Most of the house clearance work we do in Skegness starts with a phone call from somewhere else — a son in Nottingham, a daughter down in Kent, a solicitor holding a set of keys and a completion date. Abacus has been clearing houses since 2007, and the PE25 and PE24 end of the Lincolnshire coast has been on our round for a long stretch of that. The job below is one of ours, from April 2021, and it is the sort that never photographs well.
It was out at Wainfleet, in PE24, and it went onto the books as a verminous clearance rather than an ordinary house clearance from the moment it was booked. Booked on the ninth of April for the twenty-seventh, that was — a fortnight's notice, which suited everybody, because work like that wants planning rather than squeezing in at the end of a week. One team leader, his own crew, one property, one day.
The word "verminous" gets thrown about loosely in this trade, so we keep a written definition and the office sends it out before anybody commits to a date. It reads: "Decaying food, human faeces, animal faeces, bodily fluids (human or otherwise), animal carcasses, heavily soiled scenes, death in the property, drug paraphernalia (needles etc.), and the general decaying of waste itself is classified as a verminous clearance." That list covers everything that can put a job into that category; it is not a description of any one house. Any of that and the job is a different animal from the first bin bag onwards — different kit, different bagging, a different disposal route, and nobody puts a hand into anything without gloves and a mask on. What was actually inside that house is not ours to publish. The contents of somebody's home belong to them and to their family, and a page on the internet is not where they go.
What I will say is that houses which have quietly got away from somebody are a steady part of house clearance in Skegness and along this coast generally. Nobody on the team makes a performance of it. Nobody stands in the front room passing comment. We bag, we carry, we hand the keys back to an empty house, and that is the end of it.
Not all of it is furniture
Appliances catch people out more than anything else. Anything wired in or plumbed in — an oven on a spur, a washing machine hard-plumbed under a worktop — stays where it is unless somebody qualified has disconnected it first. Anything on a plug comes out with us. Fridges and freezers then travel on their own route, because the law treats them as hazardous waste and they cannot be tipped in with a general load.
Outbuildings are half the work in this part of Lincolnshire. Brick coal sheds. A lean-to greenhouse with the glass long gone. A garage that has not had a car in it since the seventies and has had forty years of paint tins, folding garden chairs, seed trays and offcuts of timber posted into it instead. None of that appears in the photographs of the sitting room, and it is the usual reason a day out here runs a good deal longer than anyone planned.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Skegness
Probate house clearance in Skegness
Probate is the bulk of it. A bungalow in PE25 stands empty, probate is being dealt with by a firm two counties away, and somebody has to get the place cleared before it can go on the market. A probate house clearance is no different in the doing — same vans, same crew, same nine o'clock start — but the paperwork side matters more, and people are usually doing it at the worst month of their lives. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever suits the family, and payment can come out of the estate once probate has been granted. There is no deposit and nothing is asked for up front. Say at the booking stage who the invoice goes to and it saves a fortnight of it being forwarded about afterwards. There is more on how we handle estate work on our probate house clearance page.
End of tenancy clearance in Skegness and PE24
The other steady one is end of tenancy work. Landlords and agents behind the seafront, and out at the park home sites, ring us when a tenant has gone and left half a flat behind. A bed frame, a broken settee, four bags in the hall and a shed nobody had looked in for years. An end of tenancy clearance is usually a single day and often a small load, and the property gets swept through at the finish so the next person walks into something clean. We photograph the empty rooms and email the pictures the same evening, which tends to be the end of any argument about what was left.
Garage and loft clearance in Skegness
Plenty of people do not need a whole house doing. A garage and loft clearance on its own is a common booking round here, particularly on the older semis inland where the loft was boarded out in about 1985 and has been filling up ever since. Tell us at the booking whether the loft is boarded and whether there is a proper ladder or a hatch and a chair, because it changes how the day is set up rather than anything else.
Hoarder house clearance and rubbish removal
Hoarder work and verminous work are not the same thing, though they overlap often enough. A hoarder house clearance is about volume and about doing it without anybody being made to feel small; a verminous one is about safety and containment. Sometimes a property is both. Where there is no furniture involved at all and it is simply waste that wants shifting — a yard, a garden, a garage floor — that is house rubbish removal rather than a clearance, and it is a shorter conversation.
Where we go from Skegness
The town is PE25, with PE24 next to it for Wainfleet and Burgh le Marsh, and those two districts are what this page is about. Spilsby, Alford, Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea, Horncastle and Woodhall Spa sit in their own districts on the same round, and the bigger towns beyond them have pages of their own. All of it East Lindsey, all of it Lincolnshire, and all of it a long way from anywhere on a wet Tuesday in February.
