Which days banks, solicitors, the Land Registry and removal crews actually work over the festive shutdown — and how to book around them.
You can complete on a house at Christmas, but only on a handful of specific days, and which days those are changes every year. Between about 22 December and 5 January the institutions a completion depends on — the banks, your solicitor, the other side’s solicitor, HM Land Registry, your lender — are open on different days from each other and for shorter hours than usual. Get the calendar right and a festive completion is unremarkable. Get it wrong and you find out on the morning that nobody is answering the phone.
This page is the calendar, not the decision. It sets out which days actually work, why completions bunch up in the week before the shutdown, what “closed” means when a firm says it, which removal dates carry a premium, and how to book so a closed office cannot strand you. If you are still deciding whether to move at all, read should I move at Christmas? first. For the day-to-day side once the date is set, the Christmas and New Year moving guide covers storage between completions and the first week in the house.
Start with the fixed points. In England and Wales the festive bank holidays are Christmas Day on 25 December, Boxing Day on 26 December, and New Year’s Day on 1 January. Nothing else in the period is a statutory holiday — not Christmas Eve, not the 27th to the 31st, not 2 January. Those are ordinary working days on paper, whatever your inbox suggests.
The complication is the substitute-day rule. When a bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, a weekday is designated in its place, and it is the substitute weekday that counts as the bank holiday. So a year where Christmas Day lands on a Saturday produces bank holidays on the following Monday and Tuesday, and the workable days shuffle accordingly. This is why advice that names specific dates is useless: the answer genuinely differs year to year and you have to check the current list rather than remember last year’s.
Why it matters for a completion: money moves through CHAPS, and CHAPS runs on banking days only. On a bank holiday there is no mechanism to send the purchase money, so a completion cannot happen — not late, not with goodwill, not at all. A date that falls on a closed-bank day is not a tight completion, it is an impossible one, and the chain has to land on the working day before or after.
The weekend rule bites the same way. Completions do not happen on Saturdays or Sundays in the ordinary run of things for exactly the same reason. In a bad year the shutdown therefore swallows four or five consecutive calendar days in which no transaction anywhere in the country can complete.
Most conveyancing firms publish festive opening hours some time in November. Read them properly, because “open” and “able to complete your transaction” are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where December completions come unstuck.
A firm that is open on 24 December is often running a half day with a skeleton team. The receptionist is there; your fee earner may not be. A firm that is open between the bank holidays may have one partner covering three departments. And an office that is technically staffed still cannot complete if the accounts team — the people who actually send and receive the money — are on leave. When you ring, do not ask whether the office is open. Ask three specific questions: is my fee earner working that day, is the accounts or cashiering team working that day, and what is your internal cut-off time for sending funds?
That last one catches people every year. Firms set their own internal deadline for instructing a same-day transfer, and it is usually well before the end of the working day so that the transfer clears with time to spare. On a half day, or on a skeleton-staffed day between the holidays, that internal cut-off often comes forward. A completion that would comfortably have gone through at two o’clock in March can miss the boat at noon on 24 December.
The other side’s solicitor matters just as much as yours, and so does every other firm in the chain. Your transaction completes at the speed of the slowest office in it. It is entirely reasonable to ask your conveyancer, four to six weeks out, to confirm that the other firms in the chain are working on the proposed date. Good firms do this as a matter of course over the festive period. Ask anyway. Our questions-to-ask guide takes the same approach to the removal side of the booking.
The Land Registry does not sit on the critical path on completion day itself — registration follows afterwards — but it does control one thing that has a deadline attached, and the festive shutdown quietly eats into it.
When your solicitor carries out the official search before completion, it confers a priority period measured in business days. Business days exclude weekends and bank holidays. Three bank holidays landing inside the period therefore shorten the calendar window it actually covers, sometimes by the best part of a week once the surrounding weekends are counted. A search taken out in early December to cover a completion on the 22nd is fine; one taken out to cover a slipped completion in mid-January can run closer to the edge than anyone intended.
The Land Registry itself observes the same bank holidays as everyone else. Applications submitted over the shutdown queue up rather than disappear, and the practical effect for a buyer is a slower registration in January rather than anything that stops the move. What you should not do is treat a Land Registry delay as a reason to push completion — it is not, and any solicitor who suggests otherwise is describing a different problem.
Stamp duty has its own clock, running from the effective date of the transaction rather than from any office being open, and the festive holidays do not pause it. Your conveyancer normally handles the return, but if you are managing anything yourself, note that the deadline does not stretch to accommodate the shutdown. The Sussex cost-of-moving guide covers where these fees sit in the overall budget.
If you have been told your completion is on the 22nd or the 23rd, you are not being singled out. There is a genuine bunching effect in the last working week before Christmas, and understanding why it happens tells you how much room you have to negotiate.
