At A Glance
A last minute three day move, charged by the hour: A four floor Lewes townhouse packed and cleared at short notice, then staged into Henfield Storage while the onward purchase completed. One dedicated packing day with two packers covered a room sized library, an iMac, TVs and antique furniture broken down at its original fixings. Days two and three were pure loading, and hourly pricing meant the customer paid for the work rather than a fixed price padded with worst case guesswork.
Access and planning: Lewes BN7 is a controlled parking area enforced by East Sussex County Council. Loading in a bay is capped at twenty minutes, so a residential suspension at £16 set up per bay plus £2.25 per day is what buys a workable move day. Four floors including a basement kitchen means the stair run drives the hours, not the mileage to BN1 8AF. Mercedes Sprinter on packing day for materials and tools, Ford Transit Luton with tail lift on both move days, and the last load timed back from the storage site's 5:00pm closing.
At ESV: You deal directly with Peter from first message to final unload. Every job carries £20,000 Goods In Transit and £5m Public Liability cover as standard, across the packing day, both loading days and the delivery into the unit. Call 07552 555 820 or request a quote at www.eastsussexvan.com. For real move days and weekly practical tips, follow @esvremovals on Instagram.
Quick Answers
Do you take last minute removals bookings in Lewes? Often yes, subject to crew availability. Last minute jobs are about having a realistic plan rather than cutting corners.
Do you cover Lewes and the villages around it? Yes. Lewes and the BN7 postcode sit inside our standard working area, alongside Brighton and Hove and the wider Sussex postcodes.
Do you offer packing as well as the move? Yes, as a full pack, a part pack, or just the move. On this job we ran a dedicated packing day with two packers before either move day.
Do you handle antiques, libraries and specialist items? Yes. Antique and vintage furniture, high value book collections, all in one computers and TVs are all handled as prepared items rather than as general contents.
Do you deliver into self storage units? Yes. This move went into Henfield Storage in Brighton, and we load the unit to a plan rather than in the order the van empties.
Are you insured? Yes. Every job carries £20,000 Goods In Transit and £5m Public Liability cover as standard, including the packing day and the delivery into storage.
Brief
The brief: A last minute booking from a four floor Lewes townhouse, with a full professional pack, careful handling of antiques and a library, and everything into self storage until the next purchase completed.
Why hourly: With a last minute start and an unknown volume behind a lot of doors, an hourly rate protected the customer. They paid for the hours worked rather than a padded fixed price built around worst case guesswork.
The shape of the job: Three days. One dedicated packing day with two packers, a second day that combined finishing the pack with the first load out, and a third day to complete the move.
Vans: Our Mercedes Sprinter on packing day for tools, materials and boxes, then our Ford Transit Luton with tail lift for both move days.
Access planning and parking: Lewes is a controlled parking area enforced by East Sussex County Council, and a four floor property with a basement kitchen means the stair run matters more than the mileage. Both were planned before day one.
Trust and transparency with ESV: You deal directly with Peter from first message to final unload, with £20,000 Goods In Transit and £5m Public Liability cover. Call 07552 555 820, book via www.eastsussexvan.com, or follow along on Instagram.
Why This Job Existed In The First Place
Moves like this one are a direct consequence of how the UK housing market behaves. The customer had to be out of the Lewes property before their onward purchase was ready, which is an extremely common position to be in and an extremely stressful one.
The national fall through rate stood at 24.2% in June 2026, close to the decade average of 24.5%, meaning roughly one in four agreed sales still collapse before contracts complete.
Source: PropertyWire, reporting market analysis by The Property Franchise Group
That number is the whole argument for storage as a planning tool rather than a last resort. When a quarter of agreed sales fail, tying your move day to a completion date you do not control is a gamble. Putting everything into a secure unit removes the dependency. You move when you are ready to move, and you move in again when the keys are genuinely yours.
It is also why the booking came in late. Chains do not give notice when they wobble. The customer needed a full house packed and cleared at short notice, and needed it done without the contents being treated as freight.
