Flat & apartment
Every flat move turns on one question: whose permission do you need, and how far in advance. The furniture is downstream of the answer.
Who you ask
Nobody — but measure everything
A Victorian or interwar house divided into flats, with a shared street door and a staircase that was never meant to be shared. No agent to clear it with, which sounds easier and is not: the constraint is physical, and the only way to know whether the sofa leaves in one piece is to measure the turn at the top of the stairs before the day.
Who you ask
The managing agent, sometimes
Post-war and later blocks around Hayes Town and Yeading. Often a lift sized for people rather than furniture, and occasionally a rule about permitted hours. We take the internal lift dimensions at survey and establish whether anyone needs telling — because in half these blocks nobody does, and in the other half they very much do.
Who you ask
The concierge, in advance, for a window
The converted wharf buildings and the newer developments along the Grand Union. A booking system for the service lift, a reserved loading bay, protection to be fitted, and frequently a requirement to see our insurance before anyone is admitted. The window is finite, so the load order is built backwards from it.
Whoever you do or do not have to ask, these four decide the method.
It is an ordinary Hayes job. It changes the crew size and the time on site, both of which come out of the survey — which is exactly why we ask which floor you are on before quoting rather than after.
Sometimes not, and far better to know at the survey. Where it will not, either it comes apart, or it goes out through a window with a crew trained for it, or it stays. All three are workable; being surprised on the morning is not.
Normal in the canal-side developments. We speak to the concierge or agent, book the lift and the bay for a window, fit whatever protection the building asks for, and plan the load order around that window.
Send them as early as you can. Several blocks will not admit a removals crew without seeing cover details first, and the morning of the move is the worst possible time to discover it.
That is usually better as a man-and-van job — the same wrapping standard, a smaller vehicle, priced by the job.
Tell us the floor, whether there is a lift, and anything the building asks for. That is most of the survey done already.