Research and analysis

Carrier bag charge: summary of data in England

A summary of the data on single-use plastic carrier bags in England.

• From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Published: 30 July 2016
• Last updated: 30 July 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 30 July 2026

     Added the summary data for 2025 to 2026.

  2. 31 July 2025

     Added the summary data for 2024 to 2025.

  3. 19 September 2024

     Added the single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2023 to 2024.

  4. 31 July 2023

     Added the summary data for 2022 to 2023.

  5. 29 July 2022

     Added the single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2021 to 2022. Added a line to state from 21 May 2021, the charge for single-use plastic carrier bags was raised to 10p and extended to all business.

  6. 30 July 2020

     Added the summary data for 2019 to 2020.

  7. 31 July 2019

     Added the 7 April 2018 to 6 April 2019 data.

  8. 27 September 2018

     Updated following further checks with retailers. The total voluntary donation figure for 2017 to 2018 has been revised due to errors in reporting. Other minor revisions have been made to the donation, gross and net proceeds figures for 2016 to 2017 only.

  9. 27 July 2018

     Added the summary data for 2017 to 2018.

  10. 21 July 2017

      Data added for the first full year from 7 April 2016 to 6 April 2017.

  11. 30 July 2016

      First published.

Applies to England

• Publication for Northern Ireland
• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

Documents

Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2025 to 2026

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Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2024 to 2025

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Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2023 to 2024

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Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2022 to 2023

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Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2021 to 2022

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Single-use plastic carrier bags charge: data for England 2020 to 2021

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Details

Since 5 October 2015, large shops in England have been required by law to charge 5 pence for all single-use plastic carrier bags.

On 21 May 2021, the charge for single-use plastic carrier bags was raised to 10 pence and extended to all businesses, though the reporting requirements apply to large retailers only. Large retailers are required by law to report certain information to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and they provide other information on a voluntary basis.

These publications summarise the data collected by Defra for the:

• tenth year – from 7 April 2025 to 6 April 2026
• ninth year – from 7 April 2024 to 6 April 2025
• eighth year – from 7 April 2023 to 6 April 2024
• seventh year – from 7 April 2022 to 6 April 2023
• sixth year – from 7 April 2021 to 6 April 2022
• fifth year – from 7 April 2020 to 6 April 2021

We publish the full datasets on data.gov.uk.

You can find data for previous years (2015 to 2020) on the National Archives.