Moving house is stressful enough without wondering whether the firm loading your van actually knows what it’s doing, and that’s precisely the issue the removals trade has just put in front of Parliament. The British Association of Removers launched a report at a Westminster roundtable in the spring, setting out how removals and storage underpin the wider housing market and warning that rising costs and an expanding unregulated end of the trade are putting pressure on the family firms doing this properly.
The numbers behind that report are worth knowing if you’re planning a move from Kesgrave or Woodbridge this autumn. BAR members alone support around 1.2 million house moves a year nationally, carrying out close to 380,000 of them directly, in an industry worth close to £1.2 billion and employing roughly 8,400 people. And because most of that workforce sits in small, often family-run businesses, increases to fuel costs, insurance, and employer National Insurance land harder here than in bigger sectors.
What that translates to on the ground around Ipswich is simple enough: a firm that’s properly insured, trains its packing crews, and turns up with the right size van for a three-bed semi off Bell Lane rather than winging it with a transit that’s too small, costs a bit more than a man-with-a-van outfit advertised on a local Facebook group. But the informal end of the market the BAR report flags is exactly where things go wrong – broken furniture, no insurance cover, and no comeback if your move day falls apart.
Storage is the other piece people underestimate. If completion dates slip, and around here with Woodbridge and Felixstowe chains they often do, having somewhere secure to leave your furniture for a few weeks matters more than the price per hour of the removal itself. A dedicated storage facility with an inventory system beats a garage or a mate’s barn every time something needs finding again in a hurry.
T. Humphrey Removals has been moving families and clearing houses across Ipswich, Woodbridge, Felixstowe and the rest of Suffolk since 2000, fully insured with secure storage available if your dates don’t quite line up. Get a quote at thumphrey-removals.co.uk/.
