Moving with children has two halves that people tend to muddle. One is administrative and has deadlines: school places, and they take longer than anything else in the move. The other is emotional and has no deadline at all, which is exactly why it gets left until the van arrives. This guide separates them. It sits alongside the rest of our removal guides, and the moving day section assumes you have the countdown in our moving house checklist running in parallel.
Key takeaways
- Start the school application the moment your address is confirmed. In England, in-year applications are normally decided within 15 school days. No rule says a council must wait until you have moved, but in practice many will not use a new address until you can evidence it, and each sets its own requirements — service families with a confirmed posting and crown servants returning from overseas are the exception, and must be allocated on the intended address.11
- A refusal is not the end. In England you can join waiting lists and appeal, normally within 20 school days of the refusal, with in-year appeals heard within 30 school days of being lodged.2, 32
- Tell children once the move is certain, not when it is possible and not the week before. Uncertainty is harder to sit with than bad news.
- Get children out of the house on moving day. Doors are propped open, strangers carry heavy things, and nobody can supervise properly.
- Set up their bedroom first, before any other room, with the same bedding and the same things on the same side of the bed.
- Regression is normal for a few weeks. Sleep, clinginess and behaviour usually settle without intervention; persistent change past a couple of months is worth raising with the school or your GP.
Schools: the part with real deadlines
If your children are already at school and you are moving mid-year, you are making an in-year application, which is a different process from the normal admissions round.1 It runs through the local authority for the new area, or in some cases directly through the school.1 Everything in this section is the position in England: the rules and every timescale below come from the two English statutory codes, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each run their own system.
How the timings work
| Stage | Typical timescale | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Decision on an in-year application | Within 15 school days | School days, not calendar days, so holidays extend it1 |
| Applications processed ahead of a start date | Set by each council, and they vary | You can apply for any school at any time, but check how far ahead the new council will process it |
| Lodging an appeal after a refusal | Normally within 20 school days | Do not let the deadline pass while you decide |
| In-year appeal heard | Within 30 school days of being lodged | Plan for the term, not the week |
Watch out: there is no national rule that a council must wait until you have moved before using your new address. What the Admissions Code allows is for an admission authority to ask for proof of address, and councils then set their own evidence requirements locally — commonly a tenancy agreement or completion statement, sometimes more. Ask the new council what it accepts, in writing, before you apply. In practice the clock often does not start until you are actually there, so build that gap into your expectations rather than assuming a place will be waiting on day one. One firm exception: for families of service personnel with a confirmed posting, and crown servants returning from overseas, admission authorities must allocate on the intended address and must not refuse a place just because you do not yet live in the area.
What to do, in order
- Find the admissions authority for the new address. It is usually the new local council, but academies and some faith schools handle their own admissions.1 Check both.
- Look at what is actually available, not just what is popular. Ask the council which schools in the area currently have places in your child’s year group.1 Published catchment information tells you about the main admissions round, not about today.1
- Apply as soon as you can evidence the address, with the documents ready to attach.
- Join waiting lists for the schools you want, whether or not you have a place elsewhere.1 Places come up through the year as other families move. Know what a list actually is, though: in England it is not a queue you work your way up. Admission authorities must keep one until at least 31 December of the school year of admission, and for in-year applications they only keep one if they choose to. Every time a child is added the whole list is re-ranked on the oversubscription criteria, and priority must not be given by the date you applied — so joining early buys you nothing, and someone who moves closer next month can go above you.
- Appeal if you are refused a school you have a real case for, within the deadline. Refusal on infant class size grounds is much harder to overturn than other refusals, so get advice on which ground applies.2, 4
- Tell the old school the leaving date in writing so records and the common transfer file follow your child promptly.5
Tip: ask the new school directly whether they can arrange a visit before the first day, and whether they pair new arrivals with a buddy. Most will do both, and neither shows up in any official process. A single afternoon in the building beforehand does more for a nervous child than a fortnight of reassurance at home.
If you are moving between the four UK nations, check the position locally. Admissions and appeals genuinely differ — Wales has its own admissions code and its own appeals code, and Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate processes again — so guidance written for England, including every timescale on this page, does not transfer.6, 7
Your timeline with children in it
Tell them, together
One conversation with everyone present, with the facts you actually have. Say what is changing, what is not, and when. Answer “will I still see my friends” honestly and specifically.
Schools and childcare
Start the in-year application, join waiting lists, and contact nurseries and childminders. This is the item with a queue in front of it.
Visit the area
Walk the new route to school, find the park, the swimming pool and the shop that sells the right snacks. Familiarity is built from small specific things, not from a postcode.
