legal layer. Carriage of dangerous goods is regulated by road and more tightly still by air, and a carrier that unknowingly accepts an undeclared dangerous good is in breach of those rules. That is why an undeclared item is treated as a serious matter rather than an honest mistake, even when it plainly was one.

And there is our position in the middle. We are a reseller: we buy carriage from the carrier in our own name and sell it on to you. When something in a parcel causes a problem, the carrier bills us, and we have no way to absorb that on your behalf. We also never see your parcel. Nothing in our platform can tell what is in a box, so the check has to happen where the box is, which is with you.

2. Items no carrier will take

Nothing in this section may be sent on any service we resell, to any destination, at any price. Some of it is a criminal offence to post; the rest is refused by every network we buy from. There is no version of these that becomes acceptable if it is well packed or the parcel is small.

• Explosives, fireworks and flares

  Fireworks, sparklers, flares, detonators, blank cartridges and anything else designed to burn fast or go off. Refused whether it is new, used or believed to be spent.

• Firearms, ammunition and weapons

  Live and blank ammunition, primers and propellant, firearms and their component parts, air weapons, imitation and deactivated firearms, and offensive weapons such as flick knives and knuckledusters.

• Corrosives and reactive chemicals

  Acids and alkalis, drain and oven cleaner, mercury, wet-cell and lead-acid batteries, and anything that will eat through a box, a cage, or the parcel underneath it.

• Toxic and infectious substances

  Poisons, concentrated pesticides and herbicides, biological and diagnostic samples, and clinical or contaminated waste. Moving these lawfully needs a specialist operator with declarations and trained handlers.

• Illegal drugs and psychoactive substances

  Controlled drugs, their precursors, psychoactive substances and equipment intended for producing or administering them. Sending them is a criminal offence, and the parcel goes to the police rather than back to you.

• Cash, bullion and bearer instruments

  Bank notes and coins in currency, uncrossed cheques, travellers’ cheques, bearer bonds, loaded prepaid cards, bullion and loose precious stones. In short, anything that spends like cash if it falls out of the box.

• Live animals

  Any living creature, including insects, fish, invertebrates and eggs under incubation. A parcel network has no ventilation, no temperature control and no timetable a living animal can depend on.

• Human remains

  Bodies, body parts and organs. Cremated remains are a special case: a small number of postal services accept them under strict conditions and everything else refuses them, so ask us before you buy a label rather than assuming.

• Counterfeit and illicit goods

  Fakes, unauthorised replicas, pirated media and anything infringing a trade mark or copyright. Also goods breaching sanctions or an export ban, ivory and other CITES-protected material, and untaxed alcohol or tobacco.

• Unpackaged sharps and clinical waste

  Used needles, syringes, lancets, scalpel blades and contaminated dressings. Sharps injure the people who handle parcels, which is why this one is refused even in small quantities. New, sterile items sealed in retail packaging are ordinary goods.

Several of these can be moved perfectly legally by specialist operators, under a dangerous goods contract, with declarations, trained packers and marked packaging. That is a different trade from ours. We do not sell a dangerous goods service, and no service in our quote list accepts goods that need a transport declaration, so a supplier who ships something under their own special arrangement tells you nothing about what you can buy here.

3. Restricted items and their conditions

These are not banned outright. They are carried when a condition is met, and the conditions vary by carrier, by service and by destination. Read the condition as the important half: an item sent without it is treated exactly like a prohibited one, and the fact that the category is generally allowed will not help.

• Lithium batteries, loose or in devices

  The most common reason an otherwise ordinary parcel is refused. Phones, laptops, power banks, e-bikes, toys and cordless tools all count. A loose cell or power bank is treated far more strictly than a battery installed in the equipment it powers, and damaged, swollen or recalled batteries are never accepted.

  Typically needs: The battery inside the equipment, terminals protected against short circuit, the device switched off and packed so it cannot move, and a watt-hour rating within the limit for that service.

• Aerosols and flammable liquids

  Deodorant, dry shampoo, air freshener, spray paint, lighter refills, camping gas and pressurised cleaning products. Several networks refuse the category outright; those that take some of it take only small retail quantities.

  Typically needs: A road service rather than an air one, retail-sized containers within the carrier’s quantity limit, valves protected, and the parcel packed upright with cushioning.