Job Summary
Route: Lewes, BN7, to Henfield Storage in Brighton.
Property: Four floors including a basement kitchen. Every item on the ground floor and above had a stair run to the front door, and everything in the kitchen came up from below.
Crew: Two packers on the dedicated packing day, then our move day crew for the two loading and delivery days.
Vehicles: Mercedes Sprinter on day one for tools, packing materials and boxes. Ford Transit Luton with tail lift on days two and three for the furniture and the volume.
Pricing: Charged by the hour across all three days.
Specialist handling: A room sized library of high value books, antique and vintage furniture requiring dismantling, an iMac, and multiple TVs.
Destination: A self storage unit at Henfield Storage, held until the customer's onward purchase completes.
Planning A Last Minute Three Day Move
The temptation with a short notice job is to throw bodies at it and start lifting. That is how things get broken. What actually makes a compressed timeline work is deciding, before anyone touches a box, which day each type of work belongs to.
Separate the packing from the carrying. A full house pack and a full house load are two different jobs that use different skills and different rhythms. Combining them means packers get interrupted by carrying, and carriers wait around for boxes to be sealed. We gave packing its own day with two packers, which meant that by the time the Luton arrived, most of the house was already boxed, labelled and staged.
Prep the awkward items early. Antique and vintage furniture, the iMac, the TVs and the library were all identified on day one as items that needed preparation rather than just handling. Breaking down furniture on packing day, when the house is still calm and there is floor space to work in, is far safer than doing it with a van waiting outside.
Plan the stair run, not the mileage. Lewes to Brighton is a short drive. The real work on this job was vertical. Four floors including a basement means the carry route was the constraint, so the loading order was built around minimising trips up and down rather than around van space alone.
HSE guideline filter figures of 25kg for men and 16kg for women apply at knuckle height, with the load held close to the body in reasonable conditions. They are risk filters rather than safe limits, and lower filter values apply at shoulder or floor level. Twisting, repeated lifting and carrying beyond about ten metres all fall outside the filter and call for a fuller assessment.
That guidance is exactly why a library gets packed into small boxes. Four flights of stairs, repeated carrying and a turn at every landing are precisely the conditions the simple filter does not cover. A book box that a fit person can just about lift on flat ground is the wrong box for a Lewes townhouse.
Local Pro Tip: Lewes BN7, Confirm Your Stopping Point Before The Van Leaves Brighton
Lewes has been a controlled parking area since East Sussex County Council took on enforcement across the district in September 2004, and the town runs a mix of permit zones alongside pay and display and yellow lines. Send a photo of the frontage and the nearest bay signage before move day so we can pick a legal stopping point and keep the carry short. On a four floor property, every extra metre of carry gets paid for four times over.
You may load or unload for up to 20 minutes in any permit holder, shared use or paid parking bay without displaying a permit or paying, and on yellow lines where there is no loading restriction and you are not causing an obstruction. Loading must be continuous, and a penalty charge notice may be issued if nothing has been loaded or unloaded for five minutes, or ten minutes for a liveried commercial vehicle.
Source: East Sussex County Council
Twenty minutes is generous for a delivery and nowhere near enough for a house move. That is the gap a bay suspension closes.
Local Pro Tip: A Suspended Bay In Lewes Costs Less Than One Penalty Charge
East Sussex County Council will suspend parking bays for residential reasons including moving house, charged per 5.5 metre bay. At the time of writing that is £16 set up per bay plus £2.25 per day per bay. Apply through the council's customer service team well ahead of your dates, because a suspension has to be arranged in advance and unauthorised vehicles parked in a suspended area get a penalty charge notice.
Residential suspensions, such as moving house and building works, are charged at £16 set up per bay plus £2.25 per day per bay. All charges are per 5.5 metre bay.
