Most house clearance work in Kennington begins the same way: a property that has to be emptied, a street with nothing but permit bays, and somebody a long way off holding the keys. We have been clearing houses since 2007, and this corner of south London is a regular run for us. Here is a recent one, and it did not start with a wardrobe. It started with the parking.
The property was in SE17, a short walk in from Kennington tube, on one of those streets where the front doors open more or less onto the kerb and every space is a permit bay. There was no drive, no side gate, no yard to back into. The only sensible place to stand a van was the end bay directly outside the door, so we applied to Southwark for it, and we applied early, because this borough wants a week's notice on a suspension and will not be hurried. The approval came back with a line we have learned to take at face value: "We cannot guarantee the parking bays you have paid to suspend will be vacant, however we can assist with moving parked vehicles." On the morning it mattered, the bay was clear. It is not always.
Inside was a whole house and then some. The clearance team took two loads out on the first day, and that was before anyone had opened the back door. A mattress. A POP item, one of the upholstered pieces that has to be handled on its own paperwork. A normal fridge freezer, and then an American-style one, the wide double-door sort that takes four hands, a strap and somebody walking backwards through a Victorian front door that was never built for it. The garden came next: a tidy team for a day and two more loads off it, the sort of overgrowth that happens when nobody has been able to get out there for a couple of summers. Then the house was cleaned through, room by room, and the keys went back. That was April 2026.
Instructed from a hundred miles away
Neither of our SE17 clearances was ordered by somebody standing in the hallway pointing at things. Both were instructed from the best part of a hundred miles from the front door, by people handling the property on behalf of the owners.
That changes how you have to work. Nobody local is going to meet you with a key and tell you the wardrobe stays. So everything gets agreed up front, in writing and in photographs: what is coming out, what is staying, who holds the key, what happens if the meter cupboard is locked. We send pictures back the same day rather than a summary at the end of the week. And we deal with the council paperwork ourselves, because a client three counties away has no realistic way of arranging a bay suspension on a Southwark permit street.
The earlier of the two was in September 2025, again in SE17, again on a street with nothing but permit bays. Two spaces suspended for two days that time, directly opposite the door. It was a three-bed property and it went in a single day: first load out, then a second load the same day rather than coming back on the Tuesday. Out came the usual weight of a lived-in London house, a mattress, another POP item, a fridge freezer, the contents of every cupboard. Then the cleaners went through the three bedrooms and the rest of it, and the keys went back the same week.
Where the load actually goes
Furniture somebody else would happily live with does not get tipped. We put it in front of a reuse scheme or a charity that can take a collection from a narrow SE17 street, or into the decent second-hand trade.
What is genuinely finished is weighed in at a licensed transfer station and comes back to us as a docket, load by load, so there is a paper trail for every van that leaves your kerb. We are insured for the work and registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679. Ask for the transfer notes and you will get them.
Two things need saying because they catch people out. Sofas, armchairs, footstools, office chairs, anything with the old foam in it, are classed as POPs, and since 2023 the law will not let them ride in with the general load. They go off on a separate regulated route and are destroyed rather than buried, and we tell you which items fall into that group before the van moves. Both of the Kennington jobs had one. Second: half-used tins of paint, camping gas canisters, solvents, old paraffin heaters. Those are not going in the back with the wardrobes. They need their own route, and we will either arrange it or point you at it, but nobody should be shoving a gas bottle into a load and hoping.
Getting a van onto a Kennington street
The clearance itself is rarely the hard part around here. The kerb is.
Kennington sits on the Lambeth and Southwark boundary, which is enough on its own to make people uncertain who they are applying to for a suspension. Nearly the whole area is controlled parking. The Georgian terraces off Kennington Road and around Cleaver Square have no off-street parking to speak of; the later Victorian streets running towards Walworth are the same; and the post-war blocks between here and Elephant and Castle have their own restrictions on top. If your clearance is above ground floor, add a communal stairwell with a tight turn at the half-landing, because that is what the fridge freezer has to come down.
So we do it the slow, boring way: work out the loading spot before the date is fixed, apply for the bay, allow for the council's review time, and build the schedule around when the bay is actually granted rather than when we would like it. Where a suspension is not possible we will say so and we will carry further, but you should be told that before booking, not on the morning.
Areas we cover round here
SE11 and SE17 first, which is Kennington itself, Walworth, Newington and up to Elephant and Castle, and then south through SE5 for Camberwell and SE15 for Peckham and Nunhead, as far as SE22 for East Dulwich. We are in SE1 around Borough and Waterloo, SE16 for Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, SE8 for Deptford, SE21 for Dulwich Village and West Dulwich, SE23 for Forest Hill, SE24 for Herne Hill, SE26 for Sydenham and SE19 for Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace. Beyond that we are regularly in Oval, Vauxhall and Stockwell, split between Southwark and Lambeth: Walworth and Newington on the Southwark side, Kennington, Oval, Vauxhall and Stockwell on the Lambeth side.
