Your new life in Britain begins here, straight from Canada

Britain runs one main check on an incoming household shipment, and it is a paperwork check rather than an inspection regime. HM Revenue and Customs wants to establish whether your goods qualify for Transfer of Residence relief. If they do, your used belongings enter free of customs duty and import VAT. If they do not, the standard 20% import VAT applies to the value of the shipment, plus any customs duty owed on individual items.

There is a Canadian export leg to square away before anything leaves the country, and we take care of that documentation for you. What matters on your side is that the inventory and the values on it line up with what gets declared to HMRC at the British end.

On a sea move from Canada your belongings usually land a couple of weeks after you have already flown over, and that is perfectly normal. What causes real trouble is arriving with the ToR1 still unsubmitted. HMRC's own guidance says you should ask for approval before importing, and while a late claim with a repayment application on form C285 or C82 is possible if you have already been charged, it means paying first and waiting for money back while your goods sit. Start the application as soon as you have a move date, and make sure the inventory matches what is genuinely travelling by sea. A gap between what is declared and what turns up at the port is far slower and pricier to untangle at the quayside than at your kitchen table.

For a full household, most families ship a 20ft or 40ft container. A single room or a studio's contents usually travels as LCL (Less than Container Load) groupage, consolidated with other Canada-to-UK shipments at the departure port. On this route the size question is worth revisiting before you book: a 40ft container of Canadian furniture often becomes a 20ft container once you have honestly measured the British house it is going into.

At the British border, almost the whole tax question comes down to one thing: is your ToR relief approved by the time your goods arrive? With it, your used household effects come in free of customs duty and import VAT. Without it, HMRC assesses the shipment as an ordinary commercial import and you deal with the consequences afterwards.

A Canada-to-UK file runs cleaner when your qualifying used belongings are clearly separated from everything else. The things that blur the line, like a television bought on a Boxing Day deal or a case of Okanagan wine you meant to bring, are worth flagging before the container is packed rather than after it has docked in Britain.

If you are not sure whether something qualifies for relief or needs declaring on its own, ask us before it ships. Sorting a category question at origin takes a phone call. Sorting it after arrival, with the shipment held and a repayment claim to chase, takes considerably longer.

The crossing itself is short by international standards, but your belongings still pass through several sets of hands on the way. Cargo insurance is well worth having, particularly on anything that matters to you or carries real value.

Always go through the policy terms, exclusions, and declared values with your broker or insurer before you commit to cover.

Here is where being Canadian genuinely counts. Commonwealth citizenship opens two routes into Britain that most nationalities simply do not have, and a third that Canadians share with only a handful of countries. None of it is automatic, and all of it has conditions, but the starting position is a good deal better than the one an American or a European faces on the same corridor. Fees, thresholds and eligibility lists move regularly, so confirm the current rules with the Home Office before you lock in any relocation or shipping decisions.

Canadian household shipments to Britain leave through a small set of container and groupage ports, then arrive at one of the UK's main gateways for clearance before the final delivery leg. Where you live in Canada matters more here than the destination does: an Atlantic departure crosses directly and quickly, while a Vancouver shipment travels south through the Panama Canal and can take three times as long to reach the same British port.

Since 1999 we have been moving people from Canada to Britain, from collection at your Canadian address through export, the Atlantic crossing, UK customs clearance, and delivery to your new home. We take care of every stage, so your energy goes into the move itself rather than the logistics behind it.

1. Collection and packing at your Canadian address

2. Canadian export and port handling

We sort the Canadian export documentation, load the container at your departure port, and hand it safely to the vessel.

3. The crossing and UK customs clearance

We book the sea or air freight as agreed, track the container across the Atlantic, and manage the UK import declaration and clearance at Liverpool, Felixstowe, Southampton or London Gateway on arrival. Your ToR reference number goes on that declaration, which is exactly why we push to have the approval in hand well before the vessel docks. The customs section above sets out what is needed.

4. Delivery to your new British home

Once your shipment clears customs, we arrange the final leg and the drop at your UK address. If your new place has restricted access, a shared stairwell or no off-street parking, tell your Move Manager early. Those are common in British towns and much easier to plan around in advance than to discover on the day.

5. Unpacking and setting up

Our local delivery team puts the furniture and boxes where you actually want them, so you can start settling in rather than facing a mountain of unpacking alone.

Our Canada-to-UK support is built around a single contact: a dedicated Move Manager who owns your file from the first quote through Canadian collection, export, the crossing, UK clearance, and British delivery. You are not handed between teams at each stage.

