Moving out at the end of the academic year is an odd sort of move. You own less than a household but far more than fits on a train, the deadline is set by someone else, and it lands in the same fortnight as your exams. This guide covers hitting a halls deadline without panic, deciding what to store near campus versus send home, and timing a collection around the weekly London run.
The deadline is firmer than it feels
Halls licences end on a fixed date, usually printed in the agreement you signed in September and typically falling in mid June. Some halls also expect you to leave within a day or two of your final exam, whichever comes first. After that date the accommodation team can clear the room, and anything left behind is usually treated as abandoned. Many halls charge for removing abandoned items and deduct it from your deposit, and most run a room inspection before you hand keys back.
Dig out your licence agreement now and write down three dates: your last exam, your licence end date, and any key return cut-off time. Everything else in this guide works backwards from those.
Work backwards from the last Wednesday
London Shuttle collects in London on Wednesdays. That means the real deadline for your belongings is not your licence end date but the last Wednesday before it. If your contract ends on a Saturday, the Wednesday three days earlier is your collection day, and you live out of a rucksack for the final stretch.
If exams finish early, book an earlier Wednesday instead. A room cleared a week before the deadline is a calm room, and you can spend the last days revising or celebrating rather than hunting for tape at midnight.
Send home or store locally
If you are coming back to the same city in September, it rarely makes sense to haul everything home and back again. A simple sorting rule works well.
Send home anything you will actually use before September: summer clothes, your laptop, documents, medication, anything sentimental or expensive, and the handful of books you genuinely plan to open.
Store locally anything that only exists for university life: pots and pans, the mattress topper, the drying rack, the desk fan, folders of old notes. Local storage near campus means it never travels at all.
Sell or donate anything that fails both tests. End of term is the worst time to sell, so charity shops and halls donation bins do brisk business in June. If it is not worth carrying downstairs, it is not worth paying to move.
If you are graduating, the rule collapses to one line: everything goes home, and this is the year to be ruthless about what counts as everything.
What a student room adds up to
A typical halls room packs down to somewhere between 8 and 12 pieces. A piece is a single box, bag or suitcase you can lift and carry yourself, weighing 30 kg or less. Books go in small boxes, clothes in cases or medium boxes, bedding squashes into a large box or a zipped holdall.
Pricing is per piece, and the rate steps down as the count rises: pieces five to ten are £15 each, and from the eleventh piece onwards the rate drops to £12. A bike travels boxed or bagged at £59 and is handled by a two person crew.
Kerbside or Assisted in halls
Kerbside is the simpler tier and starts at £199. You have everything waiting at the point where the van can legally stop, which in most halls means the main entrance. Check with reception the day before, because some sites have a loading bay or a barrier code the driver will need.
Assisted starts at £349 and means the crew carries from inside, which matters when your room is on the third floor of a building with no lift, or when you are mid exam and simply cannot be hauling boxes down stairwells. If a piece of actual furniture is coming home with you, it travels at £45 and brings a two person crew automatically.
The route home
Your pieces are collected on Wednesday, travel to our Oxfordshire hub, and go out to your home area on that area's own weekly run day. London Shuttle serves 86 postcode areas across England and Wales, both directions, so this works equally well in reverse when you come back in September. For home addresses in Scotland, our sister site Scotland Shuttle covers that side of the border.
Because each area has a fixed day, delivery usually lands within the same week or early the following one, depending on how the two days line up. Make sure someone is at the home address on the run day to take everything in, and give your parents fair warning about how many boxes are coming.
A packing plan that survives exam season
Two weeks out, order boxes and tape, and do the cull. Decide what stores locally, what sells, and what goes home.
One week out, pack everything you have not touched in a month: winter clothes, books from finished modules, posters, spare bedding.
The weekend before collection, pack everything except a day bag and one outfit per remaining day. Label every piece on two sides with your name, your mobile number and the destination postcode.
The night before, stack everything near the door, charge your phone and set an alarm. On the day, be reachable, hand over the pieces, then go and sit your exam or sleep. The boxes will beat you home, or arrive just after you do, and either way you travelled light.