A street door

The kerb is the whole permission question

In a controlled parking zone a residents' bay is not somewhere a removals vehicle may simply stand for a day, and assuming otherwise produces a penalty notice rather than a conversation. A suspension is applied for against the street and the dates, and boroughs process them in their own time.

Where a suspension cannot be had — a red route, a market street, a genuinely narrow address — we survey a second standing point and plan a longer carry. The quotation says which of those applies rather than leaving it to the morning.

What a London house actually holds

Terraced and semi-detached houses across the capital follow the same pattern: the rooms are modest, and the loft, the cellar, the side return and the garden shed are where the volume sits. In a Victorian terrace add a cupboard under the stairs holding more than it looks capable of.

All of those are opened at survey. A bedroom count on a London house is a particularly poor guide to the load.

Completion, and the hour nobody owns

Where the move depends on a sale, keys are released when money has moved up a chain, and the household at the bottom is paid last. We load early and plan for a wait, which is why our start times look earlier than customers expect.

Tell us how many households are in the chain when you book. It is the single most useful thing you can tell us and the thing most often left out of an enquiry.

Getting across London

The far end matters as much as this one. A house-to-house move inside London still needs the destination surveyed — a different borough, a different parking regime, and frequently a narrower street than the one you are leaving.