18 January 2021
Office Clearance Services
Read Time: 4 mins
Having completed over 200,000 clearances each year, Clearabee knows a thing or two about office clearances. Whether your office clearance is needed for relocation, a refit or simply a store cupboard clearout, Clearabee can help with your office clearance and get you back to business. Let’s start at the beginning…
An office clearance is a broad category of rubbish clearance. It typically involves the removal and recycling of unwanted items from the office by a professional clearance company. Normally, labour and loading forms part of the office clearance service.
Clearabee can undertake almost any office clearance. As the UK’s largest clearance company, we have experience of small, large and complex office clearances. We are engaged to clear anything from just a couple of bulky items or a store cupboard to large multi floor premises as part of an office re-design or relocation.
But before we can begin the clearance there are a few things that you need to give some thought:
Office clearance: what you need to think about
There are a few things we recommend customers consider in advance of our arrival:
Let others in your office know we are coming and that you are having a clear out
We recommend this because it gives people time to prepare items they want to keep and those items they want to have recycled.
We operate a same day service across the country, and this will normally apply to an office clearance too. With over 120 vehicles and almost 300 staff, we can make quick work of most office clearances. If you are planning your office clearance ahead of time, then you can specify when you want us to start work. When required, an out of hours service is available, so your clearance can take place when the office is empty or less busy – but we will need notice of this.
For most smaller clearances we will send one team, which will be made up of one or two people depending on the waste you need clearing. For example if you have just a few bin bags, it may be a one or two person team, but if you have bulky waste it will be a two-person team.
If the clearance is large or there are other issues such as difficult access, we may send additional teams which means even the largest clearances can be completed in one day or less, as long as we know the scope of the job in advance.
Ensure the items to go are separate from items you are keeping
The saying ‘one person’s junk is another person’s treasure’ comes to mind. Keeping items you want to keep far away from the junk is highly recommended – ideally in another room.
We provide the staff required to complete the clearance. Some customers choose to dismantle items or move them outside the property but this is normally to reduce disruption and is not a requirement. Offices containing a large amount of tiny items spread all over the place may wish to consider bagging or boxing these items in advance of our arrival.
We will not ask you to help with the office clearance, other than showing us what we need to clear.
Check draws, boxes and bags before we arrive, to ensure there is nothing you want to keep
Sometimes valuables are buried at the bottom of a filing cabinet or box. Thoroughly check everything. However, we do offer a flexible service, which means we can take more or less items on the day, so we do not need to know exactly what is going. Customers often add to the collection when we are on site and we can nearly always accommodate these requests.
We do however, recommend customers provide us with as much information as possible so we can ensure we properly resource the office clearance.
Consider parking and let us know the situation in advance
We include all reasonable labour and loading but if we have to park away from the property or there is no parking at all, additional charges could be incurred. If you let us know the situation in advance, we can help you plan or organise a parking suspension or skip permit.
Consider access to lifts
Lifts can be in high demand in busy buildings. You may need to let your neighbours or the building manager know that we are coming. Where possible we will use the stairs, but with some items this may not be safe or practical.
Consider access to and out of the building
Buildings with access control or automatically locking doors can increase the length of time it takes to clear a site. Organising a fob or guest pass for our teams to use can save a lot of time and a lot of buzzing at doors.
Check there are no confidential items we are disposing of without knowing
These items include paperwork containing confidential or sensitive information as well as data stored on computers and digital mediums. If you need items securely disposed of you will need to discuss this with us in advance so we can plan for it.
What can be cleared from an office?
We can clear almost anything found in an office. Typical office clearances include:
Bulky Waste, including:
Desks and work benches
Operator chairs
Filing cabinets
Storage cabinets
Plants and planters
WEEE Waste including:
Screens and monitors
Desktop computers
Photocopiers and printers
Old lighting
Fixtures including:
Ceiling tiles
Racking
Window frames
Stationery
Paper
Pens
There are some things we cannot remove which include:
Liquid waste
Chemicals and solvents
Sharps including needles
Follow this link for more on office clearances.
Office Clearance: how much does it cost?
Office clearances range in price from less than £100 to thousands. The primary driver of the cost of an office clearance is the size or volume of a collection, but it can also be impacted by the time taken to clear and the weight of the items being collected.
Labour is only a factor when there are considerable access issues such as a lack of parking. Weight charges only apply for large amounts of very heavy items and are very rarely charged on a typical office clearance involving bulky waste, furniture and general rubbish.
There are several ways to get a cost for your office clearance, as listed below. You can choose to simply book a collection online with your best guess and we’ll sort it all out when we arrive on site. This is particularly convenient for urgent clearances or smaller clearances. Other ways of finding out the cost of your office clearance include:
Send us a list of items
We complete thousands of clearances every week, so if you are struggling to work out costs yourself then just send a list to us and we will send you back an estimate.
Send us photos
Photos can be very useful and will allow us to provide the most accurate estimate. Send as many as you can and leave the rest to us.
Have a chat with us or request a call back
We are open 7-days-a-week. Start a webchat with us or request a call back.
Order a flexible service
Our office clearances are flexible, which means we can clear more or less on the day. This means if you get your estimate a little wrong, it won’t stop us clearing your office for you.