Vans come in either on the A52 up the coast or across on the A158 from Lincoln through Horncastle and Burgh le Marsh, depending where the house is. If a customer wants to meet us and does not drive, Skegness station is the end of the Poacher line, with Wainfleet and Havenhouse the two stops before it, so an executor can come across from Grantham or Nottingham and be home the same evening. Several have done exactly that.
Neighbouring towns have their own pages rather than being lumped in with this one. Inland and south of us, house clearance in Boston covers the fen and the PE21 side. house clearance in Louth takes the LN11 wolds and the villages behind Mablethorpe; and house clearance in Lincoln is the one to start with if the property is west of Horncastle.
Access, parking and the time of year
The seafront end of town is the tight bit. Guest houses and converted flats behind Grand Parade, narrow frontages, cars nose to tail on both sides, and by half past nine in July the road is finished. We would far sooner do a house clearance here out of season, and if the date has any give in it we will say so. Between October and March we can usually put a Luton right outside the door and walk everything ten feet.
Then there are the statics and park homes at Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards — site barriers, one-way loops too narrow for two vans to pass, a warden who wants telling in advance, gates locked altogether over the winter. Book those in with the site as well as with us, or the morning starts at a closed gate. Inland it is easier. Bungalows on the edge of Alford and Spilsby, terraces in Louth, the older brick semis around Horncastle, mostly with a drive or a verge to pull onto.
Flats are their own thing again. A flat clearance in one of the PE25 conversions behind the front usually means a shared stair, no lift, a landing you cannot turn a settee on, and a neighbour underneath who is on nights. We work quietly and we do not prop the street door open.
Executors, solicitors and jobs run from a distance
A good share of the house clearance work out here is instructed by somebody who lives nowhere near it. That is normal and it does not slow anything down. We can take keys from a solicitor's office, from an agent or from a neighbour, the team leader walks the property and photographs it before anything is touched, and photographs of the empty rooms go out the same evening. Nobody instructing a probate clearance has ever had to attend one, and most do not.
Waste transfer notes come back for every load and we keep them. If a solicitor wants them for the estate file, or an executor wants them for their own records, we send them over. Where a house has something in it that is genuinely worth money, we say so before it goes anywhere — that is not a favour, it is what you do when you are clearing on behalf of an estate.
What cannot go in the van, and where the rest ends up
Paint and thinners, gas bottles off a caravan, car batteries, old fuel cans, anything with asbestos sheeting in it — none of that travels in an ordinary load. The county's household recycling centre takes most of it and asbestos has its own specialist route, but it is not ours to carry.
Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs and anything else with foam inside count as POP items. Since the rules changed they cannot be mixed with the general load at all: they go off separately and are destroyed at a permitted facility. Fridges, freezers and mattresses each have their own route as well, for the same sort of reason.
The rest gets sorted rather than tipped wholesale. Sound furniture, tools, crockery, books, pictures — we would far rather those turned up in a charity shop in Louth or a reuse project than under a lorry. What is left over goes to a permitted transfer station. We are insured for the work and registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679.
Common questions about house clearance in Skegness
What will it cost to clear a house in Skegness? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk the property through, or take a dozen photographs on your phone and send them through the form on this page. We will give you a figure on that. The estimate is free and it does not commit you to anything.
Can you invoice a solicitor for a probate house clearance? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. Payment can come from the estate once probate has been granted, and there is no deposit — nothing is asked for before the work is done. Tell us at the booking who the invoice is going to.
Do we need to be there on the day? No. We can collect keys from an agent, a solicitor's office or a neighbour, and you get photographs of the cleared property the same evening. Items of sentimental value can be put aside and posted on if you ask before the day.
How much notice do you need? Two working days is usually plenty for a straightforward house clearance in Skegness. Verminous work and anything on a holiday site want longer, because the site office has to be told and the kit has to be loaded for it.
Do you clear just a garage, or just a loft? Yes — a garage and loft clearance on its own is a perfectly normal booking, as is a single-item collection. You do not have to have the whole house done.
Do we need to box anything up first? No. Put to one side whatever you are keeping and leave the rest. The crew clears out cupboards, wardrobes and drawers, and will lift carpets and underlay if that is what you want.
Booking one
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk the property through, or take a dozen photographs on your phone and send them across through the form on this page — every room, the loft hatch, the shed, the drive. We will give you a figure on that. And if it is a house we genuinely cannot judge from pictures, we will say so and re-estimate on the doorstep before a hand is laid on anything. Two working days' notice is usually plenty. There is no deposit, and where an estate is paying we are used to waiting for probate.
