On every parcel delivered to a home. Money back to the streets. Amazon pays an effective rate of around 7% on roughly £32bn of UK revenue. Temu and Shein ship duty-free from China. High streets close, and towns keep paying rates on empty buildings.
It's gone to Parliament.
The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has published the campaign's written evidence to its Revitalising High Streets inquiry. It asks MPs to consider the levy as a recurring income for high streets, and to pilot it in a single combined authority, with Lancashire as a candidate.
- Reference
- RHS0140
- Inquiry
- Revitalising High Streets
- Committee
- Housing, Communities and Local Government
- Published
- 22 October 2026
One pound. On the receipt. Spent where you live.
A simple statutory charge on home delivery that puts the cost of convenience back into the places it hollows out.
£1 per parcel, charged to the retailer at the point of sale and printed on the receipt, the same way VAT is.
Free if you collect. Click-and-collect, a locker, a local shop or a parcel counter: no home delivery, no levy.
Ringfenced by law. The money cannot disappear into general taxation. It goes back to the area the parcel was delivered to: 60% to local transport, 40% to markets, town centres and Business Improvement Districts.
Exempt: prescriptions and medical supplies, disabled and housebound customers, addresses with no collection point nearby, deliveries to businesses, and small sellers below a turnover threshold.
Pound a Parcel
From a letter to Parliament in ten weeks.
Letter to Andy Burnham posted
The campaign starts with an open letter to the Mayor of Greater Manchester setting out the levy, the ringfence and the case for the city region to lead on it.
Lancashire Business View
First coverage. The county's business title runs the case that online giants are under-taxed compared with the traders who pay for the street.
Lancashire Telegraph
The levy leads the Saturday paper, taking the idea from the business pages to readers across East Lancashire.
Lancashire Evening Post
Coverage reaches Preston and central Lancashire, framed around the letter to the Prime Minister and the county figures.
Preston's council leader backs it
Blog Preston reports Cllr Matthew Brown calling the levy "a brilliant idea" he and the Labour Group would be keen to support if it were levied directly on online giants.
Evidence to the HCLG Committee
Written evidence goes to the Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee's Revitalising High Streets inquiry, a week after the deadline.
Late evidence accepted
The committee confirms the submission is in the inquiry's evidence base. The proposal is formally in front of MPs.
Restoring the High Street
The levy is put to policymakers, landlords and town centre managers at a national high street conference.
Labour conference, Centre for Cities
The proposal goes to the Centre for Cities reception at Labour conference, in front of the ministers and advisers who could act on it.
Evidence RHS0140 published
The Commons committee publishes the written evidence on the inquiry record, asking for a pilot in one combined authority with Lancashire as a candidate. Read it
What a pound a parcel adds up to.
All figures are estimates built on published data and are labelled as such. Click a row for the working.
- UK parcels a year, domestic and inbound (Ofcom, 2024)~4bn
- Retail parcels to homes, at a 60% share2.5 to 3bn
- Transport for City Regions settlement, for scale£3.1bn / yr
- Amazon, at ~15% of UK parcel volume (Pitney Bowes)£600m to £800m
- Temu and Shein combined~£1bn
- England's 5p carrier bag charge cut single-use bag sales by more than 90%, even though consumers paid it directly.Precedent
- A small, visible cost plus a free alternative changes behaviour. Nobody was banned from anything.Mechanism
- Unlike a tax buried in a price, people see the pound on the receipt and know where it goes.Visibility
The objections, answered honestly.
These are the questions the campaign gets asked most. Some have clean answers. One does not, and we say so.
Some of it will, and that is the point. A visible pound on the receipt is what changes behaviour, exactly as the bag charge did. Anyone who does not want to pay it can collect for free.
Then they pay nothing. Addresses with no collection point within a reasonable distance are exempt, so the pound only applies where a free alternative exists.
A flat charge with a free way out is not the same as a flat tax. Disability and medical exemptions cover people who cannot collect, and the money funds the buses that lower-income households rely on most.
It is a fixed statutory line collected at the point of sale, in the same way as VAT. There is no profit to shift offshore and no structure to hide behind. If a parcel goes to a UK home, the pound is due.
Businesses with turnover under £1m are exempt. The levy is aimed at the volume players whose scale is doing the damage, not the maker on Etsy or the shop with a website.
This is the honest one. The ringfence would be written into the Act, but a law is only as good as the oversight behind it. The campaign asks for published annual returns by area, so anyone can check where their pound went.
It is £1 per parcel, not per item, and it is not charged on collection. Retailers already vary delivery pricing by speed and basket size; this is one more line, and it is the only one that goes back to your town.