Source: East Sussex County Council
Day One: The Packing Day
We arrived in the Sprinter rather than the Luton. On a packing day you are not carrying volume out, you are carrying materials and tools in, and the Sprinter is the right van for that: quicker to position, easier to park on a Lewes street, and more than enough space for flat packed boxes, paper, bubble wrap, tape, blankets, covers and the toolkit for furniture breakdown.
Two packers went in. The house was worked room by room rather than item type by item type, which keeps a household's belongings together and makes the eventual unpack at the new property far less painful.
The library. One room was effectively a library, and the books were high value rather than paperbacks destined for a charity shop. Books were packed into small boxes only, filled to a carryable weight rather than to the brim, with spines protected and no box packed so tightly that pressure could damage bindings. Every book box was labelled as books, because a box that looks like every other box but weighs three times as much is how people get hurt on move day.
Local Pro Tip: Book Boxes, Fill To Weight Not To Volume
The mistake almost everyone makes with a home library is using large boxes because there are a lot of books. Small boxes, half to two thirds full, are safer, easier to stack in a storage unit and much kinder to the books themselves. If you are packing yourself before we arrive, do the books first while you still have the energy for it.
The iMac. All in one machines are awkward because the screen is the computer. There is no separating the fragile part from the valuable part. The iMac was packed with the screen face protected, corner support around the foot and stand, and packed upright rather than flat, then marked so nobody stacks anything on it in the van or in the unit.
The TVs. Screens travel on edge, never flat, and never with weight on the panel. Each was wrapped with the screen face protected, corners supported, and cables bagged and taped to the back of the set so nothing gets separated during a storage period that might run for months.
Local Pro Tip: Photograph The Back Of Every Screen Before Anything Is Unplugged
One photo per device, showing which cable goes where, is worth an hour of your life later. This matters more than usual when items are going into storage, because you will be reconnecting everything weeks or months from now in a different house, with no memory of the original setup.
Antique and vintage furniture. This was the part of the day that most justified having a dedicated packing day. Older furniture is not modern flat pack. It does not always come apart, and where it does, it comes apart at joints and fixings that were made by hand and are not replaceable. Pieces were dismantled only where dismantling was genuinely the safer option, at their original fixings, with each piece's own screws, bolts and fittings bagged and secured to that piece rather than thrown into a communal tub. Components were wrapped individually so nothing rubbed against anything else in transit or in the unit.
Local Pro Tip: With Antiques, Ask Whether It Should Come Apart, Not Whether It Can
Some older pieces are stronger assembled than dismantled, and every disassembly is a small risk to old joinery. The right question is whether taking it apart makes the carry safer, not whether it is technically possible. On a four floor property with narrow turns, the answer is often yes. In a bungalow it is often no.
Day Two: Finish The Pack, Start The Move
Day two switched vehicles. The Ford Transit Luton with tail lift replaced the Sprinter, because this was the day volume started leaving the building.
The morning finished the remaining packing, which on a four floor house is almost always the basement kitchen and whatever the household has still been using right up to the last minute. Kitchens are the slowest room in any house to pack and the one people most consistently underestimate. Glassware, crockery, small appliances and a decade of accumulated contents in deep cupboards take real time, and in a basement kitchen every packed box then has to come up before it can go anywhere.
Once packing was complete, loading began. The tail lift matters more than people expect on a job like this. Heavy items, dismantled furniture components and stacked boxes go up into the van without a lift and a shove at the tailgate, which reduces both the risk to the goods and the cumulative strain on the crew across a three day job.
The first load went to Henfield Storage and into the unit. Crucially, it was not simply stacked in as it came off the van.
Local Pro Tip: Build The Unit For The Reload, Not For The Unload
A storage unit filled in the order the van empties is fast on the day and painful later. We load to a plan: heavy and rarely needed at the back, anything that might be wanted mid storage nearer the front, screens and delicate items where nothing can be stacked on them, and a walkway if the unit size allows. When you are living out of boxes waiting for a completion date, being able to get to one thing without emptying the unit is worth a great deal.
Day Three: Completing The Move
Day three was a straight move day. Everything remaining in the Lewes property came out and went into the unit, finishing the load to the same plan established the day before.
Splitting a large house across two move days rather than forcing it into one long day is one of the quieter decisions that makes a job like this go well. A single fourteen hour day on a four floor property with a basement, an inbound storage delivery and antique furniture is where mistakes happen. Two properly paced days cost the same in hours on an hourly rate and produce a measurably better outcome.
Henfield Storage sites, including the Sussex branches, generally open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm, Saturday 9:00am to 1:30pm and Sunday 9:00am to 11:30am, with hours varying slightly by site. Storage access is available during published opening hours only, with no out of hours access.
Source: Henfield Storage
That constraint shaped both move days. There is no value in a crew still loading in Lewes at 4:30pm when the unit closes at 5:00pm. Working back from the site's closing time is how you decide when the last load leaves the property, and it is one of the first things we check whenever a move is going into self storage rather than into a house.
Local Pro Tip: Storage Sites Close, Houses Do Not
A house move can run late. A storage move cannot. Confirm your facility's closing time and Sunday hours before booking your dates, and tell your removals company, because the last safe departure time from your old property is set by the storage site, not by you.
What Made This Move Work
The dedicated packing day. Everything else on this job depended on day one. Because the house was packed, labelled and staged before the Luton ever arrived, the two move days were pure carrying and loading. No searching for tape, no half packed rooms, no waiting.
Hourly pricing on an uncertain job. A last minute booking on an unseen four floor house is exactly the scenario where a fixed quote has to include a contingency the customer pays for whether or not it is needed. Charging by the hour meant the customer funded the actual work. It also meant we had no incentive to rush the antiques or the library, and no incentive to pad, because the clock is the honest record either way.
Matching the van to the day. Sprinter for materials and tools, Luton with tail lift for volume. Using the Luton on packing day would have meant parking a larger vehicle in Lewes for a day of work that never needed the space.
Prep done before the pressure. Furniture broken down on the calm day, not the busy day. Screens and the iMac packed before anything was being carried past them.
A storage unit built to a plan. The customer is between properties for an unknown period. The unit was loaded so that the eventual reload is efficient and so that the customer is not locked out of their own belongings in the meantime.
Local Business Spotlight: Henfield Storage
The destination for this move was Henfield Storage, and it is worth a proper look because it is a genuinely local operation rather than a national chain with a Sussex branch.
Henfield Storage is a family run business that started in West Sussex, with its first facility in Horsham, and grew into a network covering London, Brighton and the South East. It is a member of the Self Storage Association UK, which is the industry body for standards on security and service. The Brighton site sits at Unit 1, Trade Park, Crowhurst Road, BN1 8AF, opposite the Asda Hollingbury superstore, close to both the A23 and A27.
For a removals crew, the practical details are the ones that matter, and this site handles them well. There is free on site parking while you unload, and trolleys are available to help move boxes and furniture. Units range from small lockers up to larger rooms, so a unit can be sized to an actual household inventory rather than to a guess, and sites with upper floor units have goods lifts. You secure the unit with your own padlock and keep the key, and access is linked to the account holder, so anyone visiting on your behalf has to be authorised in advance.
The two things worth knowing before you book are the access model and insurance. Access is during published opening hours only, with no out of hours access, which is a security decision rather than an oversight but does need factoring into your move timings. And all goods stored must be insured, either through Henfield's own policy or your own arrangement. Ask about both when you enquire.
Local Pro Tip: Size The Unit From The Inventory, Not From The House
People size storage by how big their house feels, which overshoots on volume and undershoots on shape. Send your removals company a rough inventory and let them tell you what will actually fit, because they load units for a living. On this job the unit was chosen so everything went in with the load built to a plan, rather than everything going in and the door barely closing.