On a British move that continuity earns its keep around the ToR application. HMRC's queue lengthens sharply over the summer, the reference number has to be in hand before your customs declaration is made, and recovering duty afterwards is far slower than avoiding it. One accountable person tracking that alongside the sailing schedule is how a timing problem gets caught while it is still fixable.

From collection in Canada through loading at your departure port, the Atlantic crossing, UK clearance, port release, and the final delivery to your British door, your Move Manager stays in touch and keeps you posted at every stage.

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A private car is not on the excluded list for Transfer of Residence relief the way alcohol and tobacco are, so if it meets the same ownership and use conditions it can come in without customs duty or import VAT. Without that relief, expect customs duty plus 20% VAT on the car's value, which turns a sentimental import into an expensive one very quickly. The practical problems are separate from the tax ones: your Canadian car is left-hand drive on a country that drives on the left, its headlights dip the wrong way, and its speedometer reads in kilometres per hour on roads signed in miles.

For most Canadians the honest answer is to sell before you go. Even with ToR relief covering the tax, the shipping, approval, modification and insurance costs on a left-hand-drive car usually outrun what the same money buys on the British used market. The exception is a vehicle you genuinely could not replace, and in that case it is worth costing the whole path properly rather than only the freight.

This is the good-news section. Canada is currently treated as a listed country for Great Britain pet travel, which means your dog or cat needs no rabies blood test and no quarantine, provided every step happens in the right order. That puts this corridor in an entirely different category from an Australia or New Zealand move, where quarantine cannot be avoided.

We handle the freight and logistics side of your move. Your pet's health certificate, vet sequencing and approved-route booking run through the official GB pet travel process, arranged alongside your move rather than bolted on at the end. Country listings and requirements do change, so confirm the current rules on GOV.UK before you book anything.

Canada and Britain share a head of state, a legal tradition, a spelling convention and a great many family trees, so this move tends to feel like the softest landing on offer. In a lot of ways it is. But the familiarity hides the differences until you are standing in them, and several of those differences bear directly on how you plan and pack a shipment.

From a shipping point of view, Britain is predictable for Canadians who get their ToR file right and stay realistic about what belongs in the container. The genuine challenges are not customs mystery. They are the voltage, the size of British homes, and settling your immigration route before any of the rest is worth doing.

London is expensive, but how expensive depends entirely on where you are leaving. Movers from Vancouver and Toronto often find London's housing costs uncomfortably familiar rather than shocking, and some find them a modest improvement. Movers from Halifax, Winnipeg or Edmonton usually get a jolt. Outside London the arithmetic changes completely: Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds and Sheffield are dramatically cheaper on housing than any large Canadian city.

Groceries generally cost less than in Canada and eating out costs less than in a big Canadian city, partly because tipping is modest and menu prices already include VAT. Fuel is far more expensive and cars are taxed and insured differently. Utilities are broadly comparable, though older British housing stock is much less efficient than what you are used to. The thing that genuinely surprises Canadians is space: British homes are considerably smaller for the money, and that is the fact with the most direct bearing on your shipment.

For planning purposes, housing is the decision that drives everything else. Whether you have a confirmed British address before the container leaves Canada decides whether you need temporary storage on arrival. Measure the doorways, the staircase and the kitchen before you commit to bringing the big furniture, because the sectional that suited a suburban Canadian living room does not always make it into a Victorian terrace.

This is the conversation Canadians find hardest, and it deserves a straight answer. Headline salaries in the UK are generally lower than Canadian equivalents in most professional fields, and the gap is widest in technology, engineering and finance. The offset Americans get does not apply to you: you already had public healthcare at home, so moving to the NHS is not a saving, and you now pay the Immigration Health Surcharge upfront on top. What does offset it is cheaper groceries and eating out, lower university costs, statutory paid leave, employer pension contributions, and, outside London, housing that costs a fraction of Vancouver or Toronto.

If you are coming on a Skilled Worker visa, the salary question is not only personal, it is a visa condition. The role has to meet the general threshold of £41,700 or the going rate for the occupation, whichever is higher, with a lower £33,400 threshold in defined circumstances. Because these figures have moved more than once in recent years, confirm the current numbers with the Home Office rather than working from a salary guide. On the Youth Mobility or Ancestry routes no salary threshold applies at all, which is part of why they are worth checking first.

One practical note on timing: tie your container's arrival to confirmed immigration status rather than betting on approval by a target date. A shipment that lands before you have a granted visa and a confirmed British address is a storage bill, and storage in a UK port is not cheap.

