Permissions
Grouped by who has a say in the move rather than by property type or borough, because in London that is the constraint which cannot be solved on the day.
A house in an outer borough may involve one permission. A mansion flat in a central one can involve five.
A front door of your own. The kerb is the only thing you have to ask about.
Your own front door, and a kerb
A house with its own entrance. The only permission in play is the one governing the kerb outside it, which in most of inner London is a controlled bay and therefore an application rather than an assumption.
What it involves →Shared halls, stairs and lifts, and somebody who manages them.
Conversions, communal stairs, a freeholder
A converted house or a small block where the hall, the stairs and the front path belong to everybody. The lease usually makes the decoration the freeholder's responsibility, which makes protecting it ours.
What it involves →Agents, concierges and goods lifts
Purpose-built blocks, mansion flats and new developments. A booking sheet, a permitted window, a goods lift and — increasingly often — a request for our insurance certificate before anybody gets a key fob.
What it involves →A landlord at one end, and a sign-off after you have gone.
A check-out and an inventory
The property is not yours and the judgement is made on the empty room. The permission you need here is not to move out; it is to be signed off afterwards, and that is a different thing to plan for.
What it involves →Offices, dilapidations, downtime
Commercial moves where a building manager, a lease and a dilapidations schedule all have a say, and the cost of the move is small beside the cost of the hours you are closed.
What it involves →Buying time while other people make up their minds.
Held while the answers come back
Goods collected, listed at the property and held. The honest use of storage in London is buying time while other people decide — a chain, a freeholder, a council, a building.
What it involves →Five things. The measured volume, taken with a tape. The access at both ends — stairs, lift, bay, bay height. How much packing you want. Whether anything is being held. And what the addresses require by way of permission.
That last one is the reason this site exists. A move into a managed block with a booking window, a lift reservation and an insurance certificate is a different job from the same volume going into a house with a drive, and the quotation says so rather than absorbing the difference and running out of day.
No price, rate card or transit time appears anywhere on this site, because none of them is knowable before a survey. Begin on the quote form, or read the questions page.
Both addresses, and what kind of building each one is. That second answer tells us how many people have to agree before anything can happen.