The Outcome
Three days, charged by the hour, with the customer paying for the time the work took and nothing more. A four floor Lewes property emptied without damage to a library of valuable books, to antique and vintage furniture, or to an iMac and multiple TVs that would have been the most expensive items in the load to get wrong.
The customer is now between homes with everything secure, insured and organised, and with a unit built so that the reload into their next property will be straightforward rather than a second full scale project. When the purchase completes, we already know what is in there and how it was loaded.
That is what a staged move should deliver. Not just moved, but moved in a way that makes the next stage easier.
Planning A Lewes Move Or A Move Into Storage
If you are in a similar position, this is what we need in order to plan properly and quote quickly:
- Your Lewes postcode and the storage facility or destination postcode
- Number of floors, including any basement, and a note on stair width and tight turns
- A photo of the frontage showing bay signage and kerb markings, so we can pick a legal stopping point
- Whether you want a full pack, a part pack, or just the move
- A rough inventory or a few photos of each room, especially any room like a library or a study that is denser than it looks
- Any antique, vintage or handmade furniture that may need dismantling
- Any single items valued at £500 or more, so protection and placement are planned rather than improvised
- Screens, computers and audio equipment, and whether you still have original boxes
- Your storage facility's opening and closing times, and whether a unit is already booked
- Your date flexibility, and whether the dates are driven by a completion you do not control
We can handle the packing, the careful handling, the dismantling and the storage delivery as one coordinated plan rather than three separate problems. Our guide on how to avoid a stressful house move covers the preparation side in more detail.
Calm planning is what made this job work: packing given its own day, awkward items prepared before the pressure, the van matched to the day, and a storage unit loaded to a plan so the customer is not locked out of their own belongings while they wait on a completion date. You deal directly with Peter from first message to final unload, which is the difference on a job with this many moving parts. That is a family run Brighton and Sussex team with local know how for permit zones, tight stairwells and multi floor townhouses.
Call 07552 555 820 or request a quote at www.eastsussexvan.com. For real move days and weekly practical tips, follow along on Instagram.
Key Terms
Hourly Rate Removals
Hourly rate removals means the customer is charged for the time the crew actually works rather than a fixed price built around a worst case estimate. On a last minute booking where the volume is not fully known, it protects the customer from paying for contingency that never gets used, and it keeps the pricing honest in both directions.
Dedicated Packing Day
A dedicated packing day is a separate day, before any move day, given entirely to packing, wrapping and preparing furniture. It exists because packing and carrying are different jobs with different rhythms, and combining them slows both down. On multi floor properties it is usually the single highest value day of the whole job.
Staged Move
A staged move is a move split deliberately across more than one loading day, rather than forced into a single long day. It suits large properties, difficult access and jobs going into storage, and on an hourly rate it costs broadly the same in hours while producing a calmer, safer result.
Basement Kitchen Carry
A basement kitchen carry means every packed box and appliance has to come up before it can go out, adding a full flight to the slowest room in the house. It is planned as its own workstream rather than treated as just another room, and it usually determines how the second move day is sequenced.
Library Packing
Library packing means packing books into small boxes filled to a carryable weight rather than to volume, with bindings protected and every box clearly marked as books. It protects both the books and the crew, and it matters most when the boxes then have to travel down several flights of stairs.
Antique Furniture Breakdown
Antique furniture breakdown is dismantling older pieces at their original joints and fixings only where doing so makes the carry genuinely safer, wrapping each component separately, and keeping every piece's own fittings bagged and secured to that piece. The judgement is whether it should come apart, not whether it can.
All In One Computer Packing
All in one computer packing covers machines like an iMac where the screen and the computer are a single unit, so there is no way to separate the fragile part from the valuable part. These are packed upright with the screen face protected and the foot supported, then marked so nothing is ever stacked on them.
Loading To A Reload Plan
Loading to a reload plan means filling a storage unit in a deliberate order, with heavy and rarely needed items at the back, mid storage items accessible, and delicate items where nothing can be stacked on them. It costs a little more time on the day and saves a great deal when the unit is emptied.
Bay Suspension
A bay suspension is a formal arrangement with the council to take parking bays out of general use for a set period, applied for in advance and charged per 5.5 metre bay. In East Sussex, moving house counts as a residential reason. It is how you turn a twenty minute loading allowance into a workable move day.
Storage Access Hours
Storage access hours are the published times a facility can be entered, with no out of hours entry at most sites. They set the last safe departure time from the old property, so a storage move is planned backwards from the site's closing time rather than forwards from the morning start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you make a last minute three day move work?
You split the job by type of work rather than throwing more people at it, so packing gets its own day and the loading is paced across two more.
On this Lewes case study the booking came in late because the customer had to be out before their onward purchase was ready. We ran a dedicated packing day with two packers first, then two move days into storage, which meant the Luton only ever arrived at a house that was already boxed, labelled and staged.
Tell us the dates you are working to and we will tell you honestly what is possible rather than promising a plan that falls apart on the day. Depending on how much you have already done yourself, that might be a full pack, a part pack, or just the move.
Why would I choose an hourly rate over a fixed price?
An hourly rate is fairer when the volume is uncertain, the access is complex, or the booking is late.
A fixed price has to build in contingency for everything the quoter cannot see, and you pay for that contingency whether or not it is ever needed. On an unseen four floor Lewes townhouse booked at short notice, that guesswork would have been substantial.
Charging by the hour meant the customer funded the actual work across all three days and nothing more. It also removed any incentive to rush the antiques or the library, because the clock is the honest record either way. For predictable, well documented moves a fixed price can be the better option, and we will say so.
What are the parking rules for a removals van in Lewes?
You may load or unload for up to twenty minutes in any permit holder, shared use or paid parking bay without displaying a permit or paying, and on yellow lines where there is no loading restriction and you are not causing an obstruction.
Lewes is a controlled parking area enforced by East Sussex County Council, with permit zones alongside pay and display and yellow lines. The activity has to be continuous, and a penalty charge notice can be issued if nothing has moved for five minutes, or ten minutes for a liveried commercial vehicle.
Twenty minutes is generous for a delivery and nowhere near enough for a full house move. That is the gap a bay suspension closes, and it is why we ask for the frontage photo early enough to sort one out.
How much does a parking bay suspension cost in Lewes?
East Sussex County Council charges residential suspensions, which includes moving house, at £16 set up per bay plus £2.25 per day per bay.
All charges are calculated per 5.5 metre bay, so the cost depends on how much kerb your van and crew actually need. Apply through the council's parking customer service team well ahead of your dates, because a suspension has to be arranged in advance.
Unauthorised vehicles parked in a suspended area receive a penalty charge notice, which is exactly what protects your stopping point on the day. Charges can change, so confirm the current rate when you apply.
Which postcodes do you cover for a Lewes to Brighton storage move?
We cover Lewes BN7 and the Henfield Storage site at BN1 8AF as standard, alongside our BN1 to BN3 home patch across Brighton and Hove.
This job ran from a townhouse in BN7 to Unit 1, Trade Park, Crowhurst Road, BN1 8AF, opposite Asda Hollingbury and close to the A23 and A27. It is a short drive, which is exactly why the pricing on a move like this is driven by the property and the stair run, not the mileage.
We also work across the wider BN, RH and TN Sussex postcodes, and we handle long distance work when an onward purchase takes someone further afield. Send us both postcodes and we will tell you what the day realistically looks like.
How much longer does a four floor property with a basement kitchen take to move?
Expect more hours rather than a higher rate, because every flight adds carry time and a basement kitchen puts the slowest room in the house at the end of the longest route out.
Every packed box in a basement kitchen has to come up before it can go anywhere, and kitchens are consistently underestimated even on a single storey. It is also why we match the van to the day: the Sprinter carries materials and tools in on packing day, and the Luton with its tail lift handles volume on the move days.
