Removals in Newham

Removals Newham: what the borough was built as

Newham is two Victorian boom towns joined together. According to the Victoria County History of Essex, West Ham had 6,485 people in 1801 and 289,030 by 1911, when it was the seventh-largest county borough in England, and more than 30,000 houses went up there between 1871 and 1901 alone. East Ham’s boom came later and was even steeper: it went from 32,713 people in 1891 to 96,018 in 1901. Both became part of the new London Borough of Newham in 1965. The result is a borough where the street pattern, and most of the houses on it, were laid down within about forty years.

That history is still the best guide to what a move here involves. The terraces built for clerks, skilled workers and factory hands have narrow halls and steep, straight stairs. The estates built after the Second World War have lifts, caretakers and parking courts. The newest blocks, round Stratford and along the Royal Docks, have concierge desks, booked loading slots and, often, no parking permits at all. We ask which of the three you are moving out of, and which you are moving into, before we fix the crew, the van and the start time.

The terraces: most of the houses we move in Newham

The County History gives the West Ham building peaks as about 1877 to 1883 and 1897 to 1901. In the north of the old borough, estates such as Woodgrange, east of Woodgrange Road, went up in those years; south of it the streets round West Ham Park were laid out for the middle-class buyers the park was expected to attract. In East Ham the Burges family, the parish’s largest landowners, began building on about 400 acres shortly before 1890, and the estates at Upton Park and Plashet followed the same pattern. The historians describe them as nearly all alike: long terraces of small but well-built houses for clerks and skilled workers.

For a removal crew, those houses are predictable in a useful way. Most have a front door straight off a short front garden, a hall about one person wide, a single straight flight of stairs, and a back addition with the kitchen. Sofas and large wardrobes often come out through the front bay rather than round the newel post, and beds are taken apart in the bedroom before they go down. Many have been split into flats, which means two or three households sharing one hall and one stair on the day. Our page on getting large furniture out of a narrow terrace explains the measurements we ask for. The kerb outside is almost always inside a resident parking zone, which is covered further down.

The post-war estates and towers

Both towns were heavily bombed. The County History records that about 14,000 houses in West Ham, over a quarter of the borough’s houses at the time, were destroyed in the Second World War, with the worst damage in the south. Between 1945 and 1965 West Ham council built more than 9,500 new dwellings, the largest scheme being the Keir Hardie estate north of the Royal Victoria Dock. East Ham rebuilt in the same years: Priory Court on Priory Road, a multi-storey block of 96 flats, was finished in 1953, and the redevelopment of North Woolwich in 1965 added 488 homes, laid out round small squares with five-point blocks of eight storeys.

Moves from these estates depend on things outside the flat. We need to know the floor, whether there is a lift and how big it is, whether the estate has a caretaker or housing officer who wants notice, and where a van can stand. Estate roads and parking courts are often outside the street parking zones, so the council’s suspension does not always apply; we check with the estate before the day. If the lift is out of service, the crew size changes, so we ask you to tell us as soon as you hear. Our notes on moving from a flat with no working lift cover what that does to the time and the price.

The newer blocks: car-free and concierge-run

Over the last few decades much of the former dock, gasworks and railway land has been built over with blocks of flats, and the Olympic site has added a new district at Stratford. Many of these were built as car-free or car-restrained developments. Newham’s own moving-home page warns that if you move into one, you may not be entitled to a resident parking permit, and that matters on moving day as much as afterwards: no permit usually means no visitor permit for the van either. Instead, the van normally uses the building’s loading bay or service road at a time the management office has booked. We arrange that slot with the concierge, send the insurance certificate they ask for, and plan the lift bookings at both ends. Our guide to moving into a new-build home in London lists what to ask the developer or managing agent before completion.

Flats above the shops

Newham’s main roads are lined with shops that have flats above them, often reached by a side door and a narrow stair straight off the pavement. Two things make these moves different. The van has to stop on the main road or the nearest side street, which can mean a red route or a loading bay with limited hours. And on many busy roads Newham runs timed rubbish collections, where residents with no space for a bin put purple and orange bags out only at set times; the council warns that leaving rubbish out at any other time can bring a £200 fixed penalty. On a moving day that rules out stacking empty boxes or wrapping on the pavement, so our crew takes the packaging away in the van. Our page on side-door flats over a London shop covers the stair, the door and the parking.

Clearing out before you go

Many Newham moves start with a clear-out, and the council has two routes for it. Its bulky waste service gives each household three free collections in a rolling 12 months, each of up to six items, with £30 charged for any collection after that; it aims to collect within five working days, and the items go out only once you have a booking reference, or a £100 penalty can follow. In blocks of flats the caretaker or housing manager says where to leave them. Landlords and managing agents pay £30 a collection plus £12 an item. The other route is the Jenkins Lane re-use and recycling centre, which is free for Newham residents and open from 07:30 to 17:45 every day, but which does not admit Luton vans or vans with tail-lifts, so it is a trip for a car rather than for our removal van. If you book the council collection a week or two before the move, the crew only carries what you are keeping. Our guide on decluttering before moving house helps decide what goes.

Renting in Newham

Many of the moves we do in Newham are between rented homes, and the council licenses private landlords. Its current selective licensing scheme started on 1 June 2023, and the council’s position is that every licensable property let privately in the borough must have a licence, with penalties of up to £30,000 for landlords who do not have one. If you are about to sign a tenancy, it is reasonable to ask the landlord or agent for the licence number before you book the van. At the other end, our student and room moves cover the single rooms and shared houses near the university campuses at Stratford and the Royal Albert Dock, and our notes on moving out at the end of a tenancy deal with deposits and check-out dates.

Newham removals: the smaller jobs and the in-between days

Not every move is a whole house. A sofa from Forest Gate to a flat in Canning Town, or a room’s worth of boxes between two Plaistow streets, is a job for our man and van service, priced by the load and the stairs. Where a purchase and a sale do not complete on the same day, our storage between moves holds everything until you have the keys, and our full or part packing can be done the day before. Every Newham street is inside the London ULEZ, and our explainer on what ULEZ and the Congestion Charge add to a removal shows why that never appears as an extra on our quotes.