Scotland has no exchange of contracts and no completion day. Missives conclude, and the move happens on the date of entry, with keys usually released around midday once funds transfer.
Most moving checklists you will find online were written for England and Wales. They are built around exchanging contracts and a completion day, neither of which exists in Scottish conveyancing. If you follow one of them, you will prepare for the wrong milestones and you will almost certainly leave your removal booking too late. This checklist works back from the date of entry instead.
The short version
- Your binding moment is the conclusion of missives, not an exchange of contracts.
- Your moving day is the date of entry, agreed in the missives and usually a Friday.
- Keys normally pass around the middle of the day, once your solicitor confirms funds have landed, so a Scottish move is a half-day move at the receiving end.
- Water and sewerage charges are collected through your Council Tax bill, so there is no separate Scottish Water account to close.
- Once missives conclude, your date is fixed and you can book a removal firm with confidence. In England, buyers are told to wait. In Scotland, waiting costs you the date.
Why a Scottish purchase does not follow the English timetable
The difference is where the legal commitment sits. In England and Wales, a buyer and seller can walk away until contracts are exchanged, which often happens only a couple of weeks before the move. In Scotland, solicitors negotiate through formal letters called missives, and when those missives conclude, both parties are bound. The date of entry is written into them.
That single difference reshapes the whole plan. You get certainty earlier, and you get it on a fixed date rather than a moving target.
| England and Wales | Scotland | What it changes for you |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange of contracts | Conclusion of missives | You are committed earlier, so you can book services earlier |
| Completion day | Date of entry | The date is agreed in writing rather than negotiated late |
| Buyer commissions a survey | Seller supplies the Home Report | You see the single survey, valuation and energy report before you offer |
| Stamp Duty Land Tax | Land and Buildings Transaction Tax | Your solicitor calculates and submits it as part of settlement |
| HM Land Registry | Registers of Scotland | Registration of your title happens after entry, not before |
The timeline, working back from your date of entry
Treat the date of entry as the fixed point and count backwards. Everything below assumes a purchase with a mortgage, which is the most common case.
Before missives conclude
Nothing is binding yet, so this is the stage for decisions rather than bookings.
- Read the Home Report properly, not just the valuation page. The single survey flags repairs, and the property questionnaire tells you about factoring arrangements, alterations and any council notices.
- In a tenement, ask what the factoring arrangement is and whether there are outstanding common repairs. A share of a roof or close repair can follow the flat.
- Get your mortgage offer moving. Missives will not conclude without it.
- Start a rough inventory of what you own. You do not need to be precise yet, but you need to know whether you are a small van or a full house.
As soon as missives conclude
This is the moment English advice gets wrong for Scottish buyers. Your date is now fixed and binding, so book the things that run out.
- Book your removal firm. This is the single most time-sensitive item on the list, and the reason is covered further down.
- If your entry dates do not line up, arrange storage now rather than later. A gap between selling and buying is common and it is easier to plan than to fix in the last week.
- Confirm with your solicitor exactly what time keys are expected to be available.
- If you are in a managed block with a service lift, contact the building manager. Lift bookings in Glasgow blocks are often taken days in advance and there is usually only one slot per day.
Four to six weeks before
- Notify the utilities you will be leaving and the ones you are joining. Take meter readings on the day itself, not before.
- Set up your Royal Mail redirection.
- Tell your current council you are leaving and the new council you are arriving, and check which authority you are actually moving into. Details are below.
- Book time off. If your entry date is a Friday, take the Monday too. Nobody unpacks a house in a weekend.
- Begin packing anything you will not need. Books, out of season clothing, spare bedding.
The fortnight before
- Confirm parking at both ends. If there is no space for a van outside the door, say so now rather than on the day. In permit-controlled streets you may need to apply to the council to suspend bays, and those applications are handled in working days, not hours.
- Check whether either address sits inside Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone, which covers the city centre and applies to all vehicles. An older van that does not meet the standard cannot drive in without a penalty.
- Arrange care for children or pets for the day.
- Run down the freezer.
- Confirm your removal booking and tell the firm about anything that has changed, especially large items, awkward access or a new date.
The final week
- Pack an essentials box that travels with you rather than in the van: kettle, mugs, phone chargers, medication, toilet roll, a change of clothes, and the paperwork for the move.
- Label boxes by the room they are going to, not the room they came from.
- Dismantle anything that needs dismantling, or agree with your removal firm that they are doing it.
- Confirm the key handover arrangement with your solicitor and the estate agent.
- Charge everything. You will not know where the sockets are at the other end.
The date of entry itself
A Scottish moving day has an unusual shape. You typically cannot get into the new property until funds transfer and your solicitor releases the keys, which is usually around the middle of the day. That means the morning is spent loading and waiting, and the afternoon is the only window for unloading.
- Take final meter readings at the old property and photograph them.
- Do a last walk through, including the loft, the close cupboard and the back court.
- Leave keys as your solicitor has instructed.
- At the new property, take meter readings before you start unloading, while the rooms are still empty and reachable.
- Locate the stopcock, the consumer unit and the gas meter before the boxes go in front of them.
