London to France
M25, M20, the tunnel or the ferry — and then a country that is a great deal larger than it looks from Kent. Where in France you are going changes the job more than anything else does.
Not by administrative region, which tells you nothing useful about a move, but by how far past the crossing you are going — because that is what actually sets the vehicle, the crew and whether sharing a load makes sense.
Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Picardy, Upper Normandy
Close enough that the London half of the move — the permit, the lift, the crawl to the M20 — is genuinely the harder part of the day. These are the routes where a shared load makes the most obvious sense, because the mileage is small and the paperwork is the same either way.
Brittany, Lower Normandy, the Loire, Burgundy, Paris and the Île-de-France
Paris is apartment work with all the London problems repeated in French — courtyard access, a lift sized for people, and permission to stop rather than a space to stop in. Brittany and the Loire bring stone longhouses with doorways built for smaller furniture than anyone makes now.
The Dordogne, the Lot, Occitanie, Provence and the Côte d'Azur
The classic British move to France. Rural addresses with long gravel approaches, village houses with stairs and no lift, and the occasional lane or bridge a full-size vehicle simply will not take. Which is why we ask about the approach and not only the postcode.
A family relocating for work, most often to Paris or Lyon. A retirement to the south-west. Somebody finally furnishing a house they have owned and visited in short bursts for years. And a steady number of moves the other way, which run the same road with the paperwork reversed.
What they share is that the two ends look nothing alike. A fourth-floor London conversion at one end and a stone house at the end of a gravel track at the other need two different plans, two different vehicle decisions and, occasionally, a shuttle. All of which comes out of the survey rather than out of the morning.
If France is the only destination you care about, our sister site france-removals.co.uk is built around that corridor alone and goes deeper on the regions than one page here can. We would rather point you at it than pretend this is the fullest thing we have.
A French tax or identification reference, proof of your address in France, evidence you are transferring your residence rather than importing goods to sell, and identification. We tell you what each one looks like for your situation and chase whatever is outstanding.
Yes — a flat plus a storage unit, or a property and a parent's house, is common on French moves. Tell us at survey so it is in the plan and in the figure rather than discovered on the morning.
Transfer-of-residence relief exists precisely so that people moving home do not pay duty on their own used household goods. It has conditions and it has to be claimed correctly on the declaration — which is our side of the job.
On the shorter northern routes it very often is, because the mileage is modest and sharing a vehicle takes real cost out. The trade-off is date flexibility. We quote both so you can see the difference rather than being told which you want.
We move household goods, not vehicles. Plenty of people drive down and meet the load; for anything else a dedicated transporter will do a better job than we would.
Send the London address, the French address and a rough idea of what is coming. We will come back about a survey.