Office and commercial clearance

What we clear from a commercial property

House clearance is our bread and butter, but a good part of our work is offices, shops and commercial units. In practice we remove just about anything a workplace accumulates:

• workstations, desks, pedestals, office chairs and meeting furniture;
• filing cabinets, shelving units and storage cupboards;
• IT and electricals — computers, monitors, servers, printers, kitchen appliances (handled as WEEE, the regulated route for electrical waste);
• paperwork and files, including confidential documents for secure shredding;
• carpets and carpet tiles, scrap metal, and heavy machinery;
• general office junk, boxes and the clutter that fills a working building.

Whether it's a two-room office above a shop or several floors of a building, the job is the same to us — we just bring the right number of vans and people.

Fixtures, fittings and full strip-outs

End-of-lease and refurbishment jobs often need more than the furniture taken away. We strip out fixtures and fittings too — suspended ceilings with their lighting, wiring and metal frame, kitchen units, stud partition walls, and the odd awkward item most clearers won't touch. We've removed reinforced cash counters and safes weighing over a tonne, and cleared carpet tiles down to bare floor ready for the next tenant or a dilapidations hand-back.

If your lease requires the premises returned to a 'shell' condition, tell us what the schedule of dilapidations asks for and we'll clear to it.

Confidential paperwork and IT

Offices carry data as well as furniture. We handle confidential paperwork for secure destruction — a single insolvency clearance can produce twenty sacks of documents that have to be shredded rather than tipped — and IT equipment is wiped or destroyed and recycled through the proper WEEE route. It matters under UK GDPR: customer and staff records leaving a building unsecured is the business's liability, so we treat paperwork and old computers as carefully as we treat the desks.

Insolvency, relocation and end-of-lease

Commercial clearances usually come from one of a few situations, and we're used to each:

• Insolvency and administration. We work for accountants and administrators winding up a business, clearing the premises to a deadline and dealing with confidential records properly.
• Relocation and downsizing. Moving to new premises and clearing what isn't coming with you — often with usable furniture passed to second-hand office dealers rather than skipped.
• End of lease. Clearing and stripping out so the premises can be handed back on time and a dilapidations bill avoided.
• Shop and unit clearances. Retail fit-outs, stock and fittings cleared quickly between tenants.

How we work — around your business

The main thing an office clearance has to do is not get in the way of the working day. So we schedule around you — evenings, weekends or a quiet period — and we're punctual, because a team that turns up late costs you access time you may have booked with a landlord or agent. Our staff are uniformed and directly employed; we don't hand your building to subcontractors we can't vouch for. And we pack vans efficiently, which keeps the number of trips, and the price, down.

What it costs

Commercial clearances are priced by the load, like our house clearances, from £695 +VAT per load with all labour included and no hourly rate — each further load on the same day is half price. Strip-out work (ceilings, partitions, heavy fixtures) is quoted on top once we've seen what's involved. We confirm the scope from photos, a floor plan or a quick site visit before we start, so the figure you're given is the figure you pay. There's no payment upfront.

What happens to the furniture and waste

Usable office furniture is worth something, so where we can it goes to second-hand office dealers or is donated rather than scrapped. The rest is separated for recycling — metal, wood, cardboard and WEEE electricals through their proper routes — and only what genuinely can't be reused is disposed of. It all moves under our Environment Agency upper-tier waste-carrier licence to approved facilities, with a record of where it went. Commercial waste fly-tipped and traced back to your business is your liability, so a licensed carrier who can show the paper trail isn't optional.

Where we cover

Churchills is a family-run business clearing houses since 2007, licensed and insured to £10 million public liability. We clear offices, shops and commercial premises across Surrey and south-west London — Guildford, Woking and Kingston across to Croydon, Sutton, Twickenham and the south-west London boroughs. Call and tell us what needs clearing.