We have been doing house clearance in Thornton Heath since 2007, and CR7 is one of the corners of Croydon our vans see most often. The calls tend to have the same shape. A house that has to be emptied, a family that no longer lives in London, and nobody entirely sure what is supposed to happen to three mattresses and a pair of fridge freezers. Here is one of ours, in full.
Spring 2020, a house in CR7 a short walk from Thornton Heath station. Three mattresses, still made up. Two small fridge freezers standing in the kitchen. Enough in the rest of the rooms that it went out as two loads in one day — the first load, then a second before the men finished. The man instructing us was in Cyprus. He had inherited the property and was running the whole thing by email from the eastern Mediterranean, and he never once set foot in the house while we were in it.
When it was done he asked us to send the invoice again, this time marked as paid, so that he could hand it across to the probate solicitor dealing with the estate. That is a routine request on probate work and we send them without fuss. He also had a question we get more often than you would expect, and he put it like this: "Also I remember while booking the house clearance I so that you also do garden clearance could you please send me some information about this service."
The answer we gave him is the one we give everyone. Whatever the garden needs — overgrowth, broken pots, the shed and everything in it.
A second CR7 house, that December
Nine months later we were back in Thornton Heath for another full house clearance, a different sector of CR7. Same shape of day: a first load, a same-day additional load, one mattress on top of that, a full house clearance team on site and the whole lot taken away under the regulated recycling and disposal route. The person instructing us was in Gloucestershire, a couple of hours up the road, dealing with a Croydon house from another county entirely.
That is most of what we do around here, if we are honest. Executors and family members clearing a house from a distance. You cannot easily take three days off work to stand in an empty hallway in CR7 while strangers carry furniture past you, and there is no reason you should have to.
What goes where after it leaves the house
Furniture that somebody else could still use we try to route to a reuse project or a charity that will take collections, rather than sending it straight to the tip. Not everything qualifies — a wardrobe that has stood in a damp back bedroom for a decade is scrap, however solid it looks.
Everything else goes to a permitted transfer station and comes back with a waste transfer note. We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and we send the paperwork on whenever it is asked for, which on probate work and managed lets it usually is.
A few categories cannot travel in a mixed load at all, and that is the law rather than a preference of ours:
- Fridges and freezers — the gas has to be extracted at a licensed plant before the shell is broken up. The two small ones from that March house in CR7 went off that way.
- Mattresses — separated out, springs and foam split at a specialist site. Four came off those two Thornton Heath houses between them.
- Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs, footstools — these count as POP items now. The flame retardant in the foam means high-temperature incineration at a permitted facility, and no legitimate firm can tip them with the general waste.
- Paint tins, gas canisters, solvents, oil drums. If there is a shelf of half-used paint in the garage, tell us on the phone. It can be taken, but as a separate arrangement.
Anything that looks personal or valuable — medals on a mantelpiece, coins in a drawer, photographs, documents — gets left out on a surface for you rather than bagged. We would rather be told afterwards that we should have binned it than the other way round.
Access, parking and vans in Thornton Heath
The housing here is mostly Victorian and Edwardian terrace with bay fronts, plus interwar semis as you move out towards Woodside and Norbury, and a scattering of post-war blocks. Front paths are short and narrow, which matters more than people expect when a three-seater is coming out of a front room.
Parking is the real variable. The streets running off the High Street and Brigstock Road fill up early, several of them sit inside controlled parking zones, and the roads around Selhurst can be effectively impassable on a match day at Selhurst Park. We use a caged tipper or a Luton depending on the volume, and we would rather know in advance if a bay suspension is needed than send two men to circle the block. If access is tight we can barrow to the van from further up the street. It only changes how long the day takes.
Keys are usually the other question. We have worked plenty of Croydon jobs off a key safe with a code sent through the week before, and returned keys to a letterbox, a neighbour or an agent's office afterwards. None of that is unusual.
