The removal itself typically accounts for only 15 to 25 percent of what a UK business actually spends relocating an office. The vans, the crates and the crew are the visible number, they are the one businesses shop around on, and they are a minority of the budget. Fit-out, dilapidations, IT and the lease overlap consume the rest.
That mismatch is why office move budgets overrun. A finance director gets three removal quotes ranging from £8,000 to £12,000, negotiates hard, saves £2,000, and then receives a dilapidations schedule for £40,000 that nobody had modelled. This guide builds the budget from the bottom up across every category, with 2026 UK figures.
Quick answer: Budget from square footage. A physical office move runs roughly £2 to £5 per square foot in London. A Cat B fit-out runs £45 to £200 per square foot depending on specification, or roughly £500 to £900 per employee. Dilapidations on the old space commonly run £8 to £25 per square foot. Add a 10 to 20 percent contingency.
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The full cost picture by category
| Category | Typical 2026 UK cost | Share of budget | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical removal | £2 to £5 per sq ft in London, £3,500 to £23,000 overall | 15 to 25 percent | Over-scrutinised while larger lines go unmodelled |
| Cat B fit-out | £45 to £200 per sq ft by specification | Often the largest single line | Specification creep after the budget is set |
| Dilapidations on the old space | £8 to £25 per sq ft | Frequently a surprise | Discovered when notice is served, not before |
| IT relocation and cutover | £500 to £3,000 for a medium office | Small line, large risk | Downtime costs more than the work does |
| Legal and property fees | Lease negotiation, surveys, agent fees | Varies with deal size | Rarely included in early estimates |
| Storage during the gap | Monthly, scales with volume | Situational | Only appears when dates do not align |
| Contingency | 10 to 20 percent of build cost | Mandatory in practice | Cut first, needed most in older buildings |
Start with square footage, because almost every other figure scales against it. Then build three groups separately: the physical move, the property and legal side, and the hidden costs. Totalling each group and combining them produces a number with no gaps, which a single blended estimate never does.
Fit-out: the line that dwarfs the move
Cat A is the landlord’s basic finished shell, usually covered by the lease. Cat B is the tenant fit-out that turns it into your office, and it is where the bulk of the spend sits. A basic fit-out is around £500 to £600 per employee, a good mid-specification one closer to £800 to £900.
Per square foot, the 2026 bands run roughly £45 to £85 for a basic fit-out, £85 to £135 for mid-range, and £135 to £200 or beyond for high specification. Those are all-in figures covering construction, mechanical and electrical services, furniture and technology. London carries a clear premium over regional projects.
The per-employee figure is the better sense-check for a smaller business. If a supplier quotes a number that works out at £2,000 a head for a straightforward open-plan office, something in the specification is more ambitious than you agreed. If it works out at £300, the furniture will not survive three years.
Mechanical and electrical work is where programmes and budgets slip. Additional small power, dedicated circuits, containment, comms containment, testing and certification all sound minor and are not, particularly in an older building where nothing is where the drawings say it is. Budget the contingency at the top of the 10 to 20 percent range for anything pre-2000.
Dilapidations, and why they arrive late
Dilapidations are your obligation to return the old space to the condition the lease requires. A standard redecoration and reinstatement runs roughly £8 to £25 per square foot, so a 2,000 square foot office can mean £16,000 to £50,000 payable to a landlord you are leaving.
This is the single most common budget shock in an office relocation, because the liability is invisible until someone reads the lease properly or the landlord serves a schedule. It is also negotiable, which most tenants do not realise.
Commission a dilapidations surveyor before serving notice rather than after. They assess your actual liability against the lease and the condition of the space, and they negotiate on your behalf. Landlord schedules are opening positions, frequently well above what is genuinely enforceable, and a surveyor’s fee is routinely recovered many times over.
What drives the figure is what you changed during occupation. Partitions installed, walls removed, cabling run, kitchens fitted and floor finishes changed all typically have to come out. A tenant who took a space and barely altered it has a modest liability. One that reconfigured twice has a large one.