In the papers.
Five clippings since August, from the front page down. Tap one to read the full piece.
Crafty Vintage suggests parcel levy on big business to PM
The Telegraph leads with the campaign, taking a pound-a-parcel levy from the business pages to readers right across East Lancashire.
The piece sets out the £3bn national figure and what it would mean closer to home, including around £130m for Greater Manchester and £2.8m for Ribble Valley.
It also puts the obvious objection plainly: shoppers are likely to pick up part of the bill. The campaign's answer is that anyone can avoid it by collecting.
“Delivery feels free, and it is not free. Somebody covers the collapse of the retail base that used to pay for the street.”Dan Johnson, quoted in the TelegraphRead the full article →
“Put £1 on every parcel”: Ribble Valley market founder's call to Prime Minister over Amazon
The Post reports the letter to the Prime Minister and puts Amazon at the centre of the argument, carrying the campaign to Preston and central Lancashire.
“For 20 years we have made staying at home cheaper than walking into town, and then acted surprised when the towns emptied.”Dan Johnson, quoted in the PostRead the full article →
Proposed 'Amazon-tax' could raise £7m per year to support Preston city centre
Blog Preston puts the Preston figure to the city's council leader, who backs the idea on one condition: that it lands on the online giants.
“This is a brilliant idea myself and the wider Labour Group would be keen to support if the tax was levied directly on online giants.”Cllr Matthew Brown, Leader of Preston City CouncilRead the full article →
A £3bn letter to No. 10 North
The first published account of the campaign. The letter has gone in the post, and the column makes the case for a pound on every home delivery, ringfenced for the streets it is taken from.
Two American states already charge for home delivery. Here is what Lancashire would get.
The follow-up sets out Colorado's and Minnesota's retail delivery fees, then works the national figure down to what Lancashire would receive.
“A pound on each is roughly £3bn pounds a year, close to 58m a week and double that in December.”From the columnRead the full article →
Lost in the supermarket.
Press play.
The convenience is real. So is the bill.
- Every parcel is a journey a person didn't make into town.Fewer journeys mean fewer shoppers, fewer stalls, fewer reasons for a bus route to exist.
- The cost is already being paid.Empty units still owe rates. Councils still sweep the streets. The difference is who picks up the tab.
- Markets and independents can't lobby.Amazon has a public affairs team. A market trader has a Tuesday pitch. This gives towns a funding stream that doesn't depend on winning a bid.
- It has been done.Two US states already charge a per-delivery fee. Both are still in force, and both survived attempts to repeal them.
Two states have already done it.
Retail delivery fees, collected at checkout and remitted by the retailer through the existing sales tax system.
Colorado
- In force
- July 2022
- Year one
- $75.9m
- By 2025
- $218m cumulative
- Small sellers
- $500k threshold added 2023
- Status
- Still in effect
Repeal failed in 2023 and 2025
Minnesota
- In force
- July 2024
- Year one
- $59m projected
- Small sellers
- Exempt under $1m in-state sales
- Status
- Still in effect
Marketplaces including Amazon and Etsy already remit both fees automatically. Eight further states have commissioned feasibility studies. Figures as set out in written evidence RHS0140.
It isn't only about town centres.
of 162 Temu products failed EU safety standards in International Consumer Research & Testing's 2025 tests.
Where it comes from
Temu's parent, PDD Holdings, is registered in Dublin. The goods ship from Guangdong in southern China, outside the reach of UK trading standards until they land on a doormat.
What the levy funds
Money raised on cross-border parcels can fund product standards enforcement at the border and in the market, not just town centre regeneration.
Everything on one card.
- What it is
- A £1 statutory levy on every parcel delivered to a UK home, charged to the retailer at the point of sale. Free if you collect.
- What it does
- Raises an estimated £2.5bn to £3bn a year, ringfenced by law: 60% to local transport, 40% to markets, town centres and BIDs.
- Who backs it
- Called "a brilliant idea" by Cllr Matthew Brown, Leader of Preston City Council. Covered by the Lancashire Telegraph, Lancashire Evening Post, Lancashire Business View and Blog Preston.
- Where it is now
- Published by the Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee as written evidence RHS0140 on 22 October 2026. It asks for a pilot in one combined authority, with Lancashire as a candidate.
The committee is reviewing the evidence now.
Read the submission
Published by Parliament on 22 October 2026 as written evidence RHS0140 to the Revitalising High Streets inquiry. Twenty paragraphs, three recommendations.
Get updates
Committee progress, conference dates and new coverage, sent occasionally and never sold on.
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