Terms and conditions for a house clearance business

A house clearance business needs terms that answer three awkward questions: who is entitled to give away the contents, what happens to the cash found in a coat pocket, and where the load goes afterwards. Add pricing from a photograph and a bereaved customer with cancellation rights, and a generic service contract will not cope. I draft terms around your clearance business for a fixed fee of £995, delivered in five working days.

Who this is for

House and probate clearance businesses, man and van operators doing full property clears, and firms taking repeat instructions from solicitors, estate agents, councils and landlords. Most of your customers are private individuals, often executors or grieving families, and they are consumers in law. Some are businesses and public bodies. One set of terms can serve both, provided it is drafted with both in mind.

What matters in house clearance terms

Who is instructing you and who owns the contents

Almost every serious dispute in this trade starts with authority. The person booking you may be an executor without a grant, one of four siblings who have not agreed, a landlord dealing with goods a tenant left behind, an attorney whose power ended on death, or a care home manager clearing a room. Your terms should require the customer to confirm in writing that they are entitled to dispose of everything in the property and to cover you if a relative or beneficiary surfaces afterwards. Against a consumer that protection has to be drafted fairly to bind them under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Valuables, paperwork and things found during the clear

Teams find cash inside books, jewellery in wardrobe drawers, medals, share certificates, passports, wills and computers full of family photographs. Terms that say nothing about this leave you facing an accusation you cannot disprove. I draft a found items procedure: what is set aside, how it is recorded, who is told, how long you hold it and what happens to anything unclaimed. The same clause should deal with documents and devices, which need returning or destroying rather than tipping, and should confirm the customer has removed what they want to keep before you start.

Pricing a property you have only seen in photographs

Most clearances are quoted from a video walk round, a few photographs or a description on the phone. The terms need to record what the quote assumed: the volume, which rooms are included, whether the loft, garage, shed and garden are in scope, access, stairs and parking, and whether tip charges sit inside the price. When the loft turns out to be packed or the garage is a second house, you need a written right to re-price or withdraw before the van is loaded. For consumer quotes, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 requires the headline price to include every mandatory charge.

Waste carrier registration and where the load actually goes

You are transporting other people's waste for money, so registration with the Environment Agency under the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989 and the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 matters, and so does keeping your transfer paperwork. The terms should list what you will not remove without a separate agreement: asbestos sheeting from a garage roof, gas bottles, paint and chemicals, fridges and freezers, tyres, and the contents of a property with serious contamination or infestation. They should also control subcontracting, because a tipped load carrying your customer's post is your problem long before it is anyone else's.

Bereaved customers and the fourteen day cancellation right

A clearance agreed at the property, or by phone and email, is an off-premises or distance contract, so the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give the customer fourteen days to cancel. Families usually want the house emptied well before that, and a probate sale will not wait. The answer is to handle it properly rather than ignore it: the customer can ask you in writing to begin early, and if they then cancel they pay a proportionate amount for what you have already done. Where the cancellation information is never given, the period can extend by up to twelve months.

Resale, disposal and limiting what you can be blamed for

If you offset resale value against your fee, or take saleable items in part payment, the terms must say so plainly and say who values them. Otherwise you will meet the customer who decides, a month later, that the bureau was Georgian. The terms should confirm that cleared items pass out of your possession for sale, donation or disposal and cannot be recovered, and should cap your liability. Under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 a cap against a business customer must be reasonable; against a consumer the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not allow liability for a service to be cut below the price.

What it costs

Customer or supplier terms and conditions, £995. One set of terms, customer-facing or supplier-facing, drafted around your business. Five working days.

Review of your existing terms, £495. You already have terms and want to know how much of a problem they are. Returned marked up with my amendments and an explanation of the changes. Three working days.

Buying online forms the engagement on payment. The scope is what the terms and conditions drafting page describes, you accept the Terms of Service at checkout, and I email you within four working hours to get started. If you would rather ask something first, email me.

What you get

• A full set of terms drafted around your business, not a template with your name inserted
• A covering note in plain English explaining every commercial choice I made and why, so you can defend the terms in a negotiation without ringing me
• Liability, payment, termination and IP provisions set at a level that will survive a procurement review
• Consumer-facing wording drafted to be enforceable where you sell to consumers
• Guidance on how to incorporate the terms properly, which is where most businesses actually fail
• One round of amendments after you have read them

What is not included

• Negotiating your terms with individual customers
• Sector-specific regulatory compliance beyond the contract terms themselves
• Website privacy notice and cookie compliance, which I quote separately
• Terms governed by the law of another country

Questions I am often asked

The property is far fuller than I was told. Can I charge more?

Only if your terms allow it. I draft a re-quote clause that applies where the volume, access or contents differ materially from what the customer described, with the revised price agreed in writing before loading continues and a right to walk away if it is not. Without that, you are stuck with the original figure and the tip fees.

A landlord wants me to clear a tenant's belongings. What should the terms say?

That instruction carries a real risk that the goods are not the landlord's to give away. The terms should put the landlord on record as confirming the tenancy has ended, that any notice procedure for abandoned goods has been followed, and that they will meet any claim from the former tenant. Photographing the property before clearance is worth building into your process.

Do I need different terms for solicitors and estate agents?

One set will normally do. The commercial sections can apply to everyone, with a separate part covering the rights that only consumers have, and a payment part that claims interest and compensation from business customers under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. Firms instructing you regularly may also want an account arrangement, which the same document can accommodate.

Related guidance and services

• Terms and conditions drafting, £995, the service this page describes
• Contract review, £495
• Ask Caesar, £495 a month
• Terms and conditions for a removals company
• Terms and conditions for a domestic cleaning business

This page is general guidance for businesses in England and Wales, not advice on your own circumstances. Last reviewed: September 2026. Email geoffrey@caesar.co.uk.