Most of the house clearance work we do in Littlehampton starts with a phone call from somebody who isn't in the town. An executor in another county. A daughter three hours up the road. Sometimes a solicitor's office ringing on behalf of an estate that includes a house in BN17 nobody has been inside for months. The property has to be emptied, made presentable and handed over, and none of the people responsible for it have a spare fortnight to do it themselves. We have been clearing houses since 2007, and probate work of that kind is the bulk of what we do in Littlehampton.
That shape of job is common down here. Somebody dies, the house has to be emptied and made presentable, and the person doing the arranging is often a relative living miles away with a solicitor in between. We're used to invoicing a firm rather than a person, sending a receipt where we're told to send it, and taking key instructions second-hand.
A flat clearance, and the question about the bed
A flat clearance we took on one September gives a fair idea of how these run when the person organising it is nowhere near the property. They were abroad and working, and dealing with us entirely by email at odd hours. They opened with a list — two beds, two mattresses, a chest of drawers, a two-seater sofa, a dining table and four dining chairs, two small side tables, a coffee table and a keyboard — and asked for a firm figure and a morning slot the following week.
We asked for photographs instead. A list doesn't show size or material, and those two things decide how much room something takes in the van and how it has to be handled. Two beds might be a pair of slatted singles or a pair of divan doubles, and that is not the same job at all. So we said so, plainly, and asked for a picture of each item.
The questions came back one at a time, which we far prefer to silence. Would the beds be dismantled, or taken the way they were? We dismantle; not an issue. What exactly was the POP item on the estimate? The sofa. Since the start of 2023 the Environment Agency has treated upholstered furniture as persistent organic pollutant waste — sofas, sofa beds, armchairs, headboards, bed bases, dining and office chairs, footstools, bean bags, loose sofa cushions. It cannot be shredded in with general bulky waste; it goes to an incinerator permitted to take it. Which brought us straight to the bed bases, and the line that settled the day: "The divan bed isn't upholstered, so that should be okay."
It was, and that mattered, because it changed how the load had to be sorted before it ever left the property.
Then parking, which they queried as well — they hadn't seen any meters and couldn't understand why we'd flagged it. We went back and told them what the road actually showed: bays signed for permit holders and pay-and-display, which is a problem for a caged tipper and a job we would rather sort out before the day than argue about on it. The clearance was confirmed for a Thursday, the latest slot we had, and we agreed to ring the contact at the flat half an hour to an hour before the team arrived rather than give a vague window.
None of that is unusual for us. What made it go smoothly is that they kept asking, and we kept answering in writing. Plenty of our Littlehampton customers are in the same position — another county, another country, a set of keys with an agent — and a short exchange of emails and photographs before the day is worth more than any amount of goodwill on it.
The districts we work
Littlehampton and the whole of the Arun district: BN17 in the town itself, BN16 out through Rustington, East Preston and Angmering, BN18 up the river towards Arundel and Ford, and across the boundary into the PO21 and PO22 side of Bognor Regis. Wick, Toddington, Climping, Ferring, Goring — all the same trip for us. Littlehampton railway station is the marker most people give us for the town centre; the line runs one way through Angmering and on to Worthing, the other way through Ford towards Arundel, Barnham and Bognor. If you're describing where the house is, naming the nearest of those and the road it sits on tells our team more than a postcode does.
We work either side of the town as well, and those places have pages of their own: house clearance in Bognor Regis for the PO21 and PO22 side, house clearance in Arundel for BN18 and the villages along the river, and house clearance in Chichester further west. Anything in that stretch is one working day for us from Littlehampton.
The housing here is mixed in a way that matters to a clearance. Victorian and Edwardian terraces around the centre and out through Wick, with narrow hallways and stairs that turn twice. Interwar semis with proper lofts. A big stock of bungalows towards Rustington and East Preston — easy for carrying, often heavy on garden and garage contents. And blocks of seafront flats, some with a lift and a service road round the back, some with neither.
Parking, and the streets that make you think
A lot of our time on a job is spent walking, not lifting. Where the van ends up decides how the day goes: every armchair carried forty yards instead of five adds up over a full load, and it is the single thing customers most often forget to mention.
Littlehampton has its own version of that. Streets near the prom and the harbour fill up in summer, and some of the terraced roads inland were laid out long before anyone owned two cars. Tell us what it's like outside your property at nine in the morning — parked both sides, one-way, resident bays, nothing free until the school run is over — and we'll plan around it. An honest description is worth far more to us than an optimistic one. If a bay needs suspending for a Luton or a caged tipper, that's a conversation with Arun District Council and it's better had a fortnight ahead than on the morning.