Some of the places around us have pages of their own. If the property is not actually in SE11 or SE17, you may want house clearance in Brixton a mile down the road, house clearance in Battersea across the river bend in SW11, or house clearance in Croydon, the bigger town south of us.
If you are arranging things from elsewhere, Kennington and Oval are both on the Northern line and Elephant and Castle brings in the Bakerloo and the mainline, so an executor coming down for a morning to hand over keys can usually do the whole thing and be back at their own front door by evening. East Dulwich station covers the SE22 end, and Denmark Hill covers SE5.
The kinds of house clearance Kennington asks for
Probate house clearance in Kennington
Most of what we do here is probate work. A flat or a terrace has to be emptied before it can be sold or handed back, the executor is often nowhere near London, and the paperwork matters as much as the lifting. We are used to working to an executor's instructions by email and photograph, to leaving named items behind, and to keeping the waste documentation tidy enough to sit in the estate file. Our probate house clearance page sets out how those jobs run.
Flat clearance in SE11 and SE17
A flat clearance is a different animal to a house. Communal stairs, a lift that may or may not be big enough for a wardrobe, a caretaker to notify, and a bin store nobody wants filled with your load. We walk the route before the first item moves, and if the lift is out we say so before the day rather than after.
Hoarder house clearance in Kennington
Houses that have quietly filled up over twenty or thirty years do not faze us. We have opened doors onto rooms you can only get a couple of feet into, and the crew gets on with it, no faces pulled and no remarks. Hoarder house clearance usually needs more hands and more days than the owner expects, and sometimes a clean and a pest treatment afterwards.
End of tenancy clearance and rubbish removal
Landlords and managing agents ring us when a tenancy ends badly and the flat has to be let again quickly. If there is no full clearance in it, just a van's worth of furniture and bags, that is house rubbish removal rather than a clearance, and it is a shorter job.
Garden, garage and loft clearance
Gardens, garages and lofts sit alongside the clearance rather than being someone else's problem. On the spring job the same booking covered the emptying, a day of garden tidying and the clean afterwards, which is why the bay had to be suspended around the work rather than for one straight run. Ask whether we can take something odd, a piano, a shed's worth of tools, a garage nobody has opened since 2011, and more often than not the answer is yes. We just want to know first, so the right van and the right number of people turn up.
Who we invoice, and the awkward houses
On probate work we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate once things settle. There is no deposit to find before we start. What the work will come to is not something we will guess at over the internet: ring the office or send photographs and you will get a figure back.
If cash, jewellery, medals or paperwork turn up in a drawer, they are set aside in a bag and handed back to whoever instructed us. That happens more often than you would think in a house nobody has been through properly in decades. And if you want an item kept rather than cleared, tell us in writing before the day, because once a wardrobe is on the van it is on the van.
If you need one clearing
Ring us on 0800 046 5555 and describe the place: how many bedrooms, which floor, whether there is a garden or a loft still full, whether there is any chance of getting a van outside the door. Photographs are better than a description, so send a few through the form on this page and you will get a proper figure back rather than a range. The quote is free and does not commit you to anything.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Kennington
Can you invoice the solicitor, or be paid from the estate?
Yes. On probate work we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come from the estate once probate is through. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work rather than coming before it.
How do I find out what a house clearance in Kennington will come to?
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through, or send photographs through the form on this page. Room by room is best, plus the loft, the garden and the garage if there is one. You will get a figure back from that, not a guess made at the door.
Do you sort out the parking?
Yes, and on a Kennington permit street that is half the job. We work out the loading spot, apply to Lambeth or Southwark for the bay suspension, and build the date around when it is granted. The councils here want about a week's notice, so early instructions help.
Can you take a fridge freezer, a mattress and the sofa?
All three, though each goes a different way. Fridge freezers are degassed under the regulations, mattresses go off on their own route, and upholstered furniture is treated as POPs and destroyed rather than buried. American-style fridge freezers we have brought out through Victorian doorways more than once.
Do you clear flats above ground floor?
Regularly. Much of our SE11 and SE17 work is flats. Tell us the floor, whether there is a lift, and how tight the stairwell turns, and we will bring the right number of people.
Do you clean afterwards?
We can. Both of the Kennington clearances described above finished with a clean through the whole property before the keys went back, which is usually what an agent or a buyer wants to see.
