The guide
Out-of-Hours and Weekend Office Moves in London in full
Why buildings push moves out of hours
In a multi-let London building, the goods lift and the loading bay are shared. Building management protects the working day for tenants, so removals traffic is pushed to evenings and weekends and slots are allocated in blocks with an attendant on duty.
That constraint is usually helpful. An empty building means faster lift runs, no lobby congestion and no meetings interrupted, so a job that would take two disrupted days often lands in one uninterrupted night.
Southwark: Access in Southwark is the part that slips. 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. On top of that, part of the borough sits inside the Congestion Charge zone and all of it inside ULEZ, so both are priced into the project figure rather than invoiced later.
What out-of-hours actually costs
Expect an uplift on crew rates for evenings, and a larger one for Sundays and bank holidays. Buildings may add their own charges: a lift attendant, a security guard for the access window and, in some towers, an out-of-hours facilities call-out.
Weigh those against downtime. If sixty people lose a working day, the cost dwarfs the uplift, which is why the out-of-hours option is the default recommendation for anything above about twenty desks.
Southwark: Sector mix matters to how this plays out locally: Professional and legal services is the largest employer in Southwark at 24.1% of borough jobs, with Administration and support at 15.6%. 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.
- Evening and overnight crew uplift
- Sunday and bank holiday premium rates
- Building charges: lift attendant, security cover, out-of-hours facilities
- Any bay suspension fee, charged per bay per day by the borough
Single-hit or phased?
A single-hit switchover moves everything in one window — cleanest, and the option the calendar usually wants. It needs a destination that is genuinely ready: cabling live, furniture in place, floor plan agreed and passes issued.
A phased move runs over two or three windows, typically department by department, and suits floors where fit-out is still finishing or where a service must stay live throughout. It costs more in total crew hours but removes the single point of failure.
Southwark: Geography, in practice: Southwark covers SE1, SE5, SE15, SE16, SE17, SE21, SE22, SE24 across 14 named areas, and 0.96× 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.
Telling staff what to do
Two communications do most of the work: a packing brief a week out with the crate deadline and desk-number instructions, and a return brief the day before with the new address, entry arrangements, floor plan and who to find on the morning.
Name a floor marshal per department for the first morning back. They handle the small things — a missing crate, a desk swap, a printer to add — while IT works the ports, and the day feels organised rather than improvised.
Southwark: Sign-off in Southwark follows the same shape every time. One named contact approves the switchover window, the managing agent approves the RAMS and insurance pack, and the IT lead owns the comms room. We survey both addresses before quoting, so the number on the purchase order is the number invoiced.
- Packing brief: crate deadline, what IT handles, what staff pack
- Clear-desk cut-off on the last working afternoon
- Return brief: address, access, floor plan, marshals, support contacts
- Floorwalk booked for the first two hours back