Garage and loft clearance in Thornton Heath
Garage and loft clearance is the part of a house that gets forgotten when people describe a property to us over the phone, and it is the part most likely to turn one van into two. In the terraces here the loft hatch is often on the landing with no ladder fixed, and the garage, where there is one, sits at the end of a shared rear service road that a Luton cannot always get down. So tell us if there is a loft, and tell us if there is a garage, even if you have not been up or in for years and have no idea what is in there. We would rather plan for it than discover it at four in the afternoon. A garage and loft on their own, with the rest of the house staying as it is, is a perfectly normal booking too — plenty of the house rubbish removal we do in CR7 is exactly that.
Hoarder house clearance in Thornton Heath
Some houses have forty years of accumulation in them and every room half-blocked. We clear those. A hoarder house clearance takes longer, it usually takes more than one load, and it may need masks and heavier gloves, but it is ordinary work for the team and nobody comments on the state of a place, then or afterwards. If there is anything genuinely unsanitary — spoiled food, animal mess, needles — say so when you book, because it changes the kit and the number of men on the van, not because it will put us off. There is more on how we approach hoarder house clearance on its own page.
Probate house clearance in Thornton Heath, and who we invoice
A good half of what we do in CR7 is probate house clearance. A house sitting empty while an estate is settled, and an executor somewhere else entirely trying to get it to a state where it can be valued, sold or handed back. Both of the Thornton Heath houses above were that: one instructed from Cyprus, one from Gloucestershire.
On that work we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. Payment can come out of the estate rather than out of your own pocket, and we will send the invoice wherever it needs to go, marked paid, for the file. There is no deposit and nothing is taken to hold a date. If a valuer needs to see the house before we touch it, tell us and we will work around that date instead.
We are also used to executors who want the waste transfer note and the paperwork for the estate file. Ask for it and it comes as a matter of course.
Where we cover around here
Thornton Heath sits in the London Borough of Croydon, Greater London, in the CR7 postcode district with Croydon itself next door, and our vans work across the whole spread of the borough. Selhurst, Woodside, Broad Green, Addiscombe, Fairfield, Waddon, Croham and Ashburton, then south through Sanderstead, Kenley and Coulsdon. North of that we are regularly in the SE and SW postcodes — Norwood, Streatham, Brixton and Clapham.
Several of those places have pages of their own. If you have landed here but the property is a mile or two away, try house clearance in Croydon for the town centre, house clearance in South Croydon for the roads climbing towards Croham, Mitcham west of us, or house clearance in Streatham if you are over the boundary to the north.
Thornton Heath station puts you twenty-odd minutes from London Bridge or Victoria, which is exactly why so many of the houses we clear here belong to families who moved out of London years ago and are now dealing with a property from a distance. Croydon Council's own bulky-waste service works well enough for a few items. A full house is a different proposition, and doing it yourself means a council skip permit, a licence for the skip on the road, and a week of neighbours quietly filling it for you.
Common questions about house clearance in Thornton Heath
How do I get a figure for a house clearance in Thornton Heath? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send photographs through the form on this page. Room by room is best — bedrooms, loft, garage, shed, garden — and mention the sofas, the beds and the white goods. We will come back with a figure and a date. The quote is free and puts you under no obligation.
Can you invoice the probate solicitor or the executor directly? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit to pay before we start. Copies of the invoice and the waste transfer note go wherever the estate file needs them.
Do I have to be at the house on the day? No. A key safe code, a set of keys with a neighbour, or an agent holding them is all fine. We ring you when we arrive, ring you again if anything looks different from the description, and return the keys however you ask.
What will you not take away? Asbestos in any form, and we will stop and tell you if we find it. Paint, solvents, gas canisters and oil need to be flagged in advance so they can be handled separately. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered POP furniture we do take, but they leave the site by their own route rather than in the mixed load.
Do you clear hoarded or very full houses? Yes, regularly. Tell us honestly what is behind the door and we will send the right number of men and the right kit. Nobody on the team will make a remark about it.
Can you do just the garage and loft? Yes. A garage and loft clearance, a single wardrobe, a shed, or one van load of garden waste are all normal bookings. The same applies to a room that has quietly become a store cupboard.
If you want to get on with it, ring 0800 046 5555 or send the photographs through the form on this page, and we will give you a date for the house clearance in Thornton Heath and a figure to go with it.
