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Office removals guide · Southwark · 11 min read

Office move checklist for London: a 12-week plan in Southwark

Give a London office move twelve weeks: weeks 12–9 for lease dates, budget and surveys, weeks 8–5 for the move plan, RAMS, IT and telecoms lead times, weeks 4–2 for crate delivery, floor plans and staff briefings, and the final fortnight for the switchover itself and the snagging week that follows. Anything under four weeks is possible but costs more and carries real risk on lift bookings and comms provisioning.

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

Illustration of Hello Services cleaning London offices out of hours — a City tower floor with desks being sanitised, a converted warehouse studio being vacuumed, a period West End office being wiped down, a consumables and recycling round outside, and a branded van in a permit bay — Southwark

Local read

What changes in Southwark before you book

The guide below is the London-wide version. This panel is what changes once the move is inside this borough. Southwark covers SE1, SE5, SE15, SE16, SE17, SE21, SE22, SE24 and 14 named areas, and the building type, the lift and the loading bay decide most of what an office move here actually costs.

  • 18,190

    Businesses in Southwark

  • 296,000

    People employed here

  • 0.96×

    Daytime workers per resident

  • 14

    Areas covered, each with its own guide

Office stock in Southwark

SME suites above the high street defines Southwark: small office suites above retail, dental and medical practices, solicitors and accountants, salons, clinics and studios in single-storey or first-floor units with no lift and no dedicated bin store. The commercial weight sits around Bermondsey, Canada Water, Elephant and Castle, London Bridge and Bermondsey Street. 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

Southwark has 18,190 registered businesses — 3.1% of every business in Greater London — and 296,000 people employed on 2022 figures. 80.3% 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 Professional and legal services (24.1% of borough jobs), Administration and support (15.6% of borough jobs), Health and social care (10% of borough jobs).

Access, lifts and charges

A single street door with your own key, no concierge and no goods lift — the practical issues are stairs, bin day and where the van sits for twenty minutes. Riverside loading restrictions, red routes on the New Kent Road and CPZs from SE1 to Peckham. Part of Southwark 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

Owners, practice managers and office administrators buying two or three visits a week on a short, plain-English agreement. In Southwark 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

Office Move Checklist for London: A 12-Week Plan in full

Weeks 12–9: dates, budget and surveys

Everything downstream hangs off two dates: when the new floor is available for fit-out, and when the old lease ends with dilapidations complete. Get both in writing before you brief anyone internally, because they rarely align neatly and the gap decides whether you need business storage.

Book removal surveys at both addresses in this window. A surveyor counts desks, IT positions, storage units and anything unusual — safes, plan chests, server racks, a kitchen — then reads the access at both ends. That is what turns a guess into a fixed project price you can put in the budget.

  • Confirm lease end, dilapidations scope and new-floor access dates
  • Book removal surveys at both addresses and get fixed project prices
  • Check the destination building's rules: lift booking, out-of-hours access, insurance limits
  • Give telecoms and broadband providers notice — this is the single longest lead time in the whole plan

Weeks 8–5: the move plan, RAMS and IT

Approve one supplier and lock the switchover weekend. In London the last weekend of a month and every quarter-end go first, so a date held now is worth more than a slightly cheaper quote taken later.

Your mover issues the method statement, risk assessment and insurance certificates in this window, because most managing agents want them at least five working days ahead and some want them signed off by building management before passes are issued.

Run IT in parallel. Circuits, patching and any new cabling at the destination need to be live and tested before move weekend — a crew can rebuild a floor in a night, but nobody can conjure a leased line on a Sunday.

  • Sign the move plan and confirm the switchover window with both buildings
  • Issue RAMS and insurance certificates to your managing agent
  • Confirm structured cabling, patching and circuit live dates with your IT provider
  • Decide what is being disposed of — desking, pedestals, screens — and get it quoted as part of the move

Weeks 4–2: crates, floor plans and people

Crates arrive about a week before the move with labels and a seat-numbered destination plan. Give staff a fixed pack-down deadline — end of business the day before the move, not the morning of it — and make it clear that personal items and desk plants travel with them.

Publish the destination floor plan with seat numbers on it. Every crate, monitor bag and pedestal gets that number, which is what makes a rebuilt floor findable at 08:00 on Monday rather than a treasure hunt.

Brief reception, security and cleaners at both buildings, and tell clients and suppliers the address is changing. Update the Google Business Profile, invoices, letterheads and email footers on a date you set, not ad hoc.

  • Crates and IT bags delivered, labels issued, packing deadline announced
  • Seat-numbered floor plan circulated to staff and to the move crew
  • Confirm lift slots, loading bays and out-of-hours access at both ends
  • Book the clearance load for redundant furniture and WEEE

Need the Southwark 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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The switchover weekend and the week after

Loading starts after close of business. Protection goes down on lifts, floors and door frames first, then crates and IT travel, then furniture. At the destination the floor is built to the plan and workstations reconnected so a sample of desks can be powered up and tested before the crew leaves.

Keep the snagging week deliberately light on meetings. Expect a handful of missing cables, one monitor arm that will not fit and at least one department that wants to move two desks. Empty crates are collected within five working days, and the waste transfer note for anything cleared goes into the dilapidations file.

Verified Trustpilot reviews

What Southwark businesses say

★★★★★

Pre-move deep clean - pleasant surprise!

Milad and his assistant did an excellent pre-move deep clean of our new home, turned up on time, spent longer than expected and were very friendly - thanks so much. We were pleasantly surprised at how well each room was done and in particular how exhaustively they cleaned the kitchen and appliances. It was great to walk in after the clean and see not only a very clean home but very fresh smelling, like-new. Thank you!
NT ·
★★★★★
Really easy to book and great communication through the whole process. Erik arrived promptly at my parents flat as we had booked an end of lease deep clean, and very pleased with the cleaning, looks like new, Erik was polite and did a great Job, would definitely recommend and use again.
Lynn ·

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

By area

This guide, localized across Southwark 14 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 Southwark 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 Southwark, 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 Southwark

Yes. The prices, RAMS and switchover timings in this guide are the ones we work to across Southwark, including SE1, SE5, SE15, SE16. What varies is building access — goods lift booking, loading bay suspension with London Borough of Southwark and contractor induction — plus ULEZ and the Congestion Charge, and all of them are inside the written project price before you book.