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.
Tower Hamlets: Applied to Tower Hamlets: 18,760 registered businesses sit in this borough and 316,000 people work here, so the step above is usually run for a ten to fifty desk suite rather than a whole tower. 83.8% of firms here employ fewer than ten people, which is why the survey and the switchover normally fit into one weekend.
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.
Tower Hamlets: In Tower Hamlets the building type sets the pace. 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 Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, Spitalfields, and that decides crate volumes, how many goods-lift bookings the switchover needs and whether it runs over an evening or a full weekend.
- 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.
Tower Hamlets: Access in Tower Hamlets is the part that slips. 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. Tower blocks with goods-lift booking, Canary Wharf estate permits, and CPZs across Bethnal Green and Bow. 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.
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.
Tower Hamlets: Sector mix matters to how this plays out locally: Finance and insurance is the largest employer in Tower Hamlets at 24% of borough jobs, with Professional and legal services at 18%. 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.
- 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