How Much Does Office Furniture Clearance Cost in the UK?

By Sam Coggin, Coggin Sustainable Office Solutions

There is no national price for office clearance. There are three ways it gets priced, a shortlist of things that move the number, and one figure the price tables never include: what your furniture is worth against the bill.

There is no national price for office clearance, and any figure you find quoted as one is describing a different job from yours. What there is instead is a small number of pricing models, and a shortlist of things that move the number a long way. Once you know both you can read a quote properly, and you can tell whether two quotes are even for the same work.

The Three Ways Clearance Gets Priced

Almost every quote you receive will be built one of these three ways, and knowing which one you are looking at matters more than the number on the bottom.

• By volume, usually van or lorry loads. Simple and common, and it suits a small clear-out. It rewards the contractor for filling the vehicle rather than for sorting what is in it.
• By workstation or by item. Better for a whole floor, because the count is something you can check and compare. Ask what a workstation is taken to include.
• By day rate for a team and a vehicle. Usual on large or phased projects, and the fairest basis when access is the hard part rather than the volume.

A quote that does not say which of these it is built on is not a quote you can compare with another one.

What Actually Moves the Number

Two identical piles of furniture in two different buildings are not the same job. In order of how much they change the price:

• Access. Lift or stairs, how far the carry is, whether the lift can be booked, whether the loading bay is shared.
• Timing. Out of hours and weekend work costs more because the labour does. A landlord who insists on evenings changes the price before anything is lifted.
• Volume and mix. A floor of matching desks is quicker to strip than the same volume of odds and ends.
• Distance from the depot, and in London the emission and congestion charges that apply to every vehicle every day.
• What is in it. Upholstered seating that may contain POPs has to be kept separate and destroyed at a permitted incinerator, and that is a cost on the job.

What Comes Off the Other Side

This is the part the price tables never include, and on a commercial clearance it is often the largest single number. Furniture with resale value can be valued and credited against the clearance invoice, so the figure you pay is the net one.

As an illustration, a clearance priced at £8,000 with £2,500 of creditable furniture in it leaves £5,500 to pay. Where the resale value is high enough it can cover the job entirely. What earns credit is specific, and quality task chairs in matching batches earn the most by a distance. We set out what earns credit and what does not in full.

The practical consequence is that a headline price means very little on its own. A higher quote that credits your furniture properly can cost you less than a lower one that does not.

Why the Cheapest Quote Is Often the Most Expensive

A very low price usually means one of three things, and all of them come back to you.

• The furniture is going to landfill rather than being sorted, so nothing is credited and your waste figures are worse.
• The carrier is not licensed, which leaves your duty of care unmet and the liability with you rather than them.
• The quote covers the easy part and the extras arrive later, typically for lift bookings, out-of-hours access or the items nobody priced.

Duty of care does not transfer with the furniture. If your waste is fly-tipped after it leaves your building it is still traceable to you, so a waste transfer note for every load is not paperwork, it is your evidence.

How to Get a Quote You Can Compare

Send the same information to everyone you ask, and you will get numbers that can be put side by side:

• The postcode, the floor, and whether there is a lift and a loading bay.
• A rough count by type, so desks, chairs, storage units and tables, rather than a total.
• Photographs of each area, which are worth more than any description.
• Your dates, and whether the building forces evening or weekend work.
• Whether you want the resaleable items valued and credited.

That last line is the one most people leave out, and it is the one that changes the number most.

Most clearances can be priced from photographs and a list without a site visit. If a supplier cannot give you a figure from that, ask what they still need to know and why.