Canada taxes on residence, not citizenship, which makes this considerably simpler than the equivalent American move. When you cease to be a Canadian tax resident you file a departure return covering worldwide income up to your departure date, along with a deemed disposition of most of your assets, taxed as though you had sold them that day. Your RRSP, TFSA, RESP and principal residence are not caught by that deemed disposition. Your RRSP can stay where it is, though you stop accruing contribution room, and a withdrawal as a non-resident attracts 25% Canadian non-resident tax.

Now the fact that surprises almost every Canadian arriving in Britain: your TFSA is not tax-free here. HMRC does not recognise it as a sheltered account, so the income and gains inside it are generally UK-taxable as they arise once you are UK resident. RRSPs and RRIFs fare better, because the Canada-UK tax treaty treats them as pensions and allocates periodic payments to your country of residence, but lump-sum withdrawals are handled far less kindly. Talk to an adviser who works across both systems before you move money, not after.

On the British side, the tax year runs 6 April to 5 April and your liability depends on the Statutory Residence Test. There is one genuinely valuable change for new arrivals: the old non-domicile remittance basis was abolished on 6 April 2025 and replaced by a four-year Foreign Income and Gains regime, open to people who have not been UK resident in the previous ten tax years. Most Canadians arriving fresh will qualify, and for those four years it can cover the very foreign income that would otherwise make a TFSA painful. It has to be claimed, and claiming it costs you the personal allowance and the capital gains annual exempt amount for that year, so it is a calculation rather than a free win. On pensions, the Consolidated Arrangements between Canada and the UK came into force on 1 December 1995 and a Convention on Social Security followed on 1 April 1998, so your Canadian record is not simply lost when you cross.

Britain remains a serious destination for Canadian professionals, particularly in finance, technology, life sciences, higher education, energy and the creative industries. London dominates, but Cambridge and Oxford anchor real life-sciences and research clusters, Manchester and Leeds have genuine technology and media employment, Aberdeen has energy, and Edinburgh is a financial centre in its own right.

The structural advantage is that Canadians do not always need a sponsor. A Youth Mobility visa or an Ancestry visa both let you arrive first and look afterwards, which is a fundamentally different job search from one conducted at long distance while asking employers to sponsor you. If you are 35 or under, or you have a British-born grandparent, check those routes before you start hunting for a licensed sponsor. It is the closest thing to an open door on this corridor, and it is one Americans on the same route do not have.

Expect the hiring process itself to feel different. British recruitment tends to be less aggressive on salary negotiation, references carry more weight, and notice periods of one to three months are normal rather than exceptional. Build that into your shipping timeline: a British employer who wants you to start in eight weeks is not unusual, and eight weeks is tight for a container.

The NHS is free at the point of use for people with the right immigration status, and most visa applicants pay for that access upfront through the Immigration Health Surcharge, currently £1,035 per adult per year and £776 for students, under-18s and Youth Mobility applicants. You pay it for the full length of the visa when you apply, which is a substantial number for a family on a five-year Ancestry route. Register with a local GP practice as soon as you have an address, because most NHS access runs through that registration rather than through walk-in care.

Banking has one classic newcomer trap: most British banks want proof of address to open an account, and most landlords want a bank account to sign a tenancy. The usual way through is a digital bank that accepts alternative documentation, or an account opened before you arrive. Your Canadian credit history does not transfer, so expect to start again on credit scoring even if you arrive with a spotless record and a good salary.

Driving is one of the genuine wins. Canada is on the DVLA's designated list, so once you are resident you can exchange your Canadian licence for a British one without sitting either the theory or the practical test, and you can drive on the Canadian licence for up to 12 months in the meantime. Sort the exchange inside that window rather than at the end of it. Public transport is good in the cities and between them, and plenty of Canadians find they do not need a car in London at all. One more Commonwealth footnote worth knowing: once you are resident with leave to remain, you are a qualifying Commonwealth citizen and can register to vote in UK parliamentary and local elections.

Britain uses the pound sterling (GBP). CAD/GBP has moved around meaningfully over recent years, so the rate on the day you convert makes a real difference across a large sum. If you are turning Canadian savings into pounds for a rental deposit, first-month costs, or a British property purchase, the timing and the method both matter more than people expect.

Wise and similar specialist services give mid-market rates with transparent fees and are widely used by Canadian movers for CAD-to-GBP transfers. A traditional Canadian bank wire to a British account is slower and usually less cost-efficient for a personal transfer. If you will keep Canadian dollar income after the move, whether that is rental income, investment distributions or a pension, set up a multi-currency account or a regular-conversion service before you leave rather than after.

Your shipment is priced across two currencies too, with UK port charges, customs handling and any temporary storage sitting in pounds that may drift against the Canadian dollar between booking and paying. On a large move where the final delivery cost is substantial, it is worth confirming the sterling total at the time you book.