Let them pack their own box
One box each, packed and labelled by them, that travels in the car. It gives a child some control over a process where they have none.
Arrange moving day care
Confirm grandparents, friends or childcare for the day itself, and agree the pickup and drop-off times with the person doing it.
Children elsewhere, bedrooms first
They arrive to a made bed in a room that is already theirs, not to a hallway of boxes.
Talking to them, by age
The right amount of notice and detail changes with age, and getting it wrong in either direction causes the same problem.
- Toddlers and preschool: a few weeks is plenty, and repetition beats explanation. Read books about moving, play at packing, and be concrete: their bed is coming, their toys are coming, you are coming. Very young children mostly worry about whether things disappear.
- Primary age: tell them once it is certain and give them jobs. They will ask practical questions, and specific answers land better than reassurance. Show them the new house on a map, count the sleeps, and be clear about what happens to friendships.
- Secondary age: tell them early and expect anger rather than sadness. A teenager’s objection is usually about losing a social world they built themselves, and it is a reasonable objection. Do not argue it away. Give them real input on their own room, keep contact with friends practical and funded, and accept that agreement may take months.
- Exam years: take advice before moving a child mid-GCSE or A level. Exam boards, subject options and coursework do not always transfer cleanly between schools, and staying put for a term is sometimes worth more than any convenience.
Good to know: do not promise the new house will be better. Promise it will be different and that you will make it good together. Children measure adults against what they said, and the one thing you cannot afford to lose in a move is your credibility on the subject.
Moving day with children
The front door is propped open for hours, strangers are carrying heavy furniture through the hallway, and every adult who normally supervises is answering questions. It is the least safe day in the calendar for small children, and the least interesting one for older ones.
The plan
- Book care for the day: grandparents, friends, childcare or a full day of activities away from the house. This is the single most useful thing on the page.
- If they must be there, give one adult the sole job of supervising them, and keep them out of the loading route entirely.
- Pack a child bag for the car: snacks, drinks, a change of clothes, medication, tablet and charger, a favourite toy, and something to sleep with.
- Keep comfort items out of the van. A missing bedtime toy at 8pm in an unfamiliar house is a genuinely bad evening.
- Do the school run as normal if it is a school day and the old school is still reachable. Routine is worth more than involvement.
- Bring them to the new house late, once the van has gone and the bedrooms are built.
- Have the first meal sorted before you need it. Nobody is cooking.
Tip: ask the crew to unload the children’s bedroom boxes first and put the beds up before anything else. Most removal firms will happily do this if you say it at the start of the day. Beds made, curtains up, one lamp on, and the room is theirs before they walk into it.
Safety, briefly
Fit stair gates and window restrictors before the first night rather than after, check the garden boundary and any pond, find out where the smoke alarms are and test them, and keep the essentials box with medication in it somewhere you can reach in the dark. New houses have hazards you have not learned yet.
Get the van sorted early
Booking the move well ahead is what frees you up to deal with schools and everything else.
Compare removal quotesThe first weeks in the new house
Children settle at their own pace, and the pace is slower than most parents expect. A useful rough shape is a few days of disruption, a few weeks of learning the new routines, and a few months before somewhere feels like home.
- Rebuild the routine immediately. Same bedtime, same mealtimes, same order of things. Routine is the fastest signal that the world is still the world.
- Unpack their room first and finish it, rather than half-finishing every room. One completely normal space beats six partial ones.
- Keep the old friendships running. Fund the video calls, arrange a visit within the first month if it is reachable, and put it in the diary so it is real.
- Get them into something local fast. A club, a team or a class does more for making friends than school alone, because it is smaller and repeats weekly.
- Expect some regression. Broken sleep, clinginess, tempers and the occasional accident from a child who was past that stage are all normal for a few weeks.
- Tell the new school what is going on. They deal with new arrivals constantly and will watch out for a child they know is settling.
Watch out: distinguish settling from something more. A few weeks of unsettled behaviour is expected. Persistent withdrawal, refusal to go to school, or changes to eating and sleeping that are still there after a couple of months are worth raising with the school and your GP rather than waiting out.
Nursery, childcare and healthcare
- Nursery and childminder places work like school places: apply early, join waiting lists, and check what funded hours you are entitled to in the new area.8
- Register with a GP in the first week, before anyone needs one. You do not need to contact the old practice at all — the NHS tells them once you have registered with the new surgery, and the records follow from that. Children under 16 usually need their own registration form filled in by a parent or guardian, so do not assume they are covered by yours. Do the dentist at the same time.
