House clearance in Arundel is mostly probate and sale-deadline work: a house lived in by one family for thirty or forty years, an executor two counties away. A completion date already sitting in the diary. Abacus has been clearing houses since 2007, we hold an upper-tier waste carrier licence. The office takes the details on 0800 046 5555. What follows is what house clearance Arundel jobs actually look like on the day, rather than what a brochure says about them.
BN18 sits in the gap between the river and the downs. The properties split roughly two ways: old terraces and cottages in the town centre with nowhere to park, and post-war semis and bungalows out towards Ford, Lyminster and Wick. Then there are the hamlets — Burpham, Warningcamp, Tortington, Binsted — where a bungalow can have more shed and outbuilding behind it than house in front. Where the loft is the only bit of storage anybody thinks to mention on the phone. Same postcode district, three quite different days' work.
Getting a van near the door
The High Street climbs, the side streets off it are narrow. A lot of the older houses have no driveway at all. Add the castle and cathedral traffic in season and it can be tight. We'd rather know about it beforehand than find out at nine in the morning.
Sometimes there are no restrictions worth worrying about and daytime parking outside the house is fine. That is what we're told when we ask. Sometimes the nearest realistic space is a couple of hundred yards off, and every armchair has to be carried that far. Which adds time to the day, so we agree it in writing before anyone sets out rather than springing it on a customer at teatime. Nobody likes a surprise on that. Where there's genuinely no space at all, Arun District Council can sometimes hold a bay for a vehicle. The householder has to ask them, and they need warning.
If you're not going to be there, that's normal. Keys come from a safe, a neighbour, or the agent. The team photographs each room on arrival and again when it's empty, so you can see what was done without standing in the hallway all day.
A house clearance arranged entirely from a distance
Late November, a Monday start, and the whole thing set up by email because the person handling it lived a long way from the property and had a working week of her own. She put it plainly when we asked who would let the team in: "If I can make it over that day I will. Otherwise it is fine to send pictures and pop the key through the letterbox."
Everything else was settled before the van moved. The booking questions were answered in writing — the address of the property, the week she wanted the work done, whether anyone attending was unwell or isolating (no), who to ring on the day. Three bedrooms, the loft included, and the outside areas as well. The answers had sat in her drafts box for a day after she'd talked the quote through with us on the phone. Is about as ordinary as this gets: people mean to send it, then the week happens.
That matters more than it sounds. A team that arrives already knowing what stays, what goes and who holds the key gets through a house in a fraction of the time of one that finds out room by room.
There was more in that house than a single van holds, so it did not finish in a morning. The instruction when we came back for an answer was simply to carry on as discussed. A few things in it could not travel with the furniture at all: a fire extinguisher, a gas bottle, a small fridge freezer and a mattress, each of which has its own legal route out of a property, plus a handful of items that go through regulated recycling and disposal rather than the ordinary household stream. None of that is unusual in a house that has been lived in for a long time. It just needs saying out loud before the day. A gas bottle discovered at four in the afternoon is a different problem from one mentioned at the quote stage.
The paperwork went to a solicitors' office rather than to a private address, which is often the case where an estate or a sale is being handled by someone else. It was closed out in the middle of December. The last email in the thread ended "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!". You take the wins.
What we can't take in with the sofas
Some things travel separately or not at all. Tins of paint, aerosols, oils, gas cylinders, fire extinguishers — none of that can ride in a mixed household load. Where we find them mid-clearance we ask first, then they go off on their own route to be recycled properly rather than being tipped in with the rest.
Fridges and freezers go through a licensed degassing route under the F-gas rules. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating have been treated as POPs waste since 2023, which means they are incinerated rather than recycled. The sofa cushion counts too, even on its own. Mattresses go to a separate route again. Clinical sharps go back to a pharmacy or the council's clinical route, never into a van with the furniture. If you find a yellow bin in a bedroom that's the answer. Asbestos, tyres and anything else clinical we'll point you at the right specialist for.
Paperwork, and where it all goes
Furniture with wear left in it, decent white goods, books, tools, garden bits. We'd rather these went on to a reuse shop or a charity in Arun than into a skip, and where a family has already bagged clothing up for charity, those bags go where they were meant to go rather than onto the van with everything else. What's left is tipped at a permitted transfer station and weighed in on a ticket.
We're a registered upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679, and every load leaves a paper trail behind it. Separate streams get separate Waste Transfer Notes — mixed household waste on one, POPs and regulated items on another, anything going off on its own ticket on a third. The note is raised when the load is tipped. We send our copy on with the rest of the paperwork. If you're an executor and you'll be asked what happened to the contents, ask us for the notes and keep them with the estate file.
