Man and Van London

London is the one city where the road rules change the price of a move rather than just the route. The congestion charge applies in central London during its charging hours, and the ultra-low emission zone now covers the whole of Greater London, so an older vehicle either pays daily or does not come.

Both are worked out and included in your quote before you book rather than added afterwards, which is why a central London job and an outer-borough job of the same size are not the same price. Red routes matter more than either.

On a red route you cannot stop to load at all during controlled hours, and the nearest legal loading point may be a street away, which turns a short carry into a long one. Bus lanes and school streets restrict access at fixed times of day, and school streets in particular close residential roads entirely during drop-off and pick-up.

Any of these can be worked around. They just have to be known about before the van is booked rather than discovered at eight in the morning.

Parking is the single biggest variable in a London move, and it is the one most likely to add hours to a day. Most inner boroughs are permit-controlled for the whole working day, which means there is nowhere legal to leave a van outside the front door without arranging something first. There are three routes and they are not equivalent.

A parking bay suspension reserves the space and is the reliable option, but boroughs need notice, commonly several working days, and each one has its own form, its own fee and its own lead time. A dispensation allows a vehicle to sit in a controlled bay for a set period and is quicker to obtain in some boroughs.

Visitor permits work for a car and are rarely usable for a large vehicle. Estates and new-build developments add a fourth situation, because the roads are often private and enforced by a management company rather than the council, so the borough rules do not apply and the estate office is the only place that can help.

Whichever applies, apply for it as soon as the date is fixed. A suspension refused for lack of notice cannot be fixed on the morning.

Most London moves are flat moves, and the building decides the day. In a managed block, the goods lift usually has to be reserved in advance through the building manager, and often only for a set window such as ten until four. Some blocks will not allow a move at all at weekends.

Where a lift is available it is worth measuring, because a lift that will not take a sofa upright turns a fourth-floor move into a stair carry.

Converted Victorian and Edwardian houses are the other common shape and they bring their own constraint: a narrow half-landing with a tight turn will stop a two-seater sofa or a large wardrobe that would go through any doorway in the building.

That is why flat-pack furniture is often dismantled rather than carried whole, and why it is worth telling us about a bulky item at the quote stage. Basement flats have the opposite problem, with steps down to a front door and a railing that limits the angle. None of this is unusual in London.

All of it costs time, which is why it belongs in the quote rather than in a conversation on the doorstep.

In most of the country the start time is about convenience. In London it is about traffic and access rules, and the two point in different directions. Starting early gives you clear roads and a full working day, and it is the right choice for a move crossing the city or heading out of it.

It is the wrong choice on a school street, where the road is closed at exactly that hour, and awkward in a managed block where the concierge is not on duty until later. Mid-morning starts avoid both rush hour and the school run and are the safest default for an inner-borough move.

Anything crossing the centre is better done outside the congestion charging hours where the route allows it. If both addresses are in London, plan around the harder of the two rather than the more convenient one, because the difficult end sets the length of the day and there is no useful time saved at the easy end.