• Alcohol

  Frequently carried on domestic services and refused on many international ones. Duty status matters as much as the bottle: alcohol on which UK duty has not been paid must not be moved this way at all.

  Typically needs: A strength and volume the service accepts, purpose-made bottle packaging, an age-checked delivery where the carrier requires one, and duty already accounted for.

• Tobacco, vapes and nicotine

  Heavily restricted and becoming more so. A vape is two problems in one parcel, a lithium battery and a nicotine liquid, and several networks now refuse vaping products entirely. Tobacco crossing a border is an excise matter before it is a shipping one.

  Typically needs: A carrier that says in writing that it accepts the category, a domestic route, age-checked delivery, and nothing part-used or leaking.

• Perfume, aftershave and nail varnish

  Small bottles, but flammable liquids in transport terms whatever the shop shelf suggests. Hairspray, hand sanitiser and some cosmetics fall the same way.

  Typically needs: A road service rather than an air one, quantity within the limit that service sets, and leakproof packaging that survives being dropped.

• Paint, adhesives and solvents

  Water-based emulsion is normally ordinary cargo. Solvent-based paint, varnish, thinners, wood treatment and strong adhesives are flammable goods and are not.

  Typically needs: A look at the product’s safety data sheet before you book. Section 14 tells you whether it is regulated for transport, which is the only answer that matters here.

• Strong magnets

  Neodymium magnets in speakers, motors, tools and toys. A magnetic field escaping the box can affect aircraft instruments and can confuse automated sorting equipment.

  Typically needs: Shielding, keepers fitted where the magnet takes them, and a field strength under the carrier’s limit measured at the distance it specifies.

• Dry ice

  A dangerous good in its own right. It sublimes into carbon dioxide, so a sealed parcel builds pressure and a loaded trailer becomes a space nobody can safely open.

  Typically needs: A service that accepts it at all, which most standard parcel services do not, plus vented packaging, the net weight declared and the package marked.

• High-value items

  Jewellery, watches, phones, laptops, gift cards and designer goods travel perfectly well. The problem is what you recover if they do not arrive: carrier compensation is capped well below the value of a full box of them, and some carriers exclude the category from cover altogether.

  Typically needs: The value declared honestly, cover bought to the level the service allows, and a realistic view of the cap. Splitting a consignment across several parcels does not raise it.

• Fragile items

  Glass, ceramics, framed pictures, screens and anything hollow. Parcel networks are automated: the box will be slid down a chute, stacked and driven through the night. A fragile sticker changes none of that.

  Typically needs: Double-boxing with cushioning on every face and nothing touching the outer wall, plus the knowledge that damage to fragile goods is excluded from cover on most services however well you pack it.

• Food and perishables

  Ambient, sealed, non-perishable food is generally straightforward. Chilled, frozen and fresh food is not: nothing we resell is temperature controlled, and a parcel delayed by a day is a parcel that arrives warm.

  Typically needs: A shelf life comfortably longer than the transit time, leakproof packaging, and no expectation of compensation for spoilage. Going abroad adds import rules that refuse most food outright.

• Plants, seeds and soil

  Live plants, bulbs, cuttings, seeds and anything with soil on it are controlled to keep pests and disease out of a country’s agriculture. Soil is banned into many destinations regardless of what is growing in it.

  Typically needs: A phytosanitary certificate for most cross-border movements, bare-rooted stock rather than potted, and a check of the destination’s rules before the plant is in a box.

A useful shortcut for the whole section: look at the retail packaging. If it carries a hazard diamond, or the words flammable, corrosive, toxic, oxidising or pressurised, the item is regulated for transport and you need the carrier’s written position before you buy a label rather than after.

4. Limits differ by carrier and by service

There is no single national rule. The four networks we resell publish four different lists, each carrier varies its own rules between services, and every list changes without notice. A few distinctions do most of the work:

• Road and air are different regimes. Air is far stricter, and a domestic service can still include an air leg — Northern Ireland, the Scottish islands, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands often fly. A parcel that is fine on a mainland road route may be refused for the same contents to an island postcode.
• One carrier is not one rule set. An express service and an economy service from the same carrier can take different views of the same item, and a service that hands over to a partner network abroad inherits that partner’s restrictions too.
• The destination decides as much as the carrier. An item that moves freely within the UK can be prohibited on import a few hundred miles away.
• The carrier’s published list binds the parcel. This page is a summary we maintain by hand and it can lag behind a change. Where the two disagree, the carrier’s list is the one that decides what happens to your box.

