Moving Office Out of Hours in London: Planning an Evening or Weekend Move

Most London offices move when nobody is working: on a weekday evening, a Saturday, or across a whole weekend. Doing it that way protects the working week, but it brings problems a daytime move never meets. The building is closed. The receptionist who usually lets people in has gone home. The alarm is set, the goods lift may be switched off, and the security desk may not know you are coming. Residents above the shop next door are trying to sleep.

This guide is about planning around those problems. It covers getting permission and access, the alarm and the keyholder, the goods lift and loading bay out of hours, noise and permitted hours, the IT shutdown and restart, telling staff, and how to split a bigger move across a weekend. It ends with a Friday-to-Monday runbook and a table of who does what. For what each time slot costs, see how London office removals are priced.

There are three out-of-hours shapes, and the right one depends mostly on the size of the office and how quickly you need to trade again.

• One weekday evening. Suits a small office, a studio or a single team, where the whole load fits one vehicle and can be loaded, driven and unloaded before late evening. Staff pack during the day, the crew arrives after close, and people come in the next morning to a working office if IT can reconnect overnight or first thing
• A Saturday. Suits most small and medium offices. The crew has a full day, the building is usually quieter, and Sunday stays free for IT, reassembly checks and anything that ran over. Weekend loading also tends to be easier in streets that are full of deliveries on weekdays
• A whole weekend, in phases. Suits an office too large for one day, or one with a server room, a large archive or more than one floor. Packing and shutdown start on Friday evening, the main move runs on Saturday, and Sunday handles the second load, reassembly and IT

On price, one paragraph is enough here because the cost guide works it through in full: evenings add 15% and Sundays and bank holidays 20% to the labour and dismantling on our rate card, Saturdays carry no surcharge, and the surcharge is shown as its own line. When an evening begins on our rate card is confirmed in your quote.

What usually decides the shape is not the surcharge but the building. Many office buildings only let tenants move at set times, and some will not allow it on a Sunday at all. Ask before you plan anything else.

The window you ask building management for has to cover the time the crew actually spends at that building, not the whole job. The old office needs the loading hours; the new office needs the unloading hours. Our quote form starts every office from defaults for each vehicle: a loading time, an unloading time and a crew. They are estimates of what that size of load usually takes, and your own inventory and access set the real figure in the written quote.

Here is every vehicle with its defaults, plus the 15 min our quote form adds for driving 5 miles across London, and the time each job would finish from a 07:00 Saturday start or an 18:30 weekday evening start. The 18:30 start is our assumption for the example.

Three things stand out. First, everything up to the Luton Box Van finishes by about 11:30 from a 07:00 Saturday start, which is before TfL's weekend Congestion Charge starts at 12:00. Second, an evening works for loads up to the Luton Box Van, which only just finishes by about 23:00; from the 5.5 Tonne Lorry upwards the job runs past 23:00 and finishes 01:00 next day or later. "CC hours" in the table means TfL's charging hours, which only matter if either office is inside the Congestion Charge zone. Third, the biggest loads need more than one shift whatever the day, which is why they are usually planned as a weekend.

When you ask for the slot, ask for a margin either side. The crew needs time to protect the route and set up before the first item moves, and a margin protects you if the lift is slow. How to book a goods lift for moving day explains how to work out a slot and what to send the building.

In the daytime, getting in is not a question. Out of hours it is the most common reason a move starts late, and a crew that is ready but cannot get in is paid time. Work through these at both buildings, old and new.

Permission, in writing

Ask building management, or the landlord if there is no managing agent, whether an out-of-hours move is allowed, on which days and between which hours. Check your lease or the tenant handbook too, because many set the hours for moves and deliveries. Get the answer by email. If the security desk is run by a contractor, ask building management to pass the booking to them, and ask for the name of the person on duty.

Keys, fobs and passes

Fobs and passes for the new office are often issued only from the lease start, and sometimes only after a building induction. Find out when they will be ready and who will hold them on moving day. At the old office, check whether out-of-hours fobs work on every door the crew will use, including the goods entrance and the loading bay shutter. A fob that opens the front door but not the service corridor is a common surprise.

