Office Removals in Wigan
Commercial moves across the borough, from the distribution units at Martland Park to upper-floor offices in the town centre. Sequenced so you are working again quickly.
- Evenings and weekends
- Offices, workshops and trade units
- Fixed written quote
The removals are rarely the hard part
In short: give us the count of desks, storage and racking, both addresses, and the window you can work in. We will arrange a look round and send a fixed written price.
After enough commercial moves you notice that the ones which go wrong almost never go wrong because of the lifting. They go wrong because something with a lead time was started too late.
Broadband at the new premises is the most common. A new connection can take weeks, occasionally longer if physical work is needed, and the date you are given is a target rather than a guarantee. A business that arrives to a working building and a dead line is a business that cannot trade, whatever else went right.
The second is specialist disconnection. If an engineer is booked to disconnect a machine on the same morning we are due to lift it, the day stops. Booked the afternoon before, everything works. It is a scheduling detail and it is the difference between a smooth move and an expensive one.
So the useful conversation early on is not about vans. It is about what has a lead time, who is doing it, and in what order. Get that right and the physical move becomes the predictable part.
Where businesses move across Wigan
Six kinds of commercial premises, with a genuinely wide gap between the easiest and the hardest.
Martland Park and Kitt Green
Industrial and distribution units on the western side, close to junction 26 of the M6. Yards, roller shutters and level access throughout. Physically the most straightforward commercial moves in the borough and usually the largest.
Westwood Park and Robin Park
Business and leisure space close to the town centre, with modern units, decent parking and reasonable loading. Access is rarely the constraint here, and the working week usually is.
Wigan town centre
Upper-floor offices, professional practices and shops around the centre. Older buildings, narrow service access, stairs rather than lifts, and controlled parking that shapes the start time.
Ince and Hindley
Trade counters, workshops and light industrial units along the eastern corridor. Good vehicle access, and jobs here are priced on racking, benches and materials rather than on desks.
Ashton-in-Makerfield and Bryn
Small business units and premises close to the M6, with easy vehicle movement. Frequently a mix of office and workshop in the same building.
Standish and Shevington
Smaller professional offices, clinics and units serving the newer residential areas. Usually simple moves, constrained by parking rather than by the building.
A six week sequence
Most commercial moves in this borough are handled by somebody who is also running the business. This is the version that fits round a normal week.
Confirm the date, and start anything with a lead time. Broadband and phone lines at the new premises, any specialist disconnection, and whatever the building needs to authorise. These are the things that cannot be rushed later.
Walk the premises with every cupboard open and decide what is not coming. This is the cheapest saving available to you and the one most often skipped.
Agree the new floor plan and number the desks. Tell everybody their number. Crates get labelled to a destination that physically exists rather than to a room that may not.
Staff crate their own desks and personal items. Archive and anything seasonal moves early if it can. Confirm who is on site at each end on the day.
Load to the plan, unload to the priority order, and set up the things people need first before anything else comes off the vehicle.
Send us the numbers
Desks, cabinets and bays of racking is all we need to start with, plus where you are now and where you are going. We come back with a figure in writing.
Getting the racking up before the stock arrives
On any move involving shelving, the racking is the critical path and everything else waits behind it. It is the part most often left to sort itself out on the day, and it is the part that decides whether you are picking orders on Monday or on Thursday.
The sequence is fixed and it cannot be shortcut. The old racking comes down. The floor at the new unit has to be clear and marked out. The racking goes up. Only then can stock come off a vehicle in any useful order. Attempting to overlap those stages produces a unit with pallets in the middle of the floor and nowhere to put them, which is slower than doing it in order.
What that means practically is that the racking should move ahead of the stock rather than with it, and ideally on a different day. A Friday for the racking and a Saturday for the stock works far better than trying to do both at once, and it usually costs less because neither crew is standing waiting for the other.
Two other things are worth settling early. Whether the racking is coming at all, because some of it is not worth moving and a new unit may have different ceiling heights or floor loadings. And whether it needs inspecting or signing off once re-erected, which for some installations it does. Neither is a removals question, and both will stop a move if nobody has asked.
Moving a warehouse or a stockroom
A large share of the commercial work in this borough is really a stock move with an office attached, particularly out towards Martland Park and along the M6 corridor. Those jobs are priced and planned quite differently from a floor of desks.
The first difference is measurement. Stock is counted in pallets, bays and shelf metres rather than in products. A business that tells us it holds forty thousand items has told us nothing useful. A business that says twelve pallet spaces and thirty bays of shelving has told us almost everything.
The second is that racking is its own job. Dismantling and re-erecting racking takes real time and it has to happen in the right order, because stock cannot go back until the racking is up and the racking cannot go up until the floor is clear. Where the new unit is being fitted out by somebody else, their finish date is your start date.