Read the reinstatement clause and any licences for alterations at the point you decide to move, not at the point you give notice. That sequencing alone changes the number.
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What removal quotes routinely exclude
A competitive quote often prices the core move and leaves out the surrounding requirements. Crate rental, evening or weekend working, lift marshals, floor and door protection, cable relabelling, furniture dismantling and reassembly, and disposal of what you are not taking are all commonly out of scope.
- Out-of-hours working. Most office moves happen at evenings or weekends to protect trading. That is a premium rate, and it should be stated rather than assumed.
- Building access requirements. Managed buildings frequently require lift marshals, protection to lifts and common parts, and a method statement. Some charge for out-of-hours access.
- Crate hire duration. Priced per crate per week. A move where packing starts early and unpacking runs late doubles the hire period.
- Furniture dismantling and reassembly. Particularly desks, storage walls and partition-mounted items.
- IT decommissioning and recommissioning. Unplugging is not the job. Labelling, patching, testing and getting people working is.
- Disposal. Furniture you are not taking has to go somewhere, and WEEE and furniture disposal both carry costs.
- Parking and access. Central London bay suspensions run roughly £50 to £300, plus the daily congestion charge where applicable.
Ask every bidder to price the same scope including all of the above, or to state explicitly which are excluded. Our guide to the questions worth asking an office relocation company covers how to structure that conversation.
The property and legal side of the budget
Beyond the physical move sits a second budget group: lease negotiation, legal fees, agent costs, surveys, business rates on the new space, and any rent-free period you did or did not manage to negotiate. None of it appears on a removals quote and all of it lands in the same financial year.
Commercial lease negotiation is where the largest single saving in the whole exercise is usually available, and it is not a cost line so much as a lever. Rent-free periods, capital contributions towards fit-out, and break clauses all have real monetary value, and a tenant representative or commercial agent acting for you rather than the landlord is generally worth the fee.
Business rates are the line most often forgotten entirely. They are payable on the new space from occupation, they are based on rateable value rather than rent, and empty rates may also become payable on the old space once any exemption period expires. If the old lease runs past your exit, that is a cost for as long as it runs.
Legal fees cover the new lease, any licence for alterations required before fit-out works begin, and the exit documentation on the old space. A licence for alterations in particular has a habit of appearing late and delaying the start of works, so raise it at heads of terms rather than after signing.
Finally, budget for the things that make the new space usable rather than merely occupied: signage, access control and fobs, insurance changes, updating your registered address, and reprinting anything that carries the old one. Individually small, collectively several thousand pounds.
Modelling downtime as a real number
We compared the visible costs of an office move against the cost of lost operating time, because downtime is the largest line in many relocations and the one almost nobody puts in the budget.
| Business size | Half a day lost | A full day lost | Two days lost | What usually causes it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 staff | Around £1,000 | Around £2,000 | Around £4,000 | Broadband not live on day one |
| 25 staff | Around £2,500 | Around £5,000 | Around £10,000 | Comms room not ready, patching incomplete |
| 50 staff | Around £5,000 | Around £10,000 | Around £20,000 | Access restrictions delaying the load-in |
| 100 staff | Around £10,000 | Around £20,000 | Around £40,000 | Phased move overrunning its window |
Two conclusions come out of this. First, on any office above about 25 people, a single lost day costs more than the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive removal quote you received. Choosing a contractor on price while accepting a weaker programme is a false economy that the budget never records, because downtime does not appear on an invoice.
Second, the causes are overwhelmingly connectivity rather than furniture. Broadband and leased line installation are the long-lead items, frequently taking many weeks, and ordering them late is the most reliable way to lose days on the other side. Order circuits as soon as the lease is signed, before anything else is arranged.
Downtime figures are illustrative, based on a notional fully-loaded cost per employee per day, and should be recalculated against your own payroll and revenue rather than used directly.
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Phasing a move, and whether it saves money
Phasing a move across several weekends looks cheaper because each individual weekend costs less. It usually is not, because you pay for lease overlap on both spaces, repeated mobilisation, and a longer period of split operations where nothing works properly.