Three forces push in the same direction. First, conveyancers work to clear files before the office closes, because a transaction left hanging over the break is one nobody can progress for a fortnight and everybody has to pick back up cold in January. Second, lenders’ mortgage offers have expiry dates, and a large batch of offers issued in the early autumn come up against the end of the year; drawing the funds before the shutdown is safer than assuming an extension will be granted. Third, chains are only as flexible as their least flexible link, and if one household in a chain of five has a hard December reason, everybody else inherits it.
The practical consequence is congestion. Every conveyancing firm in the country is trying to complete a month’s worth of files in the same three or four days, on a banking system running its usual hours. Transfers get instructed later in the day than anyone would like, and the ordinary friction of completion day — a payment that arrives at half past three instead of half past one — hits a much shorter runway.
The flip side is that once you get past the bunching, the picture inverts. The days between the bank holidays and the first week of January are among the quietest in the conveyancing year, because so much was cleared before the break. If your chain can hold its nerve, a completion in that window often runs more smoothly than a July one.
The stretch from the 27th to the 31st is the oddest week in the property calendar. On paper they are ordinary working days. In practice the country runs at a fraction of its usual capacity, and who is available depends entirely on the individual firm rather than on any rule you can look up.
What is genuinely available in that week: the banking system, on the working days, so money can move. Most estate agents, at least on reduced hours. Utility transfers and meter readings, which you can handle yourself regardless. And our own crews — the depot runs a reduced diary but we take bookings in that window every year, and they are usually the calmest jobs of the month, with empty roads and no competition for parking outside either property.
What is often not available: your fee earner, if they have taken the week as leave. Full accounts cover at some firms. Surveyors and lenders’ valuers. Locksmiths, boiler engineers and anyone else you might want at short notice. And, most importantly, the ability to fix things quickly when they go wrong — the whole support system around a move thins out at the same time.
So for a completion in that week, over-confirm. Get it in writing from your conveyancer that they are working that specific day. Agree the key-release arrangement in advance rather than assuming an agent’s office will be staffed at five o’clock. And have a plan for where your possessions spend the night if it slips — short-term holding at our Lower Dicker depot is the usual answer, and the short-term storage guide explains how the contract works.
Our diary over the festive fortnight looks nothing like the rest of the year, and knowing its shape helps you pick a date you can actually get.
The 20th to the 23rd is the busiest stretch of December for us by a wide margin, because it is where all those pre-shutdown completions land. Those days book out from October, and by late November the choice is usually whichever crew is left rather than whichever crew you would pick. If your date is in that window, book as soon as your conveyancer gives you a working date — not when it is finally confirmed, which is often too late.
The working days between the bank holidays are the opposite: genuinely available, often at short notice, and operationally the easiest festive dates to run. Crews take leave in that period so the fleet is smaller, but demand falls further than supply does. From the first week of January the pattern flips again, because everything deferred from December lands at once.
On rates, we do not charge a festive surcharge for ordinary working days. Pricing over the period sits at standard winter rates, which run 10–15% below the summer peak, and the saving is a demand effect rather than a discount we are offering. The exception is work on a bank holiday itself, which is charged at a premium for the straightforward reason that the crew is on holiday pay. That is rare in practice, because a completion cannot happen on a bank holiday anyway — it only comes up for moves that are not tied to a completion at all.
One more scheduling point specific to December: daylight. The crew loses usable working light in the middle of the afternoon, and a load that would finish comfortably in June can be going into a dark house in December. We build that into the plan by starting earlier, and it is one of the reasons a mid-week December date beats a Friday one. The best day of the week to move covers how weekday choice affects a move generally.
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The sequencing problem over the festive period is that removal slots run out before completion dates get confirmed. In an ordinary month you can wait for certainty. In December, waiting for certainty means there is nothing left to book.
The way round it is to work in two stages. As soon as your conveyancer names a target date — even a soft one — ring us and take a provisional hold on it. That costs nothing and takes the slot off the board while the legal side catches up. Then, when the date is formally confirmed, the booking firms up and the deposit follows. Our own arrangement is 25% of the quoted price on booking with the balance on completion, and every deposit is protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee, so committing early does not put your money at risk.
Get the survey done early too, ideally 10 to 12 weeks out. The survey is what turns a rough figure into a fixed quote, and it is also where access problems surface — a narrow lane, a shared drive, a top-floor flat with no lift, a piano nobody mentioned. Finding those in October is a scheduling note. Finding them on 22 December is a problem, because the second crew you would normally call on is on leave.