The keyholder on site

Name one person from the business at each building who will be there from the crew's arrival to the end, with the authority to answer questions. At the old office that is usually the move coordinator. At the new office it may be someone else, who must arrive before the first vehicle does. Make sure both have each other's number, ours, and the security desk's.

The alarm

An intruder alarm going off at 21:00 on a Friday stops a move in its tracks. Confirm who sets and unsets it at each building, whether the codes or zones will change, and whether the alarm company or monitoring centre needs telling about the move. GOV.UK explains that councils can declare alarm notification areas, where an owner or occupier with an alarm must give the council the details of a key holder. That key holder must have the keys, be able to reach the alarm, be based near the premises, know how to turn it off and agree to do it. Where councils cannot reach a key holder, they can enter without force to silence an alarm that has sounded constantly for 20 minutes or on and off for an hour. You do not want any of that on moving night, so check the alarm arrangements at both ends the week before.

If access is late on the day, the crew waits, and waiting is charged at £40 per crew member per hour. Our quotation terms list waiting and access restrictions among the reasons a job can go into overtime, so confirming access is the cheapest preparation there is.

Out of hours, the goods lift and the loading bay are often run differently from the daytime. Some buildings switch the goods lift to a key-operated mode in the evening, some need a security officer or lift operator present, and some share the bay with deliveries that also happen at night. Ask about each of these when you book.

• Is the goods lift available for the whole window? Ask whether it is switched off or locked after a set hour, and who can switch it back on
• Does anyone need to operate or attend it? If the building needs its own staff present, ask whether there is a charge and who pays it
• Who else is using the bay? Contractors, waste collections and deliveries can be booked into the same evening
• Is the passenger lift a fallback? Usually not for furniture, and many buildings forbid it, but it helps to know before a lift fails
• What is the out-of-hours fire procedure? Ask who is the responsible person on site that night, where the assembly point is, and which doors must stay closed

That last question matters more out of hours, when fewer people are in the building. GOV.UK explains that the "responsible person" for fire safety includes the employer, the landlord, the occupier and anyone with control of the premises, such as a facilities manager or managing agent, and that where there is more than one they must work together. In shared buildings, the landlord, freeholder or managing agent is responsible for the common areas. On moving night your business, the building and the crew are all working in those common areas at once, so agree the arrangements in advance.

If the goods lift is out of action on the night, the move becomes a stair job: stairs are charged at £10 per person, per flight, per hour at that address, and the work takes longer. Ask building management who to call if the lift stops out of hours. The goods lift guide has the email to send and what to measure.

Central London offices often share a street, or a building, with flats. A move in the evening means vans, trolleys, tail-lifts and voices outside people's homes, and that is where out-of-hours moves can cause trouble.

GOV.UK sets out how councils in England deal with noise. Councils must look into complaints about noise that could be a statutory nuisance, at any time of day or night, and that includes noise from vehicles, machinery or equipment in the street. They can also issue warning notices for noise above permitted levels between 11pm and 7am, including from premises that are not homes, where the person responsible for the premises may be guilty of an offence if the noise continues.

None of that makes an evening move unlawful, but it is a good reason to plan the noisy part of the job, the loading in the street, for before 23:00 in a residential area. That is one reason the window table above treats 23:00 as the practical end of an evening. If your load will not finish by then, a Saturday is usually the better choice.

If the new office is being fitted out

A move often lands in an office where a fit-out is still finishing: cabling, partitions, flooring. That work is controlled by the council's construction noise rules, which are tighter than the rules for a move. In Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the council's Code of Construction Practice summary allows noisy works audible at the site boundary from 8am to 6pm on weekdays and at no time on Saturdays, Sundays or bank holidays, and says the 6pm weekday end is in line with all other London boroughs. So a fitter who promises to finish the noisy jobs "over the weekend before you move in" may not be allowed to. Agree the fit-out finish date with that in mind, and ask your contractor which hours their council permits.

Tell the neighbours. A short note to the flats above and the businesses either side, saying when the van will be outside and for how long, costs nothing and prevents most complaints. Building management can often pass it on for you.

