Planning Kitchen Deliveries Across a Phased Development

On a single kitchen, delivery is a diary entry. On a development of twenty plots running over several phases, delivery is a logistics problem, and it is one of the few parts of a kitchen package where a buyer can lose serious money without ever being overcharged.

The mistake is nearly always the same: everything is ordered in one go because it feels simpler, and the site then spends months looking after a warehouse it did not ask for. This guide covers how to phase it properly.

Early is as expensive as late

Everybody plans against the risk of a kitchen arriving too late. Far fewer people plan against the opposite, which on a long programme is the more likely outcome and often the more expensive one.

What happens to a kitchen stored on site

A flat-packed cabinet is a cardboard-wrapped chipboard product. A worktop is a long, heavy, pre-finished board with an edge that shows every knock. Neither is designed to live in a partly built house for three months, and on site they get treated as furniture: stacked on, leaned against, walked past by every trade with a ladder.

The realistic damage list is short and predictable. Corners of doors chipped where packs have been slid across each other. Worktop edges dented at the ends, which is exactly where the visible run finishes. Cabinet backs bowed from being stored flat under weight. Handles and small hardware boxes that simply disappear. Appliances stored in an unheated shell over winter.

There is a second cost that is easier to miss. Once a kitchen has been on site for a few weeks, nobody can tell you whether a mark arrived on the lorry or happened on Tuesday. The 48-hour window for reporting damage or shortages exists precisely so that question stays answerable, and it can only be used if somebody opened and checked the delivery when it landed.

And late is still late

The other side is obvious but worth stating plainly: kitchens sit near the end of the programme, so a missing kitchen delays handover directly. There is nothing to reprogramme around it. That is why the answer is not “order later” — it is “order early, release in stages”.

Tie releases to handover, not to the order date

Quote and agree the whole package at the start, so the specification, the quantities and the price are settled across all phases. Then break the supply into releases and tie each release to a plot handover date on the build programme rather than to a fixed calendar date.

Handover dates move. Calendar dates in a supply agreement do not, and when the two drift apart it is the site that absorbs the difference. A release tied to a build stage moves with the programme.

Two details make this work. Keep the cabinet platform identical across plot types even where the finishes differ, so a release is genuinely repeatable — the same base units, wall units and larder units in every plot, with only doors, worktop décor and handles changing between tiers. And decide early whether cabinets come fully rigid or flat-packed, because that decision changes both the site labour and the volume arriving on each vehicle. Rigid cabinets save assembly time on site but take considerably more space in the van and in whatever room you are staging from.

There is more on structuring a package this way on the multi-unit kitchen projects page, and on the kitchens for property developers page.

Access, parking and offloading

Delivery problems on developments are almost never about the goods. They are about the last fifty metres.

Brooklands delivers on a fully tracked service across mainland UK, and larger kitchen and worktop deliveries go on a dedicated service with the day arranged with you directly. That arrangement only helps if the site can actually take the vehicle on the day agreed. Before the first release, walk the route a lorry will have to take and answer these honestly.

• Can the vehicle physically get in? Site entrance width, overhead cables, low branches, height barriers on an adjacent car park, and whether the estate road is finished or still a mud track.
• Where does it stop? A turning point, a hardstanding, and enough room that it is not blocking a compound gate or a public road for an hour.
• Are there parking restrictions? On refurbishment and infill sites this is the usual failure. Suspended bays, permit zones and school-time restrictions all need arranging in advance, not on the morning.
• Who is offloading, and with what? Assume manual offloading and enough labour to do it without stopping other work.
• Where does it go immediately? A dry, secure, lockable space, off the floor, with worktops stored flat and supported.

Long worktop loads deserve their own thought

Worktops are the awkward item on any site. They are long, they are heavy, they need two people, and they cannot be turned through a tight stairwell the way a flat-packed cabinet can. On upper-floor apartments in particular, work out how a full-length worktop gets from the vehicle to the plot before you agree the delivery day, not while the driver is waiting.

Brooklands supplies Kronodesign and Duropal laminate worktops in postformed and square-edged profiles, with lengths, depths and thicknesses listed on each product page — check those figures against your access route while you are still specifying. Cutting, jointing, cut-outs and fabrication all happen on site, so what arrives is a full pre-finished length that has to be carried in whole. Order matching upstands and splashbacks in the same release so the finish is from the same batch as the worktop it sits against.

Who receives the delivery, and what they do

Name a person per release. Not “site”, not “whoever is on the gate” — a named individual with a phone number the driver has, who knows a kitchen delivery is coming and knows what is in it.

That person needs the release list in their hand and needs to do three things: count the packs against the list, look at the outside of every worktop, door and appliance pack before it is stacked, and note anything damaged or missing on the paperwork at the time.

This is the point of the 48-hour window. Damage and shortages should be reported within 48 hours of delivery, which is generous if somebody checked on the day and impossible if the packs went straight into a locked container to be opened in six weeks. Photograph anything questionable while the packaging is still on it.

Keep the schedule matched to the programme

A delivery schedule agreed in month one and never revisited is a fