The guide
Office Relocation Costs in London: What Actually Drives the Price in full
Why office moves are not quoted hourly
A householder can absorb an extra hour. A business cannot absorb an open-ended invoice on a purchase order, and finance will not approve one. So the whole commercial model is different: we survey both addresses, take the risk on how long the building will actually let us work, and quote a single figure.
That also changes who carries the cost of a slow lift or a late bay booking. On an hourly job it is you. On a surveyed project price it is us — which is precisely why the survey matters and why a quote given over the phone without one is usually a placeholder.
Newham: In Newham the building type sets the pace. Business park units and campus buildings with generous vehicle access, single-tenant floors, trade counters and warehouse-attached offices with staff welfare areas. The commercial weight sits around Canning Town, East Village, Stratford, and that decides crate volumes, how many goods-lift bookings the switchover needs and whether it runs over an evening or a full weekend.
The desk bands, and what sits inside them
Desk count is the honest unit for an office move because it scales with crates, IT positions, furniture and crew all at once. Every band below includes the move plan, protection of lifts, floors and door frames, labelling, the RAMS and insurance pack, and the transport itself.
Newham: Access in Newham is the part that slips. Site barriers, gatehouse sign-in and estate security patrols, with a van parked at the door and no lift booking to worry about. New-build blocks require booked service lifts and loading bays; terraced streets around East Ham are permit-only and tight. On top of that, the borough is outside the Congestion Charge zone but inside ULEZ, so the access line that moves the price is a bay suspension with London Borough of Newham, booked around ten working days ahead.
- Up to 10 desks — from £650, three movers and a Luton, usually one evening
- 11–25 desks — from £1,450, four movers and a 7.5 tonne vehicle, evening plus the following morning
- 26–50 desks — from £2,900, six movers and two vehicles, Friday night to Sunday
- 51–100 desks — from £5,400, eight to ten movers and three vehicles, full weekend switchover
- 100+ desks — from £55 a desk, phased across consecutive weekends
The add-ons that move the number most
Two things reliably shift a quote: IT and timing. Workstation disconnect and reconnect at £28 a desk sounds small until you multiply it by 60, and a weekend switchover adds 18% — which is still almost always cheaper than the trading day it protects.
Crate hire at £3.50 per crate per week is the cheapest line on the sheet and the one most worth over-ordering slightly. Budget roughly two to three crates per desk, plus extras for filing and kitchens.
Newham: Sector mix matters to how this plays out locally: Retail and wholesale is the largest employer in Newham at 15.8% of borough jobs, with Public administration at 11.8%. That shapes what actually gets moved — desk density, server rooms, storage and regulated paperwork all differ by trade, and the survey prices the borough's real mix rather than a generic desk count.
- Crate hire — £3.50 per crate per week, delivered and collected
- IT disconnect and reconnect — £28 per workstation; server and comms room from £480
- Desk dismantle and rebuild — £18 per position
- Business storage between leases — £22 per pallet per week
- Furniture and WEEE clearance — £180 per load, transfer note included
- Out-of-hours, weekend or bank holiday — 18% uplift on the project price
The building costs that are not on the removal quote
Managing agents commonly charge for out-of-hours security cover, goods lift attendance and sometimes a refundable deposit against damage to common parts. None of that is within a mover's control, so ask both buildings early and put it in the budget as its own line.
Then there is dilapidations. Making good the old floor — removing partitions, patching cable trays, redecorating — is regularly a bigger number than the move itself and is negotiated with the landlord, not the mover. What we can do is document what left the building and when.
Newham: Geography, in practice: Newham covers E6, E7, E12, E13, E15, E16, E20 across 13 named areas, and 0.38× as many people work here each weekday as live here. Crews are routed to the loading point for the specific postcode, because the run between two addresses inside one borough is rarely the part that costs time — the lift is.