The third is findability. Stock that arrives in a random order is stock that cannot be picked, which means the business is technically moved and practically closed. Deciding the layout of the new unit in advance, and loading in reverse order so the first bays off the vehicle are the first ones needed, is what turns a two-day recovery into a two-hour one.
Finally, be honest about weight. Anything liquid, tinned or metal is heavier per box than people assume, and a pallet of it needs the right equipment rather than enthusiasm.
What we move for businesses
The contents of the premises, whether that is desks, benches or shelving.
- Desks, chairs, screens and monitor arms, dismantled and rebuilt
- Filing cabinets, storage units and archive boxes
- Server cabinets, comms equipment and network hardware
- Workshop benches, racking, tools and materials
- Trade counter fittings, displays and stock
- Kitchen and staff room equipment, fridges and water coolers
- Safes and heavy items, with the right notice
- Storage for anything the new premises cannot take yet
The first fortnight in the new unit
The move gets all the planning and the two weeks afterwards get none, which is odd, because that is where the disruption actually lives.
Expect the first few days to run slowly and plan around it rather than being caught out. Nobody knows where anything is, half the questions in the building are about the building, and things that took two minutes in the old premises take ten. Booking anything demanding into that window is optimistic.
A few habits shorten it considerably. Leave anything boxed that does not need opening, because unpacking everything immediately is how a new unit fills with things nobody wanted to bring. After a fortnight, a surprising amount can go straight out without ever being opened.
Put one person in charge of the question where is it, and tell everybody who that is. Not a system, a person. It is the cheapest thing you can do in week one and it stops the same question being asked forty times.
Then walk the old premises once it is empty and photograph every area before keys go back. If you are handing space back to a landlord, the condition it is left in usually matters to a deposit or a dilapidations claim, and photographs taken on the day are worth considerably more than a recollection three months later.
What decides the cost
Five variables. For anywhere holding stock, the fourth tends to swamp the other four.
Bays, not square feet
Count shelving bays, pallet spaces and cabinets. Floor area tells us surprisingly little, because two units of identical size can hold completely different amounts.
Whether we can drive to the door
A roller shutter and a yard is one job. Carrying up a flight to a first floor office above a shop is another. In this borough that gap is unusually wide.
Which hours you can spare
Out-of-hours work is standard for us and it is priced differently. Fixing the window early keeps more crews available to you.
Weight per box
Anything tinned, liquid or metal is far heavier than its size suggests. A workshop or trade unit is priced on this as much as on volume.
What your team handles
Desks crated by the people who sit at them saves real money, so long as the crates arrive early enough to be useful.
Where we cover
We work every WN postcode. That takes in Martland Park and Kitt Green in the west, Robin Park and Westwood nearer the centre, the trade units along the Ince and Hindley corridor, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Bryn towards the motorway, and the smaller premises serving Standish, Shevington, Orrell and Pemberton. For work outside the borough, see our business removals page.
Other ways we can help
Business removals
How we handle commercial work more broadly, beyond this borough.
Removals in Wigan
Household moves across the same postcodes, if you are moving home as well.
Storage
Somewhere for stock or equipment to sit while a unit is being fitted out.
Dismantling and reassembly
Benching, storage walls and workstations taken down and rebuilt.
Questions businesses ask us
Give me a rough idea of cost.
We cannot, honestly, without knowing the premises, and any figure we invented would change. What drives it is bays of racking, cabinets and desks, whether there is level access, and which hours you need. Send those and we will look at the unit, then put a number in writing that holds.
We cannot shut for a day. What are the options?
Phasing. A department or a section at a time, or archive and slow-moving stock first with the working areas last. It stretches the job out and keeps you trading, which for most businesses here is the better exchange.
Who talks to the landlord?
You do, and start it early. Both ends will have their own conditions about hours, access and paperwork, and only a tenant can agree those. Pass on whatever they tell you and we will work inside it.
Is the racking your job or ours?
Ours if you want it to be. Dismantling and re-erecting it is normal work. What matters is that it happens before the stock arrives rather than alongside it, which usually means a separate day.
How long before the move should we start?
Six weeks is comfortable, and the reason is almost never our diary. It is connectivity, engineers and building sign-off, none of which can be compressed once you are inside their lead times.
Something is bolted down. Now what?
Book the engineer for the day before rather than the same morning. That single change prevents the most common cause of a commercial move running over.
Can things go into store for a while?
Yes, and it is worth raising at the quote stage rather than when a fit-out slips. Items come back out in whatever order suits you, not all at once.
Which parts of the borough do you work in?
All of it. Martland Park, Westwood, Robin Park, the town centre, Ince, Hindley, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Bryn, Orrell, Pemberton, Standish and Shevington.
Start your move
Tell us what you have and when it needs to happen. We will look at the premises first, then price it properly in writing so there are no revisions later.