The instruction sheet for the DA15 job listed four areas, and the garage was the one that mattered. Not attached to the house — a separate brick garage right at the bottom of the garden, reached down a path that narrowed the further you went. Loft as well. Garden. Every room in the property. The occupier wasn't going to be there, so we worked to a written brief: clear it, clean it afterwards, and take the waste to a licensed transfer site.
That was May 2025, off the Blackfen side of Sidcup, and it ran to two loads on the same day plus the clean. A small fridge freezer came out of the kitchen. A mattress. One POP item — that stands for Persistent Organic Pollutants, the rule covering most upholstered domestic seating, so sofas and armchairs now have to travel to a separate permitted outlet instead of going in with ordinary household waste. The rest was what you'd expect from a family house lived in for decades. Boxes in the loft that hadn't been opened since they went up, garden furniture gone green, a garage of tins, timber offcuts and things kept because they might come in handy. A garage and loft on the same instruction is the ordinary shape of a house clearance Sidcup enquiry, and it is the part people most often forget to mention when they first ring.
A clearance instructed by a solicitor
A firm of solicitors instructed us on a house clearance where the property sat on a road with a controlled parking zone, and the parking was settled before anything else was. The case worker handling the estate applied to have bays suspended for the day and sent the confirmation through in advance, with a contact number in case anything went wrong on the morning: "Please see attached email confirmation of the parking bay suspension. Any issues on the day there is a contact number below and hopefully someone will be able to assist."
Two bays, suspended outside the entrance, warning notices going up on the signage the week before so road users knew not to park there. That is a solicitor who has done this before. The clearance itself was one load: a full house team, a fridge freezer, one POP item, and the whole lot into regulated recycling and disposal. It went through as a single day's work because the van could stand where it needed to stand — which is precisely the point of the bay suspension, and the reason we ask about parking before we ask about contents.
Where the postcodes run
We work the whole belt. DA14 and DA15 across Sidcup itself, Foots Cray, North Cray, Longlands, Lamorbey and Albany Park; DA16 for Welling and Falconwood; DA17 for Belvedere; DA8 for Erith, Slade Green and Northumberland Heath. Westwards it's SE9 for Eltham, New Eltham and Mottingham, SE2 for Abbey Wood and the Thamesmead edge, and SE18 for Woolwich and Plumstead. Bexleyheath, Bexley Village and Ruxley fall inside the same run, and Chislehurst just over the Bromley boundary. Most of that is the London Borough of Bexley; SE9, SE18 and part of SE2 are Greenwich, where the household waste rules differ — worth knowing if you've already been told your nearest recycling centre won't accept something.
If the property you're dealing with sits outside the DA14 and DA15 lines, the neighbouring pages will be more use to you. house clearance in Bexleyheath for the DA6 and DA7 side, house clearance in Bexley for the village and the Old Bexley roads, house clearance in Welling for DA16, and house clearance in Bromley for anything past Chislehurst.
Sidcup station sits on the loop line running Dartford, Bexley, Albany Park, Sidcup, New Eltham, Mottingham and Lee into London Bridge, and that line is a fair map of where the vans spend the week. If you're standing on that platform while an executor's flat sits empty above the shops on the High Street, you're the sort of caller we get.
What happens to the contents
Anything still usable gets offered on before it's binned. Furniture in sound order, unopened household goods, tools, books, kitchen equipment — Bexley and Greenwich both have shops and community projects that will take that sort of thing, and diverting it costs you nothing. Metal goes for scrap. Green waste off garden clearances is kept apart. What's genuinely finished travels to a permitted site, weighed in and recorded, and we can produce the paper trail if a solicitor or an agent asks for it. Our Environment Agency waste carrier registration is CBDU419679. Check it on anyone you hire round here — fly-tipping in the lanes out towards North Cray and Ruxley is a standing problem, and when waste is traced back the penalty lands on the householder it came from.
A few things can't ride in an ordinary van load. Half-used tins of gloss, propane and butane cylinders off a patio heater or a caravan, solvents, car batteries, asbestos sheeting from a 1950s garage roof. Those need their own arrangements, and we'll say so on the phone rather than turn up and refuse on the doorstep. Asbestos is worth a specific mention: it turns up regularly in garages and outbuildings on the interwar estates between Blackfen and Welling.
Garage and loft clearance in Sidcup
The garage and loft are where a Sidcup house clearance actually grows. Downstairs looks manageable, the bedrooms look manageable, and then somebody opens the hatch. On the interwar and post-war estates round Longlands and Lamorbey the detached brick garage is often the oldest untouched space on the plot — decorating leftovers, timber offcuts, garden chemicals, a bench somebody built in 1974 and never dismantled. Lofts run the same way, and the two together can add as much again to the volume.