One thing worth being blunt about: a successful purchase is not approval of the contents. Quotes are priced from the weight, the dimensions and the addresses you enter, and no part of the process inspects what is inside. If you buy a label for a prohibited item, the platform will sell it to you and the carrier will refuse the parcel.

If you are unsure which list applies, ask us. We will tell you which carrier and service you are looking at and point you to the prohibited items list they publish for it, which is the document that actually governs your shipment.

5. Sending abroad and customs

Sending abroad adds a second set of rules on top of the carrier’s: what the destination country allows in, and what the United Kingdom allows out. They are not intuitive, they are specific to the country, and ordinary goods are caught by them all the time. Categories that commonly need a check before despatch include food and drink, plants and seeds, cosmetics, medicines and supplements, alcohol and tobacco, drones and radio equipment, knives and tools, second-hand clothing, and anything made from an animal.

Export controls and sanctions apply whatever the parcel is worth. A low-value shipment to a sanctioned party or a controlled end use is still a breach, and that is your responsibility as the exporter rather than the carrier’s.

The customs declaration matters more than most senders expect. Describe the goods specifically: “gift”, “sample” or “goods” is not a description and gets parcels held. Say what the item is, what it is made of, what it is worth, where it was made, and give a commodity code where the service asks for one. Under-declaring the value to reduce duty is fraud, and it also caps what can be claimed if the parcel is lost.

Duties and import taxes are normally payable by the recipient unless you have bought a service that says otherwise. An unexpected charge is one of the most common reasons a parcel is refused abroad, and a refused parcel is returned at your cost or destroyed. We do not give customs or tax advice; where the treatment matters commercially, take it from someone qualified to give it.

6. If a prohibited item is found in the network

Prohibited items are usually found by X-ray at a hub, by a leak or a smell, when a damaged parcel is opened to be repacked, or during an inspection by the authorities. Once that happens the shipment is out of both your hands and ours.

• The carrier may hold the parcel, open it, return it to you at your cost, destroy it without returning it, or hand it to the police or Border Force. Which of those happens is the carrier’s decision, and it is not one we can appeal on your behalf.
• No compensation is payable, for the contents or for the carriage you bought. Cover is void the moment a parcel contains something the service excludes, however the loss actually occurred.
• Costs are passed on at what the carrier charges us. That can include fines, cleaning, disposal, decontamination, the cost of a vehicle taken out of service, and the carrier’s own handling charge.
• Those costs reach us after the event, as an adjustment. We record them against the shipment and itemise them on your statement, and an adjustment can take a balance below zero, because the carrier has already billed us and pretending otherwise would hide a real debt.
• We may suspend the account. A suspended account can still sign in, read its history and settle what it owes, but cannot buy labels or use the API. Deliberate or repeated breaches lead to closure, and serious matters are reported to the authorities.

If you think a parcel has gone into the network with something in it that should not be there, tell us straight away with the tracking number, before anyone finds it. A shipment caught early can sometimes be intercepted and returned. Once it is on a trailer or an aircraft, nobody can do anything except wait.

7. How to check before you send

Two minutes at the bench is cheaper than a destroyed parcel and a recharge. In order:

1. Write down what is actually in the box, including the things inside other things: the battery in the toy, the aerosol in the gift set, the lighter left in a coat pocket, the half-used bottle in a returned order.
2. Look at the retail packaging for a hazard diamond or a warning word. If the product has a safety data sheet, section 14 tells you whether it is regulated for transport, which is the question you are actually asking.
3. Check the prohibited items list for the service you intend to buy, not for the carrier in general. Services differ, and the difference is usually whether the route flies.
4. If the item is restricted rather than banned, check the condition against your parcel: quantity, packaging, destination and route. Meeting three conditions out of four is not meeting them.
5. Pack for an automated network rather than for a shelf, and describe the contents honestly on the label and on any customs declaration.
6. If you are still unsure, do not buy the label. Ask us first, and if the answer is no, a specialist dangerous goods courier exists precisely for that parcel.

Where this page and a carrier’s own list disagree, the carrier is right. Where this page is silent, that silence is not permission. And like our terms and our privacy notice, this document is a draft pending legal review — we would rather publish it now, plainly, than leave you guessing until launch.