If either office is in central London, the time of day decides whether the Congestion Charge applies. TfL charges £18 a day if paid on the day or in advance, between 07:00 and 18:00 on weekdays and between 12:00 and 18:00 on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays, with no charge between Christmas Day and the New Year's Day bank holiday, inclusive. On our quotes it is TfL's charge shown as its own line, and there is never a ULEZ charge because our vans meet the standard.

For planning, that gives three useful rules. A weekday evening start after 18:00 is outside the charge. A Saturday or Sunday that starts at 07:00 and is finished by 12:00 is outside it too. And a job that overruns into the charging hours brings the charge back, which is one more reason to have everything packed and access confirmed before the crew arrives. London road charges for moving day covers the zone and the rest of TfL's rules.

The physical move is the easy part to schedule. The IT is what decides whether Monday works. Our quotation terms say we do not disconnect or reconnect plumbing, gas or electrical appliances, and that includes computers, servers, network equipment and phone systems. Our crew packs, carries, loads and places the equipment. Your IT team or supplier shuts it down before we arrive and brings it back up afterwards.

That means an out-of-hours move has two more windows to book, and they belong to IT:

• The shutdown window, before the crew arrives. Everything is backed up, powered down cleanly, unplugged, and labelled by desk position. On a Friday-evening start, that means IT is working from late afternoon
• The restart window, after the crew leaves. Servers and network kit go in first, then desks are connected and tested. On a Saturday move, Sunday is the restart window; on an evening move, it is the next morning before staff arrive

Back up before anything is switched off. The National Cyber Security Centre advises small organisations to back up all the data the business needs to operate, online or on an external device, and suggests using both, so a lost or failed device does not take the only copy with it. It also says a storage device should not stay connected when not in use, and that it is important to know how to restore a backup and check it holds your important data. Do the test restore the week before the move, not on moving night.

Some decisions to make with IT before you book the crew:

• What travels with the crew, and what does not. Laptops, backup drives and anything holding sensitive data are best carried by staff or IT, not packed in the general load
• What goes on the vehicle first and comes off first. Network kit and the server need to be at the new office early, so IT can start while desks are still being placed
• Whether the internet line is live at the new office. If the new connection is not active by Sunday, nothing else in the restart window can be tested
• Who tests what on Sunday. One person sitting at a desk and making a call, sending an email and printing a page is a better test than a dashboard

Packing an office move covers how to pack and label the IT kit itself; this guide is only about the timing.

An out-of-hours move asks more of staff than a daytime one. Some will be packing on a Friday afternoon, some may be needed on Saturday, and everyone needs new instructions for Monday. Tell them in stages, so each message arrives when it is useful.

• When the date is confirmed: the date and shape of the move, the deadline for packing their own desks, and who the move coordinator is
• Two weeks before: who is needed out of hours and when, whether that is paid or given back as time off under your own policies, and how laptops and personal items should travel
• The week before: how to get into the new building on Monday (fob, pass or reception sign-in), the new address and nearest stations, the desk plan, and what to do if their desk is not working
• Friday: a reminder to take laptops and chargers home, clear the drawers, and leave the desk labelled and ready for the crew
• Sunday evening: a short message confirming the office is ready, with the time doors open and who to tell about any problem

Keep the number of people at the office out of hours small. A keyholder, an IT lead and someone who knows the floor plan are usually enough. More people does not make the move faster, and on our quote, the lifting, stairs and furniture are what the crew is there for.

This is the plan we see work for most London offices moved over a weekend. It assumes a Saturday move with an early start, a load that fits one shift, and IT working on Friday afternoon and Sunday. The times are a starting point; your own window table and building rules set the real ones.

Two rules make that runbook work. Nothing is packed on Saturday morning, because packing on the day is the most common reason an office move runs over. And Sunday is not a moving day: it is the buffer that absorbs a slow lift, a missing fob or a desk that would not go back together.

Most out-of-hours problems come from a task that everyone assumed someone else had. This table sets out who normally owns each part of a London office move with us. The AFS column comes from our quotation terms and published service; the other columns are the usual split, which your own building and IT supplier may change.