Use our waste calculator
For a slightly more enjoyable and interactive way of estimating your waste, try out our brand-new Waste Calculator which allows you to add the items that you need removing from your office and you’ll receive a bespoke waste quote in return. The waste calculator includes removable office cupboards, desks and chairs, and smaller items such as lamps, printers and faxes amongst others.
The Waste Calculator can also provide bespoke quotes which are specific to your location and can be tailor made for skip hire and Skip Bags as well as ‘Man and Van’ services. For example, the clearance of a small office, consisting of 8 desks and 8 chairs equates to 10 cubic yards. This would be estimated at a cost of £309.99 to use a ‘Man and Van’ clearance team with reasonable labour included, whilst the hiring of a skip to dispose of this waste would cost £279.36 but means that you would have to load the skip yourself. The Skip Bag option is not appropriate in this instance due to the volume and weight of waste that needs collecting.
Office clearance: additional costs
Potential additional costs that can be associated with office clearances depend on the location and accessibility of your office premises. If your office premises do not have parking which allows reasonable access to the items that need clearing, then the cost of more appropriate parking will be applied to the cost of the office clearance. We are happy to park further away or even get a parking ticket where it is safe to do so, but these costs will need to be passed on.
If your office clearance takes advantage of skip hire to complement your office clearance service, then the chances are that you’ll need to acquire a skip permit and/or a parking suspension to situate your skip on the public highway or a parking bay respectively. Of course, this is not relevant if the skip can be situated on the private land associated with (and accessible to) your business.
Labour charges rarely apply but could be considered if there is a lot of loose, scattered waste or where access is difficult, such as in a top floor office without lift access or desks that need dismantling to get out.
We have tried to keep extra charges to a minimum but there are some items which crop up in office clearances which do cost a little extra. This is normally due to the additional compliance and recycling charges we incur so the following applies:
Undercounter kitchens, fridges and freezers: £25 (larger commercial fridges will cost more)
Aircon units: £25 per unit
TVs and monitors: £15
Fluorescent tubes: £2.50 each
As with all of Clearabee’s waste removal services, the most effective method to cost the office clearance service is to contact Clearabee with the list of items you need removing. This means that we are able to `provide a bespoke quote which is tailor-made for your business so we can work more effectively together and ensure efficient clearance.
Office clearance services from Clearabee
Clearabee’s rapid, reliable service can take care of all of your office item removals on your behalf. You can send us an itemised list of the office items that you want to dispose of or, alternatively, send us images of the collection which we can then use to provide you with a quote for the clearance. This option means that we can prescribe a service which is most suitable for your office and the size of the collection. Alternatively, you can pay a flat call-out fee and our friendly field staff can provide you with a full quote once they have arrived on site and have assessed the collection.
The more detail you are able to give us on the intended collection, the more accurately and effectively we can assign your clearance. This could mean the difference between us sending a single person or a two-person team whilst also making the collection as quick, cost-effective and environmentally friendly as possible. Our rapid-reaction removals can usually attend your office and get your clearance underway on the very same day. Which means you can get back to business.
As far as we can tell, Clearabee is the most reviewed clearance company in the country, by quite some margin. We have 10,000 reviews on Trustpilot with a rating of 4.9. We think this speaks for the quality of our national office clearance service.
Office clearance: compliance
As the UK’s largest clearance company, Clearabee is trusted to complete thousands of collections every week. Compliance is incredibly important, particularly to businesses where a Duty of Care must be applied.
Clearabee is a licenced waste carrier and you can visit the EA website here to view our licence. Insurance-wise, we have £20m public and employers liability insurance. Many companies operate with £5m or less, which for an office clearance could be far too risky if something goes wrong. This is why we have Gold Standard insurance.
We employ almost 300 staff all over the UK. Our staff are uniformed and undergo a DBS check, ensuring they can work safely on your premises. We also provide a digital Waste Transfer Note for all movements we undertake. We retain copies which can be requested should you need a copy in the future. Our Waste Transfer Notes will tell you where the items went including the site licence, site permit and site landfill diversion rate.
We own and operate our own vehicles and currently have over 125 on our fleet. These vehicles are tracked with a blackbox solution, ensuring no easy tampering. They also have a tablet onboard. Finally, almost all of our vehicles now have a 5-camera live system, actively monitored by the Clearabee Risk Management team, allowing us to guarantee the highest standards to you. Most of our vehicles which are used for office clearances are contained, box-style vehicles. This ensures security and privacy. Most of our vehicles are built on an advanced, lightweight chassis which further reduces co2 compared to a standard vehicle.
Office clearance: recycling
Here at Clearabee, we are also proud of our environmental credentials. Whether it’s from house clearances, garden clearances or office clearances, at least 95% of what we collect is diverted from landfill. Most of the items we collect are transferred to a Materials Recycling Facility. Here they are graded where they will be re-used, recycled or recovered via energy from waste. A very small % of items end up in landfill, typically less than 5% across the UK.
We have extensive re-forestation projects in the UK and have planted almost 20,000 trees since 2018 and created two new UK forests. We use this to offset the carbon from our in-house fleet of vehicles and office operations. All of this means that even if you no longer have any use for your old office furniture, then Clearabee can make sure that it doesn’t go to waste and that you’re doing your bit for the environment.
If you’re ready to book your office clearance, then give Clearabee a buzz.
Disclaimer: Costs and charges featured in this blog may have changed since the publication date. Please contact Clearabee directly for up-to-date costs and charges.