So tell us about them at the enquiry stage. It changes nothing about whether we'll take the work on; it changes how many hands turn up and how long the day is planned to run. Some of the bigger houses have a proper loft ladder and a boarded floor; others have a hatch and bare joists, which means one person up there passing things down. Either is fine. We just want to know which before the day rather than at nine in the morning.
Probate and executor work
A large share of house clearance in Sidcup is probate house clearance — a house standing empty after a death, an executor holding the keys, and a completion date already booked behind it. We do a great deal of it in DA14 and DA15, and the pattern repeats: the person arranging it lives nowhere near, sometimes two hundred miles off, dealing with a south-east London property entirely by email and phone. Sidcup houses get inherited by people who moved north or west years ago, and they don't fancy three weekends on the train filling a skip.
That is a workable way to run a probate clearance, and most of ours run exactly like it. You don't have to be there. We can take keys from an agent or a solicitor, photograph anything we're unsure about before it goes on the van, and put aside small valuables or paperwork rather than load them. Say at the outset what must be kept — documents, photographs, a particular chest — and it gets set aside for you.
On the paperwork side we're used to invoicing the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly rather than an individual, and payment can come out of the estate once probate allows it. There's no deposit and nothing is asked for up front to hold a date. Copy your solicitor in and the invoice goes to them; if the estate needs the disposal records for the file, we'll send those too.
Not every instruction is disposal
Some estates want the contents sold rather than skipped. Where there's genuine resale value. Furniture, tools, collections, anything a valuer would look twice at — that gets assessed and set out separately from the clearance work, so an executor can see what is expected to come back against what is going out. It's the sensible route on a big house with a full loft and decades of contents, and it's a conversation to have before the day, not on it.
Access, parking and the practical bits
Sidcup is kinder than most of London for access. Driveways on plenty of the roads, decent kerb space along the interwar avenues, and the A20 Sidcup Bypass and the A222 get us in and out without much of a fight. It tightens up around the High Street and the older terraces near the station, and there are stretches of Bexley controlled parking where a van standing all day needs some thought. Give us the road name when you book and we'll arrange it beforehand rather than circling on the morning. As the solicitor above did, a suspended bay outside the door is worth more to a house clearance than an extra pair of hands.
A flat clearance above the shops means stairs and no lift, and a first-floor flat clearance takes longer than identical contents at ground level.
Properties that have got badly out of hand are part of the work, not a reason to be turned away. We've emptied houses where the hallway was a narrow channel between stacked boxes, and no one on the team passes comment. If small valuables or paperwork might be buried somewhere in it, tell us, and anything of that sort gets put aside for you instead of going out on a load.
What the day looks like
We aim to be at the property for nine and to clear it in the day wherever the volume allows. The team walks the house with you, or with whoever holds the keys, and agrees what stays before anything moves — carpets, curtains, fitted units, the shed, the lot. Then it's loaded room by room, worst-access items first while everyone is fresh. If a second load is needed it usually goes out the same day. A clean afterwards can be added if the property is going straight on the market.
If we can't finish, we say so on the day and come back rather than leaving you guessing. Gardens are the usual culprit — the volume behind a fence line is nearly always greater than it looks from the back door.
Frequently asked questions
How quickly can you come? Often within a few days for DA14 and DA15, and we hold dates further out for probate clearances where a completion is fixed. Ring 0800 046 5555 and we'll tell you honestly what's free.
What does a house clearance in Sidcup cost? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or email photographs of the rooms, and you'll be given a figure. We'd far sooner give you that number before we set off than produce one at the kerb, so describe the property honestly — including the garage and loft — and the figure you're given is the figure that stands.
Do I need to be there? No. Keys from an agent, a neighbour or a solicitor are normal, especially on probate work where the executor lives at a distance. We'll report back with photographs at the end of the day.
Who is the invoice made out to? Whoever is instructing — the solicitor, the executor or the estate itself. Payment can come from the estate, there's no deposit, and nothing is required before the work is done.
Do you clear the garage and loft as well as the house? Yes, and gardens and sheds too. Tell us at the enquiry stage so the day is planned around it.
What can't you take? Paint, solvents, gas cylinders, car batteries and asbestos. We'll tell you on the phone and point you at the right route rather than turn up and refuse.
Are you licensed? Environment Agency waste carrier registration CBDU419679, fully insured, and trading since 2007. Everything goes to a permitted site and is recorded, and the paperwork is yours if a solicitor asks for it.
Do you cover outside Sidcup? Yes — Bexleyheath, Bexley, Welling, Erith, Belvedere, Abbey Wood, Woolwich, Eltham, Mottingham, Bromley and Chislehurst are all ordinary territory.
Booking
Send us the postcode, a rough idea of what's in the property, whether a loft, garage or garden is in scope, and when the keys become available. You'll get a figure and a date. Ring 0800 046 5555, or email photographs if that's easier — a house clearance Sidcup enquiry takes about five minutes on the phone. Fully insured, properly registered, working since 2007, and usually able to hold to your completion deadline rather than ours.
