Moving house in London
A London move is the same job as any other move, with three things bolted on that can each cost you a day or a few hundred pounds if nobody thinks about them until the morning.
Those three are where the van parks, what it pays to drive in, and how far your belongings have to travel between the front door and the tailgate.
Where the van parks is the first thing to sort
Outside London you often just park outside. Inside a controlled parking zone you usually cannot, and a removal lorry left on a residents’ bay or a yellow line is a ticket waiting to happen.
The fix is a parking bay suspension: you ask the council to take a bay out of use for your move and put signs up. Every London borough runs its own scheme, its own prices and its own notice period, and they are not close to each other.
Checking a spread of boroughs, the shortest notice was Ealing’s three working days and the longest Islington’s fourteen calendar days. Westminster and Merton want ten working days, Kensington and Chelsea ten for a permit bay, and Hackney, Brent and Wandsworth seven. Mind the unit: working days means Monday to Friday and excludes bank holidays, so ten working days is a fortnight of calendar time, while Islington’s fourteen are plain days. Some boroughs also do not count the day you apply. Some will take a late application with a surcharge and an explanation, and some will not. Those figures move, so check your own borough rather than trusting this paragraph.
Three things make a borough’s page easy to misread:
- A lower price for more notice is a price band, not a deadline. Ealing charges less if you give seven working days but will accept three. Wandsworth’s booking fee drops from £93.20 to £82.50 if you give ten, while its minimum stays seven.
- A council can contradict itself. Richmond upon Thames says ten working days at the top of its suspensions page and seven further down.
- A suspension is not always open to you at all, which no amount of notice fixes. Havering runs its scheme for utility and street works companies, so a household move there needs to ask the borough what else it offers.
It is also worth checking whether you need one. Islington, for instance, says you can park outside your home free of charge while moving: a removal vehicle may sit on a single yellow line or in a resident bay for as long as you need, provided loading is continuous and no other loading restriction applies. A suspension there buys you a guaranteed space, not permission.
Where you do need one, where in London you are changes when you have to start. A move inside one borough is one set of rules; Wimbledon is Merton’s; a move from north London to south London is two sets, two fees and two deadlines, and you work to the longer one.
So this is a job for the week you exchange, not the week you move. Two practical points:
- You usually need a suspension at both ends, and if they are different boroughs that is two applications, two fees and two sets of rules.
- Ask your remover who applies. Some firms do it for you as part of the job and some assume you have. That assumption is worth checking in writing, because it is exactly the kind of thing a quotation can be silent about.
If a full bay suspension is not possible, boroughs also issue dispensations, which let a vehicle wait where it otherwise could not for a set period. Which one you need depends on the street, so describe the street rather than asking a general question.
The Congestion Charge and the emissions zones
Three separate charges, often confused, and all usually the remover’s to pay and yours to be billed for.
The Congestion Charge applies in central London and runs 07:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00 to 18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays, with no charge between Christmas Day and the New Year bank holiday. The daily rate rose to £18 on 2 January 2026 when paid on the day or in advance.
The Ultra Low Emission Zone is the second. It covers most of Greater London rather than just the centre, it runs 24 hours a day every day except Christmas Day, and a vehicle that does not meet the emissions standard pays £12.50 a day. That rate is for vans and specialist vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes, which is most of what turns up to a domestic move.
Above 3.5 tonnes a lorry or van stops being a ULEZ vehicle at all. It is exempt from the ULEZ and falls under the Low Emission Zone instead, which TfL runs over the same ground. The daily charge there is £100 if the vehicle misses the Euro VI standard but still meets Euro IV for particulates, and £300 if it misses Euro IV as well. TfL’s own list of vehicle types in that class names removal lorries. The LEZ runs every day of the year with no Christmas Day exemption, and a heavy vehicle that does meet Euro VI pays nothing under either scheme.
What this means in practice is simple enough. A move that crosses the middle of London on a weekday can attract both the Congestion Charge and an emissions charge, and which emissions charge applies is decided by the weight of the vehicle before anything else. An older lorry is the expensive case, and it is expensive under the LEZ rather than the ULEZ. Ask whether charges are inside the price or added afterwards. A firm that has been working in London for years will answer that without hesitating.
Access is where the hours go
The thing that makes London moves expensive is rarely the distance. It is that the carry is long and the stairs are many.
A third-floor flat with no lift, a van parked sixty metres away because the street is too narrow for it to get closer, and a communal door that has to be propped open by someone, is a materially bigger job than the same quantity of furniture in a house with a driveway. That is why the same three-bedroom move prices differently in a Victorian terrace in north London, a purpose-built block in south London and a suburban semi further out. Our guide to how much removals cost explains why: almost all of it is crew time, and carrying distance is time.
Things worth telling a remover before they quote, because each of them changes the number:
- the floor, and whether there is a lift, and whether the lift is big enough for furniture
- how close a long vehicle can realistically get, not how close a car can
- whether there is a loading bay, a barrier, or a concierge with access rules
- any restriction on moving times, which some blocks and estates enforce
- whether anything will not go up the stairwell and needs taking apart
That last one catches people out in older conversions, where a sofa that came in through a window ten years ago still has to leave the same way.
Why London quotes come in higher
Partly demand, partly the above. The charges are real money, a suspension is real money, and a job that takes seven hours instead of four costs what seven hours costs.
So a London quote generally sits above the national figures in our guide to how much removals cost, and the gap is mostly those three things rather than a London surcharge someone has invented. How far above depends on the borough and the access far more than on the postcode: a ground-floor flat in zone 4 with a driveway can price like anywhere else in the country, while a third-floor conversion in zone 2 with a suspended bay at both ends will not.
That is worth knowing because it changes how you read the spread between quotes. A London quote that looks high next to a national average is not necessarily expensive; it may simply be the only one that has priced the parking properly. What matters is whether the quotes you are holding describe the same job, and our guide to how to compare removal quotes sets out how to check that.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays for the parking suspension, me or the remover?
You do, in the end, either directly to the council or as a line on the invoice. The question worth asking is who applies, because a missed deadline is not something money fixes on the day.
Does a man and van still need a suspension?
Often yes. Suspensions are about the bay, not the size of the vehicle, so a smaller van parked in a residents’ bay in a controlled zone is just as liable. The exception is where you have a driveway or the street is unrestricted at your moving time.
How far ahead should I start on the London-specific parts?
Earlier than the rest of the move. Work back from your moving date by two to three weeks to leave room for the borough’s notice period and anything that needs a second attempt. With the addresses, the floors and the access written down, you can compare quotes from London removal companies and have them price the parking and the charges properly rather than guessing.