International Student Removals Cardiff

Cardiff University runs a free coach collection from London Heathrow Terminal 5 on 23, 24 and 25 September 2026. You book a place for a specific date, the first coach leaves at 10:00 and the last at 14:00, and the welcome team meets students at Costa Coffee in Terminal 5 Arrivals half an hour before departure.

The coach runs to the Centre for Student Life on Park Place, a journey of three to four hours depending on traffic, with onward transport arranged to your accommodation. The university advises leaving at least three hours between your flight landing and the coach departing, and it also offers discounted National Express transfers from Heathrow, Gatwick or Bristol. The detail is on its international arrivals page.

Cardiff University tells international students that two suitcases is usually a sensible limit, and not to pack bedding or kitchenware because you can buy them locally or pre-order a pack. Cardiff Met goes further and bans kettles, toasters, microwaves, air fryers, portable heaters and candles from its halls, with a mini fridge allowed only for medication with medical evidence.

All of which is good advice, and all of which explains the problem in June. Everything you buy here stays here. A year later the same student has bedding, a desk lamp, a drying rack, kitchen kit, books and a bike, and none of it fits in two suitcases going back through an airport.

Cardiff University does not accept early arrivals, and the room is simply not available before the contract start date. If your flight lands days early, you need somewhere else to stay first, and your luggage goes with you.

If you end up in a hotel or a friend's flat for a few nights, the run into halls on the contract date is a small job rather than a full move. Tell us the two addresses and roughly what there is, and we will price it as a short local run.

Second and third years usually move into a shared house, and the rules here are Welsh, not English. Right to Rent immigration checks, which English landlords must carry out, apply only in England. A Cardiff landlord is not required to run them.

What does apply in Wales is Rent Smart Wales, where landlords must be registered and agents licensed, a written statement of the occupation contract within 14 days, and deposit protection within 30 days. Our guide to moving from halls to a student house sets out the checks to make before signing, and the government's Right to Rent guidance confirms the England-only scope.

The awkward gap is the summer. Contracts end in late June, and if you are flying home you cannot leave anything in the room. Cardiff University does run summer short stays of at least seven nights, opening on 24 June 2026 for students already in residence and 1 July for everyone else, through to 9 September, but that is a different room in a different building.

So belongings either fly home, get given away, or go into storage. Our student storage moves page covers the transport at both ends, and end of term student removals covers what to do with what you are not keeping.

Moves are priced on the load, the access and the distance, agreed before we start. A room's worth of boxes and a few bits usually lands between £85 to £150, and a full room of furniture and boxes between £130 to £220. Open-ended jobs can be charged hourly at £45 an hour for one person and a van or £65 for two, with a 2 hour minimum.

Airport runs are not what we do. We move rooms, houses and storage loads within Cardiff and across the UK, which is the part of the year the universities do not arrange for you. The full breakdown is on our prices page.