How long does a London office move take?

Plan twelve weeks end to end. The physical move is much shorter — a 10-desk suite goes in an evening, 50 desks over a Friday-to-Sunday weekend and a full floor across a long weekend — but telecoms provisioning, RAMS approval and building lift bookings are what actually set the timetable.

What is the minimum notice you can work with?

We regularly survey within 48 hours and move inside two weeks when a lease date moves. Below that the constraints are rarely the removal crew: they are comms lead times, managing agent approval of the RAMS and whether the destination building has an out-of-hours slot left.

Who should own the office move internally?

One person with authority to approve spend, usually the office or operations manager, plus a named contact in IT and a named contact in finance. Moves go wrong when three people each own a third of it and nobody owns the switchover weekend.

Should staff pack their own desks?

Yes, personal contents into their own crate with their seat number on it, by a deadline the day before. Leave IT, furniture and storage to the crew — a member of staff unplugging a docking station is the most common cause of a Monday morning that does not work.

Office removals guide · 11 min read · Southfields SW18

Office move checklist for London: a 12-week plan in Southfields SW18

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

Local read

What this means in Southfields SW18

Everything in this guide applies across London — these are the parts that change here. Southfields sits in Wandsworth, covering SW18, SW19, and the local housing mix decides most of what a office removals day actually costs.

Housing stock

44.3% of homes here are flats — the rest are houses — so office removals in Southfields is generally a kerbside job with a loft, a garage or a shed attached to it. Those three are the rooms people forget to count.

How often people move

33.3% of Southfields households rent privately, above the London average, so weekends and month-ends book out first and inventory checks matter as much as the lorry does.

Access, charges and parking

Southfields is outside the Congestion Charge zone and inside ULEZ, so the only access cost worth planning for is parking: a bay suspension in SW18 takes around ten working days with Wandsworth.

Household figures: ONS Census 2021 for the Southfields neighbourhood (E02000942), via Nomis.

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

Want the project price before you sign the lease dates?

A free site survey of both buildings gives you one fixed, VAT-exclusive figure for the purchase order — plus the RAMS and insurance pack your building manager will ask for.

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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.

Questions

Quick answers for Southfields SW18

Yes. The prices, timings and terms in this guide are the ones we work to across Wandsworth, including SW18 and SW19. The local variables are access and parking, plus ULEZ, and all of them are inside the written quote before you book.

Book a free site survey for Southfields SW18 →

Where we work

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Get a fixed quote for your office move in Southfields SW18

Desk count, both addresses, your switchover window and whether IT and crates are in scope — that is all we need to price it.

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Who wrote this page

Reviewed by Sarbaz Hassan, Operations Director — 17 August 2026.

Prices, access notes and timings on this page come from jobs our own crews have run in Southfields SW18 — not from a generic template. Tell us if anything here is out of date and we will correct it.

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