Paint tins, fridges and paperwork
Some of what comes out of a house can't travel with the rest of it. Paint, aerosols, gas canisters and garden chemicals are routed to a facility set up to take them, and they go separately from a normal household load — if there's a stack of tins in the shed, tell us before the day and we'll come prepared rather than leave them on the floor.
Fridges and freezers are hazardous waste in their own right, because of the gas in the cooling circuit and the blowing agent in the foam panels. On one clearance in February the whole job turned on exactly that: alongside an ordinary load of household furniture there were three mattresses, a fridge freezer and a second, smaller fridge freezer, and every one of those items had to be recorded and routed on its own rather than tipped in with the rest. Mattresses are kept separate too. Televisions and monitors go for WEEE treatment. Upholstered seating goes the POPs route described above.
Our waste carrier licence is CBDU419679, registered with the Environment Agency as Abacus Property Clearance. Ask for the transfer notes at any point and you'll have them; it takes us a week or two to get them back from the transfer station, so we'll usually send them on after the job rather than with the paperwork on the day.
Before anything goes to a transfer station we sort. Usable furniture, clean clothing, books, tools and bric-a-brac are offered to reuse projects and charity shops around Arun and Worthing — the dining chairs and side tables off that flat clearance were sound and went that way. Metals and white goods are separated. What genuinely has no use left goes for disposal, weighed and recorded. If anything of value surfaces in the sorting, it's set aside and you're told about it.
What a house clearance in Littlehampton costs
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and tell us what's in the property, or send photographs through the form on this page and we'll come back with a figure. That's the whole of it — the quote is free and it doesn't commit you to anything. Photographs or a short video from your phone are better than a written list, for the reason above: we need to see size and material.
We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly when that's who is handling it, and payment can come out of the estate. There is no deposit.
If the team arrives and it is plainly more than the photographs showed — a loft that isn't empty, a garage nobody had opened since the funeral — you're told before anything else happens, and you decide whether we carry on.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Littlehampton
Probate house clearance in Littlehampton
Probate clearances are what we do most weeks here. We can work to a solicitor's instruction, meet an agent for keys, and clear a property the executor has never seen the inside of. If items are still to be valued, we leave them and come back. Our probate house clearance page sets out how the whole thing runs from first call to transfer notes.
Flat clearance in BN17 and BN16
A flat clearance is a different animal from a house — lifts that need booking with the managing agent, stair carries where there is no lift, service roads at the back of the seafront blocks, and bin stores we are not allowed to use. Tell us the floor and whether there's a lift when you first ring and we'll bring the right team size.
Garage and loft clearance in Littlehampton
Garage and loft clearance is often the whole job on the bungalows out towards Rustington and East Preston: the house has been dealt with by the family and what's left is thirty years of the garage and everything that went up the hatch and stayed. Lofts take longer than people expect. If the boards are partial or there's no ladder fixed, say so.
End of tenancy and hoarded properties
Landlords and managing agents use us between tenancies, where the deadline is fixed and the property has to be back in lettable order. Heavily overfilled properties are ordinary work for us too — we turn up, look, tell you what it will take and get on with it without commentary. See hoarder house clearance if that's the situation, or rubbish removal if it's a single load rather than a whole property.
Questions we get asked
Do you do probate house clearance in Littlehampton?
Yes, and it is the largest part of our work in the town. We deal with executors, family members and solicitors, and we're used to taking instructions from someone who lives nowhere near BN17.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the estate?
We can. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit to find before we start.
How do I get a figure if I'm not in Littlehampton?
Send photographs or a short video through the form on this page, or ring 0800 046 5555 and describe the property room by room. Neither costs you anything and neither commits you.
Will you clear the garage and the loft as well as the house?
Yes. Garage and loft clearance can be booked on its own or as part of a full house clearance in Littlehampton — just say what's up there when you ring, because a full loft changes how long the day takes.
Can I have copies of the waste transfer notes?
Yes, on request. Our carrier licence is CBDU419679 and the notes come back to us from the transfer station within a week or two, so they usually follow after the job.
What won't you take?
Asbestos in any form, and we don't touch it or move it. Live gas bottles and fire extinguishers we need to know about in advance. Anything clinical, and anything still connected — we're not gas or electrical engineers, so appliances need disconnecting first.
Ring us on 0800 046 5555 with the address, roughly what's in the property and when you'd like it gone, or send photographs through the form on this page. We'll tell you what we can do and when we can do it.