Two more things to do before the offices shut. Confirm in writing, four to six weeks ahead, exactly which day your completion is targeting and which firms in the chain are working that day. And collect mobile numbers — your conveyancer’s, the estate agent’s branch manager’s, and our office — because the switchboard route that works in March does not work on 27 December. Our office is on 01323 848 008 Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings, and the eight-week preparation guide sets out the rest of the run-up.
Occasionally it still goes wrong, and the festive version of “it went wrong” is worse than the ordinary version because the usual fixes are unavailable. It is worth deciding what you would do before you need to.
The most common failure is a delayed transfer — the money is instructed, but it lands after the point in the day when keys can realistically change hands. In summer this produces a late finish. Over the shutdown, with a shorter cut-off and a skeleton team, it can push the whole thing to the next working day, and the next working day may be four days away.
Practically, that means your loaded lorry needs somewhere to be. We handle this by keeping the load secure overnight or, for longer gaps, taking it into the depot on a short-term basis and redelivering when the completion lands. It is not the day anyone planned for, but it is a routine situation and it does not need to become a crisis. Tell us in advance if your completion looks tight and we will schedule with that possibility built in.
The second failure worth planning for is keys. If completion happens late and the agent’s branch has closed for the holidays, there may be nobody to hand them over. Agree the arrangement in advance — a named person, a mobile number, or release direct from the seller’s solicitor — rather than discovering the office shut at four o’clock on the 24th.
The third is your own contingency: a bag with everything you would need for two nights not in the new house. Documents, medication, chargers, a change of clothes, the children’s essentials, and the presents if it is that week. Keep it in the car, not on the lorry. The moving day survival kit lists what usually earns its place.
A useful sanity check before you commit to a festive date: write out the calendar for your specific year, day by day, from 20 December to 6 January, and mark each day as a bank holiday, a weekend, a half day or a full working day. It takes five minutes and it turns a vague sense that “the offices are shut around then” into a short list of dates that could actually work. Take that list to your conveyancer rather than asking them to produce one.
Booking your move with us is a five-step process. One: enquire via the online quote form or call our office on 01323 848 008. We’ll arrange a survey within a few working days. Two: the survey itself, usually in-home and lasting 30–90 minutes depending on the move complexity. The surveyor walks the property, photographs access points, counts cartons by size, and discusses any specialist requirements.
Three: the written quote, emailed within 48 hours of the survey. Itemised by line so you see what every cost line covers. Four: deposit and date confirmation. Typically 25% deposit on confirmation, fully protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee. Five: the move itself. Uniformed crew, our own lorry, no agency labour, blankets washed between jobs.
For pre-move questions, our office is reachable Monday to Friday 8am to 5:30pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm. We’d rather have the customer conversation early than late — a small clarification three weeks before move day saves a meaningful misunderstanding on the day itself. For the wider company background and how we work across Sussex, the about-us page covers it.
For your specific move, we look forward to the conversation. Whichever category falls under (a routine local move, a complex international relocation, a specialist antique or office job), the principles are consistent: in-home survey, written itemised quote, deposit-protected booking, crew you can rely on, calm move day, post-move follow-up. That’s the standard we aim for on every job.
For pre-move planning specifically, we’d encourage customers to book the survey 10–12 weeks before any festive move date. The lead time gives both sides margin to handle the inevitable chain-side surprises and the festive-period administrative slowdown without rushed last-minute coordination. Early planning consistently produces calmer Christmas moves.
No. Purchase money moves through CHAPS, which only runs on banking days, so there is no mechanism to send the funds. A completion set for Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day or any substitute weekday has to land on the working day before or after instead.
Most offices are, on the working days, but often with a skeleton team. Ask three specific questions rather than whether they are "open": is my fee earner in that day, is the accounts team in, and what is your internal cut-off for instructing a same-day transfer?
If it falls on a working weekday, yes — but many firms run it as a half day and bring their funds cut-off forward, so the window is tighter than a normal completion day. Get the cut-off time confirmed in writing rather than assuming the usual one applies.
It observes the same bank holidays as everyone else, so applications queue rather than being processed. The knock-on that actually matters is the priority period on the official search, which is counted in business days — bank holidays do not count, so the calendar window it covers is shorter than it looks.
The 20th to the 23rd, by a distance, because that is where the pre-shutdown completions cluster. Those days go from October. The working days between the bank holidays are the easiest of the whole year to get, and the first full week of January is busy again as deferred moves land.
Not for ordinary working days — pricing sits at standard winter rates, which run 10–15% below the summer peak because demand is lower. Work on a bank holiday itself carries a premium as the crew is on holiday pay, but that rarely arises since a completion cannot happen on a bank holiday anyway.
Your load stays secure with us overnight, or goes into the depot on a short-term basis and is redelivered when the completion lands. Tell us in advance if the date looks tight and we will schedule with that possibility built in rather than improvising on the day.