Three loads came out of one house in WR5 in a single day. The first load, then two more before the team stopped, and a mattress that travelled on its own, as mattresses always have to. The instruction had come through the wills and probate department of a solicitor's office in the city centre, WR1, ten minutes' walk from Foregate Street station. That is about as typical a house clearance in Worcester as we get: a family house on the east bank, more in it than anybody had allowed for, and a completion date doing the pushing rather than us. We have been clearing houses since 2007, and the phone is still one number, 0800 046 5555.
Flat clearance is its own kind of day in the WR1 conversions and the blocks along the river: a shared stair, a door that will not stay propped, and a van that has to stand where the loading rules allow. Worcester houses hold a lot. The Victorian terraces in St John's and Barbourne have cellars, box rooms and a loft hatch nobody has opened since the seventies. The post-war semis at Warndon and Ronkswood have the garage full and the shed fuller.
What actually leaves the house
On the WR5 day it was the usual weight of a lived-in home — beds, wardrobes, a dining set, the contents of a garage that had stopped being a garage a long time before. Boxes of records turned up too, the sort that make everyone stop for a minute: Charles Aznavour, George McCrae, The Three Degrees. Someone had bought singles all through the seventies and never thrown one away. There was a Sony Trinitron on a swivel stand and a Bush radio, and, in the loft, a Ferguson Videostar with the tape still in it.
None of that goes straight in the crusher. Furniture somebody else would happily live with goes to the charity depots and reuse projects in the county first — we ring round — and records and working bits of hi-fi are worth an hour of anyone's time. Metal goes to the scrap merchant. What is genuinely finished gets tipped at a permitted transfer station and weighed in under our carrier registration, so there is a paper trail from the door to the weighbridge. We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679. We are insured for the work — worth asking any firm for, because the penalty for fly-tipped waste follows the householder, not the man with the van.
What we cannot put in an ordinary load: tins of paint, gas bottles, solvents, asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof. Worcestershire County Council's household centres will take small amounts of some of it from residents, and for the rest there is a specialist collection. We will tell you which on the day rather than quietly leave it in the hall.
POPs, sofas and the question everyone asks
A house clearance we quoted in WR4 in September 2023 turned on exactly this. The customer had read the paperwork properly and wrote back:
"The dining chairs are not upholstered so I'm assuming they do not fall under POP?"
They do not — bare wood and metal chairs are fine. But in sofas, armchairs, futons, beanbags and padded headboards the flame retardants in the foam are themselves the POPs, so since 2023 that material has to be kept apart from general waste and burned in a controlled facility. It cannot be baled in with the rest of the load, and it cannot be dropped at a charity depot either. Mattresses are separate again, for the same practical reason.
The same customer took the duvets and the upholstered chairs out themselves and dropped the cleaning we had offered, going with the clearance only. Fine by us. Three mattresses on that one. The integrated dishwasher was staying with the house, so no white goods to shift. We said plainly what photographs can and cannot show — weight, unseen cupboards, how long the small stuff takes to gather — and that if the day looked like turning into two loads, the clean would not happen. Better said in advance than argued about at four o'clock.
The kinds of house clearance Worcester asks for
Probate house clearance in Worcester
Most of our city work arrives this way: a solicitor, or a son or daughter two counties off, with a house to empty before it can go on the market. A probate house clearance runs on somebody else's timetable — grant issued, agent booked, keys due back — so we take the questions in writing before we confirm a date. Who is opening up, who instructs the team on the day, what is staying with the house, is anything hazardous or verminous in there. Nothing found in the house is thrown out blind: paperwork, photographs, share certificates and jewellery are put aside for the executor. If you want the detail of how we handle estate work, it is set out on our probate house clearance page.
Business and estate premises
Not all of it is family homes. We have cleared commercial premises in WR1 too. There the contents went into storage rather than to the tip, and city-centre buildings where three loads went out in one day and a fridge freezer had to leave on its own, because sealed refrigerant units cannot ride with the general waste. Care and business sites bring their own wrinkle: the head office is often a long way from the building, so the person signing and the person opening the door are two different people.
Garage, loft and single rooms
Plenty of jobs here are not a whole house. Garage and loft clearance is a booking in its own right — a garage in Warndon that has not been opened since a bad winter, a loft in Barbourne, one room in a flat at Diglis. We will do a part clearance and say so honestly if a household centre run would serve you better.
