Amazon has asked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for permission to fly its delivery drones across the whole of Darlington, its first drone site outside the United States.
The application follows more than 500 flights and deliveries from the County Durham town since a limited trial began in February.
Until now, the service has reached only customers within a 7.5-mile radius of Amazon's fulfilment centre there.
David Carbon, the vice-president of Amazon Prime Air, said he expected approval "very soon", and that the wider goal was to cover the rest of the United Kingdom.
The drones carry packages of up to five pounds, roughly the size of a large shoebox, and Amazon says its fastest Darlington delivery so far took 39 minutes.
A bigger ambition
The UK push runs alongside a far larger expansion at home.
Amazon said last month that it aimed to offer drone delivery in nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase on its current footprint.
That figure counts communities served rather than launch sites, since each base can cover about 175 square miles.
The company has made hundreds of thousands of drone deliveries this year, with thousands completed daily.
It is racing rivals including Walmart, Alphabet's Wing and Zipline, all chasing the same promise of parcels arriving within half an hour.
The hurdles ahead
Turning trials into a routine service still depends on regulators, and the two sides of the Atlantic differ sharply.
Amazon's Darlington permission expires on 31 December, giving the CAA a fixed moment to renew or refuse it, whereas American rules set no such deadline.
Safety questions also linger, after a drone crashed in Darlington in July and two others struck a crane in Arizona last year.
Amazon says the aircraft performed as designed, and that incidents remain rare.
For now, the announcements are less a product launch than a map and timetable, and the pace of local sign-offs will decide how quickly drones become part of everyday delivery.