Safer Internet Day, recognised annually, is the UK’s largest initiative for promoting online safety.
Online safety often brings to mind issues like online scams, deepfakes, underage access to social media, or pornography. In the context of purchases, many associate online safety with secure transactions and data privacy. However, it extends further. What happens once the purchased item reaches your doorstep? How are safety measures ensured at that stage?
This year’s Safer Internet Day presents an opportunity to address compliance challenges in online retail and delivery services. With the increasing reliance on home deliveries, ensuring robust compliance standards is more critical than ever.
Serve Legal’s 2023 audit data showed a significant difference in age verification compliance between in-store and home delivery services for supermarket clients. Home deliveries lagged 22% behind in-store compliance. This gap persisted into 2024, with home delivery compliance remaining unchanged, while in-store compliance increased to 81%, widening the gap to 24%.
This growing disparity underscores the difficulty retailers face in ensuring consistent compliance across all sales channels, particularly for home deliveries. The risks associated with these compliance gaps, especially for age-restricted products, require immediate attention.
Several factors could contribute to lower compliance rates in home deliveries for supermarkets:
The rapid delivery sector faces even greater challenges, with average pass rates consistently fluctuating between 40-50% over the past five years. Many rapid delivery providers rely on freelance or self-employed drivers who work flexibly and may not receive the same compliance training as contracted in-store staff.
Additionally, rapid delivery providers often deliver produce from a number of retailers, including forecourts, restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores. This operational complexity creates ambiguity about who holds ultimate responsibility for ensuring age verification at the point of delivery. Such grey areas can lead to disputes between retailers and couriers, especially as legislation tightens around age-restricted sales compliance.
At Serve Legal, we take pride in collaborating with many of the UK’s leading rapid delivery providers, who are committed to enhancing their compliance standards through regular monthly audit programmes.
Legislation is evolving to address these compliance challenges. Following a fatal knife attack in Southport in 2024, after a 17 year old was able to purchase a knife online, the UK Government has proposed stricter measures for online knife sales. Key elements of the Crime and Policing Bill, expected this spring, include:
These measures represent significant progress but underscore the urgent need for delivery providers to implement robust compliance processes.
To meet these new standards and ensure public safety, retailers must:
This Safer Internet Day, Serve Legal is reaffirming its commitment to supporting retailers in overcoming compliance challenges. As a leader in compliance testing, we aim to bridge the gap between online safety and real-world accountability, ensuring every transaction—whether online or on the doorstep—meets the highest safety standards. In doing so, we hope to build an ethos that keeps customers, colleagues, communities and businesses safe from the effects of non-compliance.