Where we work
This page covers Worcester itself. WR1 takes the centre and the Tything, WR2 St John's, Lower Wick, Rushwick and Hallow, WR3 for Claines, Northwick and Fernhill Heath, WR4 out towards Warndon and Blackpole, WR5 for Battenhall, Diglis, Red Hill and Kempsey — and the villages that come with the city's postcodes: WR6 out at Martley, Broadwas and Clifton upon Teme, WR7 around Upton Snodsbury and Flyford Flavell, WR8 for Upton-upon-Severn and Hanley Swan. WR78 and WR99 are not places anybody lives; they are non-geographic codes that turn up on business post, so if one of those is on a letter you have, ring us and we will work out where the property actually is.
Then there is the ring of Worcestershire towns we work in the same week: DY10 for Kidderminster, Blakedown and Cookley, WR9 for Droitwich Spa, WR10 for Pershore, and WR14 for Malvern Link and Great Malvern under the hills. Foregate Street and Shrub Hill both sit in the city, Worcestershire Parkway is out at Norton for the Bristol and Birmingham lines, and there are stations at Droitwich Spa, Pershore, Great Malvern and Kidderminster. We mention trains for a practical reason: executors living in London or Leeds often come down for a single day to hand over keys, and it helps to know the van and the train can meet.
Landed here but the house is somewhere else? We cover house clearance in Birmingham up the M5, house clearance in Kidderminster at the top of the county, and house clearance in Stourbridge just over the border into the West Midlands. Same crew, same number.
Access, parking and the river
Anyone who works in this city plans around two things: the Severn and the pedestrianised centre. Loading anywhere near the Cathedral or up Broad Street means an early start and a permit, because the bollards and the delivery windows decide your morning, not you. Riverside flats at Diglis have parking that runs out by nine. And when the Severn comes up — Hylton Road, the cricket ground, the car parks along the water — a booked clearance can become a different job entirely, so we watch the gauge in winter and ring before we set off rather than after.
The terraced streets around St John's are tight, cars both sides, no dropped kerb. We bring the smaller van where that is sensible and carry further — it takes longer, but it beats blocking a road for four hours.
A normal day starts at nine at the property. We would rather begin early and be off the drive before the light goes than string a house clearance in Worcester across two half-days for no reason.
What we tell people about price
There is one honest answer to what a clearance costs. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs of the rooms, the loft and the garage through the form on this page, and we will give you a figure. Not a range on a web page written for somebody else's house — a figure for yours. If the job grows once we are inside, we stop, ring you, and agree it before carrying on.
Who we invoice is a separate question, and the answer is straightforward. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever you tell us to. Payment can come out of the estate once things clear, which is what executors handling a Worcester house from another county usually want to know first. There is no deposit — nothing is asked for up front, and the invoice follows the work rather than the booking.
The houses people apologise for
Houses packed floor to ceiling are ordinary work here, not an event. Nobody on the team comments, nothing gets photographed for a laugh, and paperwork, photographs and jewellery that surface in the middle of it are put aside for you rather than binned. In one Worcester loft it was a paraffin heater, a Binatone TV game and a Panasonic music centre stacked on top of a rear-projection television that took four of us down the ladder. It takes as long as it takes. If that is the situation you are in, our hoarder house clearance page describes how we approach it.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Worcester
Do you cover my postcode district? WR1 to WR8 for Worcester and its villages, plus WR78 and WR99 on business post. If your district is not on that list, say where the house is when you call — Droitwich, Pershore, Malvern and Kidderminster are all within a working day of us.
Can you invoice the solicitor on a probate house clearance? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct, the bill can be settled from the estate once things clear, and there is no deposit to find beforehand.
What does a clearance in Worcester cost? Ring the office or send photographs through the form on this page and you will have a figure before anyone comes out. We will not guess at it in print.
What will you not take? Paint, solvents, gas bottles and asbestos cannot travel in a normal load. Fridges and freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture all have to be handled apart from general waste under the POPs rules. We tell you on the day what needs a separate route.
Can you work in the pedestrianised centre? Yes, with an early start and a permit. Tell us the district and whether there is anywhere at all to stand a van, and we will plan the morning around the delivery windows.
Do I need to empty cupboards and drawers first? No. Leave them. The team clears cupboards, wardrobes, drawers, lofts, sheds and garages, and sweeps through afterwards.
Talking to us
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs of the rooms, the loft and the garage and we will quote from those. Tell us the postcode district, whether there is anywhere to put a van, and whether the house is empty or still lived in. If you want the place swept and mopped afterwards we can arrange that alongside, though as the WR4 job showed, it only fits if the clearance stays inside one load. Worcester, Droitwich, Pershore, Malvern, Kidderminster — one crew, one number, and a straight answer about your house rather than somebody else's.
