When your commercial lease comes to an end, returning your office to its original specification is rarely as straightforward as moving out the furniture. At London Dilaps Ltd, we deliver complete strip out services for office-based businesses across London, removing partitions, fitted joinery, raised access flooring, suspended ceilings, dated electrical and data cabling, and any tenant-fitted features that fall outside the agreed lease terms. Whether you’re vacating a single floor in a Shoreditch tech hub or a multi-floor headquarters in the City, our experienced team handles the full project from pre-works survey to certified handover. We understand the pressure landlords place on outgoing tenants and the financial penalties that follow late or non-compliant returns. That’s why we focus on delivering strip outs that are fully aligned with your Schedule of Dilapidations, completed within tight timeframes, and carried out with the highest standards of safety, waste segregation, and environmental compliance. From small open-plan suites to large headquarters projects, our strip out service is built around minimising risk, cost, and downtime for your business.
Every strip out begins with a thorough pre-works survey. Our project managers visit your premises to assess existing fit-out, identify asbestos-containing materials where relevant, check structural considerations, and produce a detailed scope of works. We then issue a clear method statement and risk assessment that aligns with the Schedule of Dilapidations agreed with your landlord or surveyor. This early-stage planning protects you from scope creep, surprise charges, and missed deadlines. We also liaise directly with building managers to coordinate access, lift bookings, out-of-hours working, and protection of communal areas, so the work begins smoothly the day we step on site.
Modern London offices typically include glazed partitions, plasterboard walls, suspended ceilings, raised access flooring, and bespoke joinery. Our team carefully dismantles each of these elements, separating materials for reuse, recycling, and responsible disposal. We protect the building’s core fabric, communal corridors, and lift lobbies throughout, and we clean down each area as we progress so the space is presented to the landlord in the condition specified. Where reinstatement is required following removal, we coordinate seamlessly with our wider dilapidations team. Our crews are CSCS-certified and trained to manage dust, noise, and vibration, particularly in occupied buildings where neighbouring tenants must remain undisturbed.
Tenant-installed M&E and data infrastructure must usually be removed and made safe before the building is returned. We handle full decommissioning of comms cabling, AV installations, additional power circuits, supplementary cooling, kitchen extracts, and bespoke lighting. Our electricians are NICEIC-registered, ensuring all isolations, terminations, and certifications meet current regulations. We coordinate closely with the building’s facilities team to confirm shared services remain operational and that the landlord’s installations are protected. Once works are complete, we issue full electrical certificates, asset registers, and waste transfer notes, giving you a defensible audit trail should any element of the works later be challenged.
A strip out generates significant waste, and how that waste is handled affects both your costs and your environmental reporting. London Dilaps Ltd partners with licensed waste carriers and recycling facilities, targeting a 90 percent plus diversion-from-landfill rate on every project. We segregate metals, timber, plasterboard, glass, ceiling tiles, and electrical waste at source, and provide full waste transfer notes and recycling reports for your records. Where furniture, fittings, or equipment retain value, we arrange resale or charitable donation through our network of partners. This approach reduces skip volumes, lowers project costs, and supports any ESG commitments your business has made to landlords or stakeholders.
Choosing the right strip out contractor is a commercial decision as much as a practical one. London Dilaps Ltd is a specialist dilapidations contractor — we don’t fit out, refurbish, or chase volume across the country. We focus exclusively on end-of-lease works for office-based companies in London, which means our pricing, timelines, and methods are honed for one job: getting your premises returned cleanly, on time, and in line with the Schedule of Dilapidations. Our team brings a mix of contract administration and on-site project management experience, so we negotiate sensibly with surveyors and execute decisively on site. We work across the full Greater London area, including the City, Canary Wharf, Mayfair, Victoria, Soho, Shoreditch, Kings Cross, Paddington, Hammersmith, Stratford, and the wider M25. Whether your lease covers 2,000 sq ft or 200,000, our model scales to meet the demands of your handover with no unnecessary overhead.
Office dilapidations covers the full end-of-lease process — from interpreting the served Schedule, to delivering the physical works, to formal handover with the landlord. London Dilaps Ltd manages each stage as a single coordinated project, so you have one accountable team rather than multiple contractors and surveyors working in isolation. We balance commercial pressure on the tenant against the practical requirements of the lease, and pride ourselves on keeping projects out of dispute. If you’re approaching lease expiry and unsure where to start, this is the conversation to begin with.
CAT A reinstatement returns your office to the developer-grade shell-and-core standard most City and West End leases require — fresh suspended ceilings, new lighting, refreshed raised access flooring, painted walls, and fully commissioned mechanical and electrical services. Our team works from the original CAT A specification or, where unavailable, the prevailing market standard for buildings in your grade and area. We deliver the works under one fixed-price contract with full sign-off documentation, so the landlord’s surveyor has no grounds to dispute completion or extend the dilapidations claim.
End of lease small works is for tenants whose dilapidations liabilities are limited to repairs, redecoration, or minor reinstatement rather than a full strip out. Typical scope includes patching plasterboard, replacing damaged ceiling tiles, refreshing paintwork, repairing doors and ironmongery, replacing carpet tiles, and minor M&E reinstatement. We mobilise small, focused crews — often outside business hours — and complete most projects within one to two weeks. You receive photographic sign-off and a clean handover pack, giving you confidence that no further charges will appear after you return the keys.
Get a no-obligation quote within 48 hours, tailored to your lease end date and Schedule of Dilapidations.
