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Man with a van guide · Lewisham · 9 min read

Man with a van prices in London: hourly rates explained in Lewisham

A man with a van in London costs £45 an hour for one mover and a Luton van, or £65 an hour for two, both including VAT with a two-hour minimum. Single items are £69, a studio or 1-bed flat move £220 and a 2-bed £340. The variables that actually move the bill are stairs, parking distance and how ready you are.

By The Hello Services moving team · Published 2026-08-20 · Updated 2026-08-20

Illustration of a Hello Services removals crew loading a branded Luton van outside a London Victorian terrace, tail lift down, a blanket-wrapped sofa on a trolley and labelled boxes by the front door — Lewisham

Local read

What changes in Lewisham before you book

Same guide, different front doors. Here is the housing reality across this borough. Lewisham covers SE4, SE6, SE8, SE12, SE13, SE14, SE23, SE26 and 12 named areas, and the housing type, the stairs and the parking decide most of what an hourly van job here actually costs.

  • 122,393

    Households in Lewisham

  • 57.7%

    Homes that are flats

  • 2.46

    People per household

  • 12

    Areas covered, each with its own guide

Housing stock in Lewisham

Victorian and Edwardian terraces and conversions, 1960s Catford estates and new Lewisham town-centre towers. 57.7% of homes here are flats, so the variable that moves the price is the carry: lift or stairs, the floor you are on, and how far the van can legally stop from the entrance. That is what decides whether an hourly van booking is two hours or four.

Who moves here

Lewisham has 122,393 households across 300,553 residents on Census 2021 figures, with a median age of 35. 43.4% of households own their home, so moves here cluster around completion dates and chains rather than tenancy end dates. 30.4% of households are single-person, which is exactly the studio-and-one-bed profile an hourly van handles best.

Parking, permits and charges

Steep hills at Honor Oak and Forest Hill, narrow terraced streets and expanding CPZs across SE4 and SE14. Lewisham sits outside the Congestion Charge zone and inside ULEZ, so the access cost that matters is a parking bay suspension booked with London Borough of Lewisham, usually around ten working days' notice.

Planning the day

With 29.2% of homes in social housing, a fair share of jobs here are estate blocks where the concierge or housing office wants notice and proof of insurance before the lift is held. We confirm the hourly rate and the likely hours for an hourly van job in Lewisham in writing, so nothing about the bill is a surprise on the day.

Household, housing-mix and tenure figures: ONS Census 2021, borough level — the smallest geography publishing all three series. Access and permit notes: London Borough of Lewisham, Transport for London ULEZ and Congestion Charge zones.

The guide

Man with a Van Prices in London: Hourly Rates Explained in full

What the hourly rate includes

An hourly van rate should be all-in: the van, the fuel, the driver's labour, blankets, straps and a trolley. If any of those appear as a separate line later, the headline rate was not the rate.

Charging starts when the crew arrives at your collection address and stops when the last item is inside the destination. The drive between the two addresses is inside the hour you are already paying for, which is why a cross-London job and a same-street job cost the same per hour.

  • £45 per hour — one mover and a Luton van, two-hour minimum
  • £65 per hour — two movers and a Luton van, two-hour minimum
  • £69 — single item collected and delivered locally
  • £220 — studio or 1-bed flat move, £340 for a 2-bed

Why two movers is often cheaper than one

The instinct is to book the cheaper hourly rate. On a ground-floor job with a driveway that is usually right. On a third-floor walk-up it is almost always wrong: one mover carrying a double mattress, a sofa and twenty boxes down three flights will take more than twice as long as two movers doing it together.

The arithmetic is simple. Four hours at £45 is £180; two and a half hours at £65 is £163 — and you get your afternoon back. Tell us the floor number and whether there is a lift and we will tell you honestly which booking is cheaper.

The two-hour minimum and 30-minute billing

Every London van company has a minimum because a two-hour job still costs a whole morning once travel is counted. What differs is what happens after it. Rounding up to the next full hour turns a fifteen-minute overrun into £45; billing in 30-minute blocks turns it into £22.50.

Ask which one applies before you book, and get the answer in writing. It is the single most common source of a bill that does not match the quote.

Need the Lewisham hourly rate confirmed before you book?

Send the item list, both addresses and the floor at each end — a fixed hourly quote comes back the same day.

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Parking, ULEZ and the Congestion Charge

London adds three costs a van job outside the capital does not have. Parking is the big one: if the van cannot stand legally near the door, you are paying hourly for a long carry. Where a bay suspension is worth the council fee we will say so and quote it up front.

Every van we run is ULEZ-compliant, so ULEZ never appears as a surcharge. Where a job crosses the Congestion Charge zone the daily charge is shown as a line on the quote before you book, not discovered on the invoice.

How to make an hourly booking cost less

You are buying time, so the cheapest thing you can do is be ready. Boxes sealed and stacked by the door, beds dismantled or booked to be dismantled, the lift reserved, and someone at the other end who knows which room things go in.

Two hours of preparation the night before regularly saves an hour of crew time. On a two-person booking that is £65 back in your pocket for work you would have had to do anyway.

  • Seal and stack boxes by the front door before the slot starts
  • Book the goods lift and tell us the reference
  • Clear the hallway, and take pictures off the walls in advance
  • Have parking identified at both ends, not just the collection

Verified Trustpilot reviews

What Lewisham customers say

★★★★★
Constantin and Adriana who deep cleaned my flat did excellent work. They were courteous and hard working. They completed everything that I asked of them, and they did the work in good time with it looking spotless! What more could you ask of them? Nothing in my books!
Alastair Gamble ·
★★★★★

Good cleaning service from Hello Services

Hello Service provided us with excellent deep cleaning services. Mr. Sardar, the cleaning expert, did an outstanding job, leaving our home spotless. I highly recommend him for any cleaning needs.
Jinshu Peethambaran ·

Reviews are quoted verbatim from our public Trustpilot profile, where the full rating history is open to check.

By area

This guide, localized across Lewisham 12 areas

Every area below has its own version of this guide with local housing mix, access and parking notes.

Who wrote this page

Reviewed by Sarbaz Hassan, Operations Director — .

We run van jobs across Lewisham most days, from single-item collections to full studio and one-bed moves.

  • Company no. 11855405
  • VAT no. GB 331 4560 12
  • Goods-in-transit & public liability insured
  • DBS-checked crews
  • Licensed waste carrier

Hourly van rates for Lewisham, confirmed in writing

What is moving, both postcodes, the floor at each end and your preferred slot — that is all we need to price it.

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Questions

Quick answers for Lewisham

Yes. The prices, timings and packing advice in this guide are what we work to across Lewisham, including SE4, SE6, SE8, SE12. What varies locally is access — stairs versus lift, a bay suspension with London Borough of Lewisham and ULEZ — and every one of those is inside the written quote before you book.