diff --git a/app/assets/stylesheets/_url-helpers.scss b/app/assets/stylesheets/_url-helpers.scss
index 9643d295a..fa5ad7af2 100644
--- a/app/assets/stylesheets/_url-helpers.scss
+++ b/app/assets/stylesheets/_url-helpers.scss
@@ -1,14 +1,12 @@
 // Copy of _url-helpers.scss in govuk_frontend_toolkit
-// to allow us to use gulp-base64-inline on all our images
-// gulp-base64-inline requires you to specify which of your
-// images you want encoded by using the `inline()` function
-// see https://github.com/goschevski/gulp-base64-inline
+// to prepend the path to where we store images
+
 @function file-url($file) {
   $url: '';
   @if $path {
-    $url: inline($path + $file);
+    $url: url($path + $file);
   } @else {
-    $url: image-url($file);
+    $url: url($file);
   }
   @return $url;
 }
diff --git a/gulpfile.js b/gulpfile.js
index ccb3efd2d..57125f0ef 100644
--- a/gulpfile.js
+++ b/gulpfile.js
@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@ const stylish = require('jshint-stylish');
 const plugins = {};
 plugins.addSrc = require('gulp-add-src');
 plugins.babel = require('gulp-babel');
-plugins.base64 = require('gulp-base64-inline');
 plugins.cleanCSS = require('gulp-clean-css');
 plugins.concat = require('gulp-concat');
 plugins.cssUrlAdjuster = require('gulp-css-url-adjuster');
@@ -209,7 +208,6 @@ const sass = () => {
         paths.govuk_frontend,
       ]
     }))
-    .pipe(plugins.base64('../..'))
     .pipe(plugins.cssUrlAdjuster({
       replace: [staticPathMatcher, '/']
     }))
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 189cdc8ec..61b310a78 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -29,7 +29,6 @@
     "gulp": "4.0.0",
     "gulp-add-src": "1.0.0",
     "gulp-babel": "8.0.0",
-    "gulp-base64-inline": "1.0.4",
     "gulp-better-rollup": "4.0.1",
     "gulp-clean-css": "4.2.0",
     "gulp-concat": "2.6.1",