Amazon has been forced to delay plans to deliver parcels by drone to British households after foot-dragging on airspace regulation prevented it from launching the service.

The retail giant had been planning to start UK drone flights to deliver packages in under an hour by the end of this year, but admitted on Friday that it had not secured clearance to fly the autonomous aircraft.

The company said that while it was prepared to start operations, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had not yet set out rules allowing it to carry out deliveries.

An Amazon spokesman said: “We are ready to make drone delivery a reality for our customers in the UK.

“We have built safe and reliable drone delivery services elsewhere in the world in close partnership with regulators and the communities we serve, and we are working to do the same in the UK.

“However, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is still developing the regulatory framework to support the type of operation that we launched in the United States. We will continue to work closely with the CAA as they develop the framework which can make commercial drone delivery a reality in the UK.”

Amazon declined to commit to a new timeline for flights, saying: “We have nothing more to share at this time, but will let our communities and customers know as our drone delivery service expands.”

Decade-long wait

It comes a decade after the US giant carried out its first drone tests in Cambridgeshire, raising the prospect that the UK would be the first market for drone deliveries.

However, the company later moved testing to the US. It started commercial deliveries two years ago in California and Texas.

Amazon has also recently started deliveries in Arizona, although it has also suspended flights in California.

The company said last year that it planned drone deliveries in Britain and Italy by the end of 2024.

The CAA said this summer that Amazon was one of six projects selected for trials of “beyond visual line of sight” autonomous flights.

Drone flights in Britain currently require companies to go through a lengthy airspace change process that partially blocks off the area to other operators. Flights have been slower to take off in the UK than in the US and Europe, where regulations have been updated to allow drones.

Amazon is believed to have scouted potential locations but is yet to apply for airspace changes. It no longer occupies the site outside Cambridge where it carried out tests from 2015 before shutting down the project several years later.

This week, the NHS deployed autonomous drone flights to carry blood samples between London hospitals using aircraft developed by Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet.