Across London
We work in all thirty-three boroughs. What changes between them is the housing stock — and the housing stock is what determines the staircase, the lift and the approach. Here is the city described by its buildings rather than its postcodes.
Every one of these profiles has a characteristic failure. Knowing which applies to you is most of a quote.
Islington · Hackney · Camden · Southwark
Four storeys plus a cellar
Tall, narrow houses subdivided into flats, with one staircase running the full height and getting narrower as it climbs. The top flight is frequently a later insertion at a steeper pitch, and the cellar has its own separate entrance from the front area.
Wandsworth · Lewisham · Haringey · Ealing
Two or three storeys, no lift
The classic London walk-up. A half-landing dogleg near the top of the first flight is the feature that decides most of these jobs, and a bay-window room usually contains one item that came in before the door frame was fitted.
Maida Vale · Fulham · Streatham · Finchley
Four to six storeys, one small lift
A single original passenger lift with a narrow door, a shallow car and a concertina gate, alongside a generous stone staircase. Almost everything large goes up the stairs here and the lift carries the boxes.
Tower Hamlets · Newham · Lambeth · Brent
Five to twenty storeys, lifts shared
Lifts that cannot be held and are shared with everyone on the stack. Deck access at some levels, internal corridors at others, and a ground-floor entry that may be a level below the parking. The vertical distance is rarely the problem; the queue is.
E14 · SE1 · SW8 · NW9
Eight storeys and up, goods lift by booking
A service lift, a loading bay, a booked window and a floor-protection requirement. Well run and completely inflexible. The lift car is usually generous; the flat doors and internal corridors frequently are not.
Bromley · Barnet · Hillingdon · Kingston
Two storeys, loft and garage
A winder at the bottom of the stairs, a boarded loft with a drop-down ladder, and a garage that has been a store room for a decade. The storey that produces the surprises is almost always the one above the bedrooms.
Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, Westminster and the City of London.
We also run out of London to the rest of the UK, and collect from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol where a load is being consolidated here before going to Europe. See how a road move runs for that.
Permits and bay suspensions are applied for through the borough, and boroughs differ enormously in what they require and how much notice they want. Start it well ahead of the move rather than the week before.
Where there is no legal standing point at the address, the nearest usable one becomes part of the job and we measure the walk from it. On a level job that walk is a far larger share of the work than most people expect.
Floor number. Lift or no lift, and if there is a lift, its door width. The clear diagonal at the tightest staircase turn. Where a vehicle can legally stand and how far that is from the door.
Four figures. Between them they settle almost every question about a London move, and they are all ones you can take yourself in a few minutes.
The clear diagonal across the tightest turn on your staircase, corner to corner, with the handrail in place. That single figure answers more questions about a London move than a room-by-room inventory does.