Most office moves go wrong in one of three places. The lift in the new building is too small for the desks. The internet doesn't go live on day one. Or the dilapidations bill at the old place comes in twice what anyone budgeted. You can plan for all three. People rarely do.

This is the practical UK office move checklist we work through with clients moving anything from a 12-desk satellite to a 200-person HQ. It's organised around timing, what to do six months out, three months out, the week before, because the single biggest predictor of a smooth move is whether you started early enough.

If you're inside three weeks and only just looking at this, skip to the bottom. There's a section on what to triage when you've run out of runway.

Start at six months out (or the day you sign the new lease)

Most relocations need at least six months of lead time. Moves under that window are doable but usually painful, and the rushed ones are where the unexpected costs show up. Six things to lock in early.

First, name the relocation owner. One person who owns the project end to end. Not a committee. Someone with the authority to sign off changes and the calendar slack to actually run it. If you don't have someone like that internally, hire a project manager for three months. The cost is a fraction of the value they save.

Second, read the new lease properly before you sign anything. Heads of terms, the lease itself, the service charge cap, the rent review date, break clauses, and the schedule of dilapidations the landlord can claim at the end. The dilaps clause is where moves haemorrhage money. A standard FRI lease can leave you paying to strip out and reinstate everything you installed. Get a building surveyor in for a Schedule of Condition before you sign if you possibly can.

Third, plan the exit from the old place. Notice period for breaking the lease. Diary the dilapidations inspection. Three calls to make: what goes back to the landlord, what you're paying contractors to strip out, and what's getting binned because it's not worth moving. A pre-action surveyor's report on dilaps usually pays for itself.

Fourth, build a rough budget. Realistic, not optimistic. The big-ticket items are dilapidations on the old property, fit-out on the new one, IT and AV install, furniture, removals and contingency. Budget 10 to 15% contingency. You will use it.

Fifth, plan the comms to staff. People hear about the move third-hand otherwise. A short all-hands, a written briefing covering location, timing, commute changes and any flexible-working impact. Then a follow-up Q&A two weeks later once people have sat with it.

Sixth, agree what good looks like. What does "a successful move" actually mean for your business? Zero downtime? Same productivity by week two? Better space utilisation? Without a definition, the project ends without a clear sign-off and people drift on for months snagging.

Three to four months out

This is when the long lead times bite. Get the orders in.

Business broadband and phones first. This is the single most underestimated bit of any office move. Openreach can take eight to ten weeks to install a leased line, longer if there's any fibre civils work. SoGEA and FTTC are quicker but capped on speed. Order the day you sign the lease, not the week before move-in. If the new building doesn't have fibre to the building yet, that timeline can stretch to four months.

Then your IT design. Where do the servers live? Are you keeping any on premises or going fully cloud? Network drops, Wi-Fi access points, cabling, AV in meeting rooms. The IT layout has to match the desk layout, not the other way round.

Furniture is its own decision. Inventory what you've got. Decide what survives the move. Office furniture depreciates faster than most people think and a tired chair in a fresh space drags the whole fit-out down. Second-hand commercial furniture in good nick is an undervalued option, especially for tier-two desks and meeting rooms.

Book the removals firm. Three months out is when good firms still have your dates available. Six weeks out is when you're stuck with whoever's left. Get three quotes, ideally including a logistics-led firm rather than just standard removers, and ask each about lift access, parking dispensations, and weekend or out-of-hours rates.

And confirm decommissioning of the old space. Strip-out, electrical isolation, IT decommission, secure data destruction, furniture removal and recycling. WEEE regulations apply to old electronics. They can't go to landfill. Reputable removals firms will handle this or refer you to a partner.

Six to eight weeks out

By now the structural decisions are locked. The next six weeks are about chasing detail.

Notify everyone with your address on file. Companies House for the registered office. HMRC for PAYE, VAT and Corporation Tax. Your bank, insurers, pension provider, suppliers, customers, and the ICO if you're a data controller. Build a master list. The legal entities go first because some of them have statutory deadlines.

Update marketing assets in parallel. Website footer, Google Business Profile, any directory listings, email signatures, business cards, letterhead, invoice templates. If you're rebranding alongside the move, double the time you've allowed for design and print.

Run a risk assessment for the new building. Fire wardens, first aiders, evacuation plan, accessibility check. If you've got staff with mobility, sensory or other access needs, the new building has to work for them on day one, not after a complaint.

Sort the insurance. Employer's liability, public liability, contents, business interruption. Get cover at the new address effective from move day, with overlap on the old property until handover is complete. A two-week overlap is a sensible default.

Schedule the IT cutover with your provider. When are mailboxes migrated? When does the line at the old office get ceased? Are you going through a hybrid period with both spaces live? This usually wants a phased approach. IT installs and tests at the new building while the old one is still running.

