Six horizons
Including one for not knowing, which is a legitimate answer and a common one. Each page says what should travel, what should be held, and what the move looks like when the horizon turns out to be wrong.
The boundaries are soft. A rough answer puts you in the right row and that is all that is needed.
Bring little, store the rest, keep the option open.
A sublet, a project, a term
Under a year in a furnished place. Almost nothing should travel: clothes, a laptop, a few books and whatever makes a room feel like yours. The job is mostly deciding what goes into store rather than what goes to London.
What this horizon means →Which is more common than anybody admits
A contract that might extend, a relationship that might work out, a city you might like. The honest answer is to move as though it is short and keep the option open, because the reverse is far more expensive to undo.
What this horizon means →An end date on paper. Roughly half comes and half stays.
A year or two, with an end date on paper
The classic London arrangement and the one with the clearest arithmetic. Roughly half comes, half stays, and getting the split right at the start saves two moves rather than one.
What this horizon means →Everything travels and the questions move to the property.
Three to five years, probably
Long enough that a rented flat becomes a home and short enough that you are not buying for a lifetime. Everything comes, most things are worth shipping, and the question shifts from what to bring to what to leave behind permanently.
What this horizon means →You are not planning to leave
A purchase, a family, a long lease. Everything travels, nothing sits in store on the off-chance, and the decisions are about the property rather than about the horizon. It is also the smallest category on this page.
What this horizon means →The arithmetic in reverse, plus whatever is still in store.
And the arithmetic runs backwards
Out of London, to the rest of the UK or abroad. Everything you decided at the start now has to be undone, including whatever has been sitting in a storage unit since you arrived and has probably stopped being worth the charges.
What this horizon means →Because London is transient in a way most of the country is not. A large share of the people moving into it already know roughly when they are leaving, and none of that appears in how removals firms quote.
The advice reverses somewhere around the three-year mark. Below it, bring little and hold the rest at the home end. Above it, bring everything, because holding a household for years costs more than the household and a flat you live in for years should be a home.
No price, rate card or transit time appears anywhere on this site, because the horizon, the volume and the access set the figure. Start on the quote form, or read the questions page. Nothing here is tenancy, tax or immigration advice.
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and how long you expect to be here. A rough answer is enough — the boundaries between horizons are soft and the advice barely changes within one.