House Clearance in Croydon

We sort into keep, donate and dispose before anything is loaded. Photographs, letters, bank papers, keys and jewellery are set aside, never bagged. If you are an executor, gov.uk asks you to value the estate before applying for probate, with household items valued as at the date of death, so photograph the contents and agree anything valuable with the family first.

Good furniture can go on rather than out. The British Heart Foundation furniture and electrical store on George Street collects for free, and the council lists St Christopher's and Emmaus Surrey as charities that collect furniture too. We set those pieces aside so a collection can be booked before we clear the rest.

Croydon Council's bulky waste collection costs £40.40 for one to three items and £65.30 for four to six, and six is the most it will take in one visit. Each bag or box counts as an item, everything goes out the night before because crews start from 5am, and sofas and armchairs are collected on a separate visit the same day.

That suits a few large pieces. A whole house, with rooms to sort and a deadline from a landlord or a buyer, needs a clearance instead.

Croydon's three reuse and recycling centres are at Factory Lane, Fishers Farm in New Addington and Purley Oaks on Brighton Road. Vans are only let in at Factory Lane, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 11am to 1pm, Luton vans are banned, no site takes trade waste and none accepts a car towing a trailer.

So the contents of a house cleared by a firm cannot go to the council tip. They go to licensed waste sites, and you are entitled to ask any clearer where each load is going.

Old sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating may contain persistent organic pollutants, and under the government rules on waste upholstered seating, last updated in July 2026, they must be incinerated rather than landfilled.

Fly-tipping is the bigger risk. Croydon cleared more than 56,000 fly-tips in 2024 at a cost of over £1 million, and in April 2025 the council said its fixed penalty for fly-tipping was rising from £400 to £1,000. Householders must only hand waste to a registered carrier, so check the registration number of any clearer, us included, on the Environment Agency public register. For a few items rather than a whole house, our rubbish removal is the better fit, and the keepers can go to a new home on the same day with a house move.