Splitting large properties across two paced move days rather than forcing them into one long one is the other half of it. A fourteen hour day with antiques, a library and an inbound storage delivery is where mistakes happen, and on hourly pricing two calm days cost broadly the same in hours.
How do you pack a large collection of valuable books?
Books go into small boxes filled to a carryable weight rather than to the top of the box.
Spines are protected and no box is packed so tightly that pressure can damage bindings. Every book box is labelled as books, because a box that looks like every other box but weighs three times as much is how people get hurt on move day.
The mistake almost everyone makes with a home library is reaching for large boxes because there are a lot of books. Small boxes filled half to two thirds are safer, easier to stack in a storage unit and much kinder to the books. On a four floor property with a turn at every landing, this is a safety decision as much as a preservation one.
How do you decide whether to dismantle antique or vintage furniture?
The test is whether taking a piece apart makes the carry genuinely safer, not whether it is technically possible to dismantle it.
Older furniture is not modern flat pack. It comes apart at joints and fixings that were made by hand and are not replaceable, so every disassembly carries a small risk to old joinery. On a four floor property with narrow turns the answer is often yes. In a bungalow it is often no.
Where we do take a piece down, it is dismantled at its original fixings, each component is wrapped individually so nothing rubs in transit, and every piece's own screws, bolts and fittings are bagged and secured to that piece rather than thrown into a communal tub.
How do you protect TVs and computers going into storage?
Screens travel on edge with the face protected and the corners supported, never flat and never with weight on the panel.
All in one machines like an iMac are the awkward case, because the screen is the computer and there is no separating the fragile part from the valuable part. They are packed upright with the foot and stand supported, then marked so nothing is ever stacked on them in the van or in the unit.
Cables are bagged and taped to the back of each set. That matters more than usual for storage, because you will be reconnecting everything weeks or months later in a different house. Photograph the back of every device before anything is unplugged.
How should a storage unit be loaded, and how do opening hours affect the move?
Load the unit for the reload rather than in the order the van empties, and work your move timings backwards from the site's closing time.
Heavy and rarely needed items go to the back. Anything you might want part way through the storage period stays accessible nearer the front. Screens, computers and delicate pieces go where nothing can be stacked on them, and a walkway is left where the unit size allows. Size the unit from a rough inventory rather than from how big the house feels, because people overshoot on volume and undershoot on shape.
Henfield Storage sites, including the Sussex branches, generally open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm, Saturday 9:00am to 1:30pm and Sunday 9:00am to 11:30am, with access during published hours only and no out of hours entry. There is no value in a crew still loading in Lewes at 4:30pm when the unit shuts at 5:00pm, so we work backwards from that closing time to decide when the final load leaves.
What insurance applies to a move into storage, and does it cover goods once they are in the unit?
Every ESV job carries £20,000 Goods In Transit and £5m Public Liability cover as standard, but goods sitting in a storage unit need separate cover arranged with the facility.
Our cover applies across a staged move like this one, including the dedicated packing day, both loading days and the delivery into the unit. You deal directly with Peter throughout, so there is no question about who is accountable for the handling at any stage. If any single item is valued at £500 or more, tell us upfront so protection and placement are planned rather than improvised.
Henfield Storage requires all stored goods to be insured, either through their own policy or your own arrangement, so ask the facility about both options when you book the unit rather than assuming your move cover carries over.
About the author...
Peter Hawes is the director of ESV Removals Ltd, a family run Brighton and Sussex removals team known for calm planning, careful handling and clear prices. He holds a 2:1 BA (Hons) in English Literature and Digital Media from the University of Brighton. Peter oversees every move from first message to the last box and brings local know how for permit zones, tight stairwells and seafront buildings. ESV is fully insured with £20,000 Goods in Transit and £5 million Public Liability, backed by hundreds of five star Google reviews. The company follows an eco pledge that prioritises Esso Ethos fuel where available, reuses boxes and runs paperless bookings. Learn more at www.eastsussexvan.com.