A few of those lines are worth spelling out. Desk dismantling and reassembly is priced per item from our published list, with a £90 minimum booking. A parking suspension is not part of our quote unless agreed in writing: you apply to the council and pay its fee. Our terms make the customer responsible for legal access for the vehicle and for telling us about height, width, weight or road restrictions before booking, which matters for loading bays with low clearance. And disposal of general waste or customer-owned materials is excluded, so old furniture and old IT need their own route.

When the load is bigger than one shift, split it rather than stretching one day. The window table shows why: the 18 Tonne Lorry defaults take about 10 hours from start to finish, which no evening and few buildings will allow in one go.

Ways to split it

• By time: Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday. Archive boxes, storage and anything not needed on Monday go on Friday evening; desks and IT on Saturday; the remainder and reassembly checks on Sunday. Friday evening carries the 15% evening surcharge and Sunday the 20%, so keep those sessions to what has to be done then
• By area: one floor or department per weekend. Each team moves on its own weekend and the rest keep working. This needs both offices open at once for a period, so check the lease dates at both ends first
• By priority: the minimum to trade first. Network, phones and the desks needed on Monday move first; meeting rooms, storage and archive follow on a later evening

Each phase needs its own goods lift and bay booking at both buildings, its own keyholder rota, and its own Congestion Charge check. Each phase is also its own job on the quote, with its own minimum hours. Tell us at the start that the move is phased, so the plan and the quote match.

Using a bank holiday weekend

A bank holiday Monday gives IT an extra day to restart before staff return. The next bank holiday weekends in England and Wales, from GOV.UK, are:

• Easter Monday, 29 March 2027: after Good Friday on 26 March, a four-day weekend
• Early May bank holiday, 3 May 2027: a three-day weekend
• Spring bank holiday, 31 May 2027: a three-day weekend
• Summer bank holiday, 30 August 2027: a three-day weekend

Move on the Saturday, which has no surcharge on our rate card, and use the Sunday and the bank holiday for IT and settling in. A move on the bank holiday itself carries the same 20% as a Sunday. Christmas Day falls on a Friday in 2026, with the Boxing Day substitute on Monday 28 December; TfL makes no Congestion Charge from Christmas Day to the New Year's Day bank holiday, inclusive, but many buildings close their loading bays or run reduced security over that week, so ask before you plan around it.

The move is only finished when people can work. On Sunday evening, before you send staff the all-clear, walk the new office with this list.

• Access for everyone. Fobs or passes issued, the reception list updated, and the alarm set and unset routine known by whoever opens up
• A working desk for every person in on Monday. Screen, keyboard, network and power tested at each position, not just the server
• Phones and the main number. Calls reach the new office, or are diverted, and the voicemail does not mention the old address
• Printers and shared drives. Mapped and tested from a desk, not from IT's laptop
• Signs. The building's directory and the door sign show your name, and a sign at the old office points visitors to the new one if building management allows it
• Post and deliveries. Suppliers and couriers have the new address, and someone will check the old office for post in the first weeks
• The registered office address. If it is changing, file it with Companies House. GOV.UK is clear that the address does not officially change until Companies House has registered it, so do not leave it until after the move
• A named person to report problems to. One contact for anything that is not working, and a short list of who fixes what

For the full pre-move plan, from the date to the floor plan, use the office move checklist. For labelling desks, boxes and equipment so they land at the right position, see how to label office furniture and equipment.

An out-of-hours quote is built the same way as any other, with the slot and the building rules added. The more the team knows about access before the day, the closer the quote is to what you pay. Our quotation terms say overtime applies only where the job runs over because of additional items, customer-requested work, waiting, access restrictions or delays outside the agreed scope, and an out-of-hours move that is properly planned rarely meets any of those.

Every out-of-hours move with us includes the same basics as a daytime one:

• Goods in Transit cover. Included on every move, not sold as an add-on.
• Public Liability cover. In place on every job, at home or at work.
• Our own crew. Every mover is employed by AFS. We never pass your move to a subcontractor.
• One named coordinator. Your single point of contact, from the quote to the last box.

For the full office service, see office removals in London. If people in the business are moving home too, our house removals in London page covers that on the same rate card, and the London house removals team can plan both around the same weekend.