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Who to tell, and the Scottish bodies people miss
The notification list is broadly the same as anywhere in the UK, with two Scottish differences that catch people out.
The first is Council Tax. Greater Glasgow is covered by several different councils, and a short move can change which one you pay. Moving from Shawlands to Newton Mearns, or from Dennistoun to Bearsden, means closing an account with one authority and opening one with another.
| Area | Council |
|---|---|
| West End, Partick, Hyndland, Broomhill, Finnieston, Shawlands, Pollokshields, Strathbungo, Dennistoun, Merchant City | Glasgow City Council |
| Bearsden, Milngavie | East Dunbartonshire Council |
| Newton Mearns, Giffnock | East Renfrewshire Council |
| Cambuslang, Rutherglen | South Lanarkshire Council |
| Paisley | Renfrewshire Council |
| Clydebank | West Dunbartonshire Council |
The second is water. In Scotland, household water and sewerage charges are collected through the Council Tax bill rather than billed separately by Scottish Water. If you have moved from England you will be waiting for a water bill that never arrives, and if you are moving to England you will need to set one up.
Beyond those, the standard list applies: your bank and any card providers, your employer and pension provider, HMRC, the DVLA for your licence and V5C, your insurers for both buildings and contents, your GP and dental practice, the electoral register, TV Licensing, and any subscriptions that post physical items.
Why month-end and Friday dates are the hardest to book
Scottish entry dates cluster. They cluster on Fridays, because that gives everyone a weekend to unpack, and they cluster at the end of the month, because that is how mortgage and rental cycles fall. The result is that a large share of an entire city tries to move on the same handful of days.
Add the local pattern on top. Between June and September, Glasgow’s flat market turns over heavily around the universities, and the same crews and vans that would be moving a family in Bearsden are moving students in Partick and Dennistoun.
This is why the Scottish timetable is an advantage rather than a complication. Once missives conclude, you have a fixed date that is not going to move. Booking your house removals in Glasgow at that point rather than waiting is the difference between choosing your slot and taking whatever is left.
If your sale and purchase dates do not meet, that gap is worth planning early too, because removals and storage handled together avoids loading the same furniture twice.
Access in tenements, managed blocks and the city centre
What decides how long a Glasgow move takes is rarely the distance. It is the first and last thirty metres at each end. Which of those you are facing depends on the area, and our guide to Glasgow neighbourhoods maps housing type against access across the city.
In a traditional tenement, the constraint is the half-landing. A close stair turns back on itself, and anything long has to be taken diagonally across that turn. Wardrobes, sofa beds, mattresses and desks are where this bites. It is worth measuring the widest item you own and the narrowest point of the stair before moving day rather than discovering the problem with the item halfway up.
In newer managed blocks, the constraint is the service lift. Most require booking, most have protective padding that the concierge has to fit, and most allow only one move per day. If two flats in the same building have taken the same Friday, one of them is carrying everything up the stairs.
In the city centre, the constraint is vehicle access. The Low Emission Zone applies to all vehicles, and loading restrictions on the main streets limit how long anything can sit at a kerb. A short walk from van to door is not a small detail. It is the single biggest multiplier on how long a move takes.
When this checklist will not fit your move
It will not fit a cross-border move. If you are buying in Scotland while selling in England, you are running two different legal processes with two different binding points, and the risk sits in the gap between them. Your solicitor should be the one sequencing that, not a checklist.
It will not fit a rental move, where there are no missives and your dates are set by two tenancy agreements that rarely overlap neatly.
It will not fit an office move either. Those run on lease notice dates and IT provisioning rather than missives, which is a different sequence entirely and is set out in our twelve-week office move plan.
And it is more structure than a small flat move needs. If you are moving a one bedroom flat across the West End, most of the list above is administration you can do in an evening, and the physical move is a couple of hours. Do not build a twelve week project around it.
Common questions about moving house in Scotland
Is the date of entry the same as completion day?
It serves the same purpose but it is fixed at a different point. Completion day in England is confirmed when contracts are exchanged, often quite late. The date of entry in Scotland is agreed within the missives, so it is settled earlier and is binding once those missives conclude.
Can I book a removal firm before missives conclude?
You can, but you are booking against a date that is not yet binding. The safer sequence is to speak to firms early so you know what is available, then confirm the moment missives conclude. In Scotland that moment usually comes far enough ahead of the move to still have a choice of dates.
Do I need to close a Scottish Water account?
No. Household water and sewerage charges in Scotland are collected through your Council Tax bill, so telling your council you are moving deals with it. There is no separate account to close.
What happens if the date of entry slips?
It is uncommon once missives have concluded, but funds can be delayed on the day itself. The practical answer is that the van does not unload until keys are released, so tell your removal firm as soon as your solicitor tells you, and have a plan for where the load sits overnight if it comes to that.
How do I get a price for the move?
Send the number of bedrooms at both addresses, the floor each property is on and whether there is a lift, your date of entry, and a note of anything unusually large or fragile. Photographs of the rooms help more than a written list. You can send all of that through the quote form and get a written price back.
More guides on moving in and around the city are collected in the moving guides section.
Send us the details and we will come back with a written quote for the day.
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