Kent is not one place to work in, whatever the county boundary says. There is the Medway end — Chatham, Gillingham, Rochester, Strood — which people here call Medway and not Kent, and there is Thanet out on the corner, Margate and Ramsgate and Broadstairs, which is another world again. In between is farming country and the commuter towns strung along the A2 and the M20.
62 clearances have landed in Kent postcodes over the years, and they cluster where you would expect: ME8 in Gillingham more than anywhere, then the Thanet numbers — CT14 at Deal, CT9 Margate, CT11 Ramsgate, CT10 Broadstairs — and DA1 at Dartford.
The coast is a different job from the rest of it
Thanet and the Kent coast run to a particular kind of work. A lot of the housing stock is Victorian, much of it was split into flats decades ago, and a fair share of what we clear belonged to somebody who retired here from London forty years ago and stayed. The instruction usually comes from a family who live nowhere near.
Inland — Maidstone, Ashford, Sevenoaks, Canterbury — it is more often a house sale with a date on it. The agent has the keys, the completion is booked, and the clearance has to fit in the gap.
Access is the thing that catches people out on the coast. The Georgian and Victorian terraces at Margate and Ramsgate have no front garden, no driveway and often a controlled parking zone. That is not a problem if we know in advance; it becomes one at eight in the morning if we do not.
Where we tip
The Bromley end of our runs uses Veolia on Baths Road, BR2 9RB, and Peter Norris at Station Approach, St Mary Cray, BR5 2NB. Down in Thanet there is a permitted site at CT10 2QS. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and the transfer notes come back to us — if you are an executor and want them for the estate file, ask.
What we cover
Kent pages below run across ME, CT, TN, DA and the BR districts on this side of the boundary. If you are on the edge — Swanley, Dartford, the bits that feel more like London than Kent — ring with the postcode and we will tell you straight away whether it is an ordinary run.