That is worth knowing before you instruct anybody for a house clearance in Arundel. An executor who cannot say where a houseful of furniture went is the one left explaining it to the beneficiaries months later.
The kinds of house clearance Arundel asks for
Probate house clearance in Arundel
Most of what we do in BN18 is probate house clearance. Arundel has an older population than the county average and a lot of houses that have not changed hands since the seventies. The call usually comes from an executor rather than the person who lived there. We invoice solicitors, attorneys, administrators and executors directly — it doesn't have to be addressed to you personally. Where probate is being administered the work can be settled out of the estate. Nothing is asked of a UK customer before the work is done. If you want the full detail of how we handle probate house clearance, that has its own page.
Flat clearance in BN18, and the town-centre cottages
A flat clearance above a shop, or a cottage clearance off the High Street, is its own kind of day: stairs with a turn in them, doorways that predate the furniture. Nowhere to stage boxes except the pavement. We'd sooner send a smaller vehicle twice than block the street once. Sheltered flats and retirement schemes come with their own rules as well. A booked lift, a warden expecting us, and a corridor that has to stay walkable while we work.
Garage and loft clearance in Arundel
Plenty of Arundel house clearance jobs are not the house at all. Garage and loft clearance on its own is a regular booking here: garages that haven't opened since the car stopped fitting, lofts boarded over a lifetime of boxes, sheds full of paint tins and seed trays. We'll do those without touching the rooms below, and the loft ladder question is always worth asking before the day. Plenty of BN18 lofts are reached by a hatch and a borrowed stepladder.
End of tenancy clearance in Arundel
Landlords and managing agents ring us for end of tenancy clearance when a property has to be back on the market by a date. Photographs on arrival and on completion, keys back where they came from.
Hoarder house clearance in Arundel
Houses that have been filling up for thirty years don't put us off. Nor do lofts, garages and sheds that haven't been opened since. There's a separate page on hoarder house clearance, and where it's only a matter of getting bulk away rather than emptying a home, house rubbish removal may be all you need. Single items and office contents we'll take as well — just say what it is.
How the day runs
The team arrives at the property at nine and walks round every room, the loft and the outbuildings before anything moves. Anything that changes the job — a garden heap that wasn't in the photographs, a gas bottle behind the shed door — gets raised with you then, not afterwards. Rooms come out in order, the property is swept through, and photographs go over by email when it's done. Wherever it can be finished in a day, it is. Where it can't, we say so at the quote stage rather than at four in the afternoon on the day itself.
Coverage, and how to get a figure for the work
Arundel station is at the bottom of the hill by the water meadows, on the Arun Valley line. Ford and Barnham one way, Amberley and Pulborough the other. We work the whole of that corridor. Down at BN17 that means house clearance in Littlehampton and Wick; then Bognor Regis and Felpham on PO21 and PO22, and Angmering, Rustington, Walberton, Slindon, Yapton and Climping. Inland it runs up through Storrington and Pulborough to house clearance in Petworth. West across into house clearance in Chichester, east along the coast to Worthing and Shoreham. Arun District Council covers most of it; West Sussex County Council runs the recycling sites.
On what a clearance comes to, there's only one honest answer to give in writing: ring the office and tell us about it, or send photographs. Every house is different and the difference is in the rooms, not in a table. The quote is free and puts you under no obligation.
House clearance in Arundel — questions we get asked
What does a house clearance in Arundel cost? Ring 0800 046 5555 with the rooms, the floor. What the parking is like outside, or send photographs of each room through the form on this page. You'll have a figure back without anyone needing to come out.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the estate? Yes. We invoice solicitors, executors, administrators and attorneys directly, and on a probate house clearance the work can be settled out of the estate rather than by you.
Do I have to be there? No, and most people aren't. Keys come from an agent, a neighbour or a key safe, the team photographs every room on arrival and again when the house is empty. The keys go back where they came from.
Which areas around Arundel do you cover? All of BN18 including Ford, Lyminster, Wick, Walberton, Slindon, Yapton and Climping. Out to Littlehampton, Bognor Regis, Storrington and Pulborough.
Is there anything you can't take? Paint, aerosols, oils, gas cylinders, fire extinguishers, asbestos, tyres and clinical waste don't go in a mixed household load. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture all go, but by their own licensed routes.
Do I get proof of where it went? Yes. Waste Transfer Notes for each stream, raised when the load is tipped, sent on with the paperwork. Keep them with the estate file.
Ring us on 0800 046 5555 with the rooms, the floor. What the parking is like outside, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you'll have a proper figure before anyone comes out.