Phasing genuinely suits two situations. The first is where the new space is not ready in full and part of the business can occupy a completed floor. The second is where the operation cannot stop at all, so departments move in sequence with duplicated systems running throughout.
Outside those, a single weekend move is normally cheaper and always simpler. The comparison people miss is the rent, service charge and business rates payable on both properties for every week of overlap, which on any reasonable footprint dwarfs the difference in removal pricing.
Where phasing is unavoidable, sequence by dependency rather than by department size. Comms room and network first, then the teams with the least tolerance for disruption, then everyone else. Moving the largest team first because it feels like progress leaves them without infrastructure.
Build the lease overlap into the budget explicitly as a line rather than absorbing it into general costs. Two to four weeks of overlap is normal and worth having for contingency; three months of it is a planning failure with a visible price.
When relocating is not the cheaper option
If your dilapidations liability is substantial and the rent saving is modest, staying and renegotiating can beat moving. Run the total relocation cost against the lease saving over the new term before committing, because a move that saves £20,000 a year and costs £180,000 takes nine years to pay back.
Relocation suppliers, ourselves included, have an obvious interest in a move happening. The honest position is that some proposed moves do not survive the arithmetic.
The lease event to look for is a break clause or expiry. Approaching one gives you genuine negotiating leverage with your existing landlord, and a rent reduction or a contribution to refurbishment obtained by staying costs nothing in dilapidations, fit-out, downtime or removal. Get an indicative dilapidations assessment before you open that conversation, because knowing your exit liability is what tells you how much leverage you actually have.
The other case is a business whose space requirement is genuinely uncertain. Committing to a ten-year lease and a £135 per square foot fit-out while headcount plans are unsettled is how organisations end up paying for empty floors. Serviced or managed space costs more per desk and removes the capital commitment, which for some businesses is the better trade.
On tax, office relocation expenses are generally treated as a revenue expense deductible against trading profits where the move is for business purposes, while significant fit-out spend may be capital. Confirm the treatment with your accountant rather than assuming, because the split materially affects the net cost.
How EcoGreen Movers prices an office move
We survey the space before quoting rather than pricing from a desk count, because access, lift availability, out-of-hours requirements and what you are actually taking change the figure far more than floor area does. EcoGreen Movers uses reusable crates rather than cardboard, which on an office move removes a substantial disposal cost as well as the waste.
We handle office removals and commercial relocation across the UK, including office removals in London and Manchester. Plan the sequence with our office relocation checklist and sort the paperwork first using our guide to business archiving before a move, then get in touch for a quote.
Frequently asked questions
What does an office move cost per square foot?
The physical move typically runs £2 to £5 per square foot in London, varying with desk density rather than floor area alone. A call centre packed with workstations costs more to move than an executive suite of the same size. Fit-out is a separate figure many times larger.
What proportion of the budget is the removal?
Typically 15 to 25 percent. The remainder goes on fit-out, dilapidations, IT, legal and property fees, storage, signage and downtime. Businesses that negotiate hard on the removal alone are optimising a quarter of the spend.
How much should be set aside for dilapidations?
Roughly £8 to £25 per square foot for standard redecoration and reinstatement, so £16,000 to £50,000 on a 2,000 square foot office. It depends heavily on what you altered during occupation, and a surveyor should assess the liability before you serve notice.
What contingency is sensible?
Between 10 and 20 percent of the build cost, weighted towards the higher end for older buildings and occupied or phased projects, where surprises behind walls and ceilings are more likely. It is the line most often cut and most often needed.
Are office relocation costs tax deductible?
Generally the move itself is treated as a revenue expense deductible against trading profits where it is for business purposes, while substantial fit-out spend may be capital expenditure. The split matters to the net cost, so confirm the treatment with your accountant.
In summary: budget the other 80 percent
Start from square footage, build the three cost groups separately, and remember the removal is a minority of the total. Get a dilapidations assessment before serving notice, order connectivity the week the lease is signed, and carry a contingency of 10 to 20 percent.
Then price downtime properly and compare it against the gap between your removal quotes. On any office above about 25 people, one lost day usually costs more than the saving you were negotiating for.
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