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Office removals guide · City of London · 10 min read

IT and server relocation in a London office move in City of London

IT decides whether an office move feels smooth or chaotic. Order circuits ten to twelve weeks out, have the destination cabling live and tested before move weekend, decommission the comms room last and rebuild it first, and label every desk position at both ends so screens, docks and phones land where the seating plan says. Budget a floorwalk on the first morning back — the snags are always small and always numerous.

By The Hello Services commercial moves team · Published 2026-08-27 · Updated 2026-08-27

Illustration of office cleaning detail work — desk touch points and keyboards sanitised, a glass meeting room reset, a washroom serviced and restocked, a kitchen worktop and coffee machine cleaned, a hard floor traffic lane machine-buffed, and a supervisor scoring an audit on a tablet — City of London

Local read

What changes in City of London before you book

Same guide, different buildings. Here is the commercial reality across this borough. City of London covers EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4 and 10 named areas, and the building type, the lift and the loading bay decide most of what an office move here actually costs.

  • 25,555

    Businesses in City of London

  • 614,000

    People employed here

  • 71.4×

    Daytime workers per resident

  • 10

    Areas covered, each with its own guide

Office stock in City of London

Grade A towers and multi-tenant floors defines City of London: grade A towers and refurbished multi-let floors, glass-partitioned meeting suites, client-facing reception areas, high-spec washrooms and staffed hospitality space. The commercial weight sits around Aldgate, Bank and Cornhill, Barbican, Blackfriars. That decides crate counts, how many goods-lift bookings a switchover needs, and whether it runs over one evening or a full weekend.

Who moves here

City of London has 25,555 registered businesses — 4.3% of every business in Greater London — and 614,000 people employed on 2022 figures. 75.1% of those firms are micro businesses under ten staff, so most moves booked here are ten to fifty desks over a weekend rather than full-tower programmes. The biggest employers are Finance and insurance (32.4% of borough jobs), Professional and legal services (27.7% of borough jobs), Technology and information (14% of borough jobs).

Access, lifts and charges

Security passes and a permit-to-work, goods lift booked with building management, contractor induction before the first shift and a logged sign-in and sign-out on every visit. Congestion Charge and ULEZ, ring-of-steel camera controls, almost no free kerb — loading bays must be booked around office hours. Part of City of London sits inside the Congestion Charge zone and all of it is inside ULEZ, so both are quoted in the project price before you sign — never invoiced afterwards.

Who signs it off

Managing agents and facilities teams buying for the whole building, plus tenant office managers buying for their own demised floor. In City of London that usually means one named contact signing off the switchover window, the building manager approving the RAMS and insurance pack, and the IT lead owning the comms room. We survey both addresses before quoting, so the figure on the purchase order is the figure invoiced.

Commercial figures: ONS UK Business Counts — local units by industry and employment size band, 2024 (Nomis NM_141_1) (2024) and ONS Business Register and Employment Survey, 2022 (Nomis NM_189_1) (2022), borough level — the smallest geography ONS publishes both series for. Resident population: ONS Census 2021.

The guide

IT and Server Relocation in a London Office Move in full

Lead times: the only part you cannot compress

A crew can strip and rebuild a 60-desk floor over a weekend. Nobody can install a leased line in the same window. Circuit delivery in central London routinely runs six to twelve weeks, and a wayleave in a multi-let building can add more, so the order goes in before the crates are even discussed.

Run the old and new connections in parallel for at least a fortnight. Paying two months of overlap is far cheaper than a Monday with no internet, and it lets you cut over in a controlled way rather than under pressure.

  • Order circuits and confirm wayleave permissions 10–12 weeks out
  • Book structured cabling and patching so the floor is live before move weekend
  • Keep the outgoing line running two weeks past the move date
  • Confirm number porting dates with your telecoms provider in writing

Decommissioning the comms room

Photograph the rack front and back before a single cable is pulled. Those photographs are what the rebuild is measured against, and they settle every argument about what was patched where.

Label both ends of every cable, bag and tag rack screws and shelf hardware, and shut down in the documented order — switches, then storage, then hosts — rather than by whichever plug is nearest. Anything in a rack travels bolted into purpose-built cases or a shock-mounted rack trolley, never on a flat trolley with a blanket over it.

Desks, docks and the seating plan

Every desk position at the destination gets a number that matches the floor plan, and every monitor arm, dock, keyboard and headset travels in a crate carrying that number. That is the whole trick: the crew is not deciding where anything goes, they are matching labels.

Staff pack their own pedestal and personal items into a numbered crate. IT handles anything with a cable. Splitting it that way avoids the classic Monday problem of a dock sitting in someone's pedestal on the other side of the floor.

  • Number every destination desk position and mirror it on the crate labels
  • IT strips and re-terminates all screens, docks and handsets
  • Photograph unusual setups — dual-arm mounts, sit-stand controllers, trading positions
  • Keep a small spares box: power leads, display cables, patch leads

Need the City of London figure in writing for the board pack?

A free site survey covers lifts, loading bays and out-of-hours windows, and produces a fixed written quote with method statement and RAMS.

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Rebuild sequence and the Monday floorwalk

The comms room goes back first and is tested before the floor fills, because a desk you rebuild against a dead patch panel is a desk you rebuild twice. Once the network answers, the crew works the floor in plan order while IT follows behind logging in at each position.

Book a floorwalk for the first two hours of the first working morning. The list is always the same shape — a dead port, a missing dock, a printer that needs re-adding — and it is a thirty-minute job on the day rather than a week of tickets.

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What City of London businesses say

★★★★★
Sardar kt19 very professional and quick. Showed great attention to details.
Earl Simpson ·
★★★★★

Ingrid LS12

Ingrid LS12 Great service, quick and efficient. Good value for money
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By area

This guide, localized across City of London 10 areas

Every area below has its own version of this guide with local building stock, loading bay and access notes.

Who wrote this page

Reviewed by Sarbaz Hassan, Operations Director — .

We run office switchovers across City of London every month, from ten-desk micro moves to full-floor weekend programmes.

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

Fixed office move quotes in City of London, with RAMS attached

Desk count, both addresses, lift and loading bay access and your target switchover weekend — that is all we need to price it.

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Questions

Quick answers for City of London

Yes. The prices, RAMS and switchover timings in this guide are the ones we work to across City of London, including EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4. What varies is building access — goods lift booking, loading bay suspension with City of London Corporation and contractor induction — plus ULEZ and the Congestion Charge, and all of them are inside the written project price before you book.