Three to four weeks out

Things start moving fast. Three weeks out is the last point where surprises don't blow the timeline. A problem found at this stage is fixable by month-end. The same problem found on the Tuesday before move day is overtime, weekend rates and a crisis email to the leadership team.

Site visits in the new building this week. Walk it with the removals firm and the IT install team. Measure lift dimensions. Confirm loading bay access times. Check whether the building has out-of-hours access and what the security process is for the move-in window. Check parking. In Central London, you may need a temporary parking dispensation from the local authority. Those need lead time too.

Print the floor plan large. Tape out positions on the floor of the new space if you can. Walking the layout always reveals what plans on paper miss.

Pack lists and labels. Every box, every piece of equipment, labelled with destination room and floor. Colour-coded if you've got multiple floors. The removals crew shouldn't be making decisions on the day about where things go.

Decommission redundant kit early. Old laptops, monitors, printers, archived paper. Get rid of it before the move. Moving things you're going to bin within six months is paying twice.

Confidential paperwork needs its own plan. Anything covered by GDPR or commercial confidentiality wants a documented chain of custody during the move. Either move it yourself in locked containers or use a removals firm with a documented secure data handling process.

The week before

Final IT test in the new building. Power, network, Wi-Fi, phones, printers, AV. Find the problems on a Tuesday so you can fix them by Friday.

Confirm the moving crew. Numbers, vehicles, arrival times at both ends, contact numbers, contingency.

Brief staff in detail. What to pack themselves, what the removers handle, what the new desk allocation looks like, where to park, how to get in, who to call if they can't.

Check the kettle and the loo roll. A fully kitted-out office that doesn't have basic kitchen and toilet supplies on day one is an immediate own-goal with the team.

Move day

The actual day is mostly logistics if the planning was good.

Have a co-ordinator at each end. The relocation owner stays at the new building. Someone senior stays at the old one until the last item is out and the dilaps inspection is booked. Both have direct contact with the removals foreman.

Photograph the old space empty before you leave, including any damage, dilaps issues and meter readings. This will save arguments later.

Don't try to work normally. Out-of-hours moves (Friday evening through Sunday) cost more in removals fees but save the cost of lost productivity. For most businesses they're worth it.

First week in the new office

The temptation is to call it done and move on. The first week is when the small problems surface and they're cheaper to fix while everyone's attention is still on the move.

Walk the building at the end of each day for the first week. Mark every snag, including desk wobble, lighting fault, missing cable, broken blind. The fit-out contractor will close most of them out under their snagging period if you raise them quickly.

Final IT signoff with the team, not just the IT lead. Print, scan, video conference, hot-desk login, file access, VPN. If your sales team can't print to the upstairs printer or finance can't get into the file server, the migration isn't done, regardless of what the project plan says.

Update everything that wasn't done already. Check Companies House has the new address registered. Google Business Profile is a common one to forget. Drop a card or email to suppliers and customers with the new details.

Common things that go wrong

A few patterns we see again and again on UK office moves.

The lift is too small. Standard office desks fit most lifts. Larger boardroom tables, mid-century pieces, server racks and copy machines often don't. Measure before you book the move, not the day before.

The internet isn't ready. Eight weeks of Openreach lead time turns into twelve when there's a civils job involved. Cellular failover or a temporary 5G router for the first fortnight is cheap insurance.

Dilaps come in over budget. Schedule of Condition at the start, sensible reinstatement during the lease, and a pre-action surveyor's report at the end. The amount landlords claim and the amount they'll actually settle for are usually different numbers.

Out-of-hours access turns out to be restricted. Some buildings, particularly serviced or shared offices, don't allow weekend moves without supervision and additional cost. Confirm in writing before you commit to a Saturday move.

Staff don't know where they're sitting. The desk plan exists but only the project lead has seen it. Stick the desk plan on the wall by the new entrance. Email it round. Drop it in Slack. People want to know where they're sitting before they walk in on Monday morning.

When to get a removals firm involved

Anything above 20 desks usually wants a logistics-led move rather than a generic two-people-and-a-Luton job. The size of vehicle, the access at both ends, the IT decommissioning, secure document handling, and the timing of pack-up versus install all benefit from someone who's done it before.

For smaller moves, a competent local removals firm is fine. For anything with sensitive data, valuable equipment, or tight timing windows, get specialists in. The cost difference is usually a few hundred pounds. The cost of getting it wrong is missed deadlines, broken kit and angry staff.

We run home and business removals across the UK. Full-service planning, secure handling, weekend and out-of-hours moves, and we co-ordinate with your IT and fit-out teams. If you've got a move coming up and you want a sensible quote and a sense check on the timeline, get in touch before you start commissioning suppliers.