- Immunisations run through the GP surgery, so registering is what puts younger children back in the system. Check nothing is due in the gap and ask the new surgery to catch up anything missed. Health visiting is separate — it does not follow on from registering with a GP, so chase it as its own job.
- Update Child Benefit and any Universal Credit claim, which is part of the same HMRC and DWP update covered in our change of address checklist.9, 10
- If your child has an EHC plan, in England the plan itself does transfer. The old council must pass it to the new one on the day you move, the new council must then maintain it as if it had written the plan itself, and where the named school is no longer practicable it must arrange another suitable school or setting in the meantime. What is not automatic is the placement. The new council has six weeks to tell you whether it intends to reassess your child’s needs, and must review the plan within three months of the transfer, so start the conversation as early as you can — this is still the item that needs the longest run-up of anything on this page. SEN support without a plan has none of that machinery behind it, so raise it with the new school directly.11
One less thing to organise
Compare vetted removal companies and get the date locked in while you deal with schools.
Compare removal quotesFrequently asked questions
How long does it take to get a school place when you move house?
In England, an in-year application is normally decided within 15 school days of a complete application. The complication is that many councils will not use your new address until you can evidence it — that is their own local policy rather than a national rule, and each sets its own evidence requirements — so in practice the clock frequently does not start until you are actually there. There is no set window for how far ahead you can apply either: the Admissions Code says a parent can apply for a place at any school at any time, and councils decide locally how early they will process it, so ask the new one. Apply as soon as you can evidence the address, and join waiting lists at the same time.
What if my child is refused a place at the school we want?
Join the waiting list and appeal. In England you normally have 20 school days from the refusal to lodge an appeal, and in-year appeals are usually heard within 30 school days of being lodged.2 Waiting lists genuinely move as other families relocate. One thing to check first: a refusal on infant class size grounds is a much narrower legal test and is harder to overturn, so find out which ground you are appealing before you build the case.2, 4
When should I tell my children we are moving?
Once it is certain, not while it is still possible. Children handle bad news better than uncertainty, and overhearing a half-formed plan is worse than either. For toddlers a few weeks is plenty. For primary and secondary age, tell them at the point it is definite and give them real jobs and real choices, particularly over their own room. Expect a teenager’s reaction to be anger rather than sadness, and do not try to argue it away.
Should children be there on moving day?
Preferably not. The front door stands open for hours, strangers carry heavy furniture through the house, and every adult who would normally be supervising is busy. Book grandparents, friends, childcare or a full day out. If they must be present, give one adult the single job of watching them and keep them well away from the loading route. Bring them to the new house once the van has gone and their bedroom is built.
How long do children take to settle after a house move?
A rough shape is a few days of visible disruption, a few weeks to learn the new routines, and a few months before the house feels like home. Some regression is normal in the first weeks: broken sleep, clinginess, tempers, occasionally accidents from a child who was past that. Rebuilding the old routine quickly is the single biggest thing that helps. If withdrawal or school refusal is still there after a couple of months, speak to the school and your GP.
Should I move during the school year or wait for the holidays?
Moving in the holidays avoids disrupting a term and gives everyone time to unpack, but it also means a child arrives at a new school with no one they know and no gentle introduction. A mid-term move can actually be easier socially, because the class is in routine and a new arrival gets attention and a buddy. The stronger argument for waiting is exams: moving a child mid-GCSE or A level risks subject options and coursework that do not transfer cleanly.
What should I unpack first with children in the house?
Their bedrooms, completely, before you touch anything else. Same bedding, same toys, the same things on the same side of the bed. A child who walks into a finished room in a strange house has one thing that is entirely normal, and that does more for the first night than any amount of explaining. Ask the crew to unload those boxes first and build the beds before the rest of the van comes off.
Sources
Figures, deadlines and rules in this guide are referenced below. Each source was checked on 10 August 2026. Links open in a new tab.
- Department for Education, (2021 (in force 1 September 2021; publication page last updated 11 March 2022)).
- Department for Education, (2022).
- legislation.gov.uk, (1998 (as amended)).
- legislation.gov.uk, (1998 (as amended)).
- legislation.gov.uk, (2005).
- GOV.UK (Department for Education), (accessed August 2026).
- Welsh Government, (accessed August 2026).
- GOV.UK (Department for Education), (accessed August 2026).
- GOV.UK (HM Revenue and Customs), (accessed August 2026).
- GOV.UK (Department for Work and Pensions), (accessed August 2026).
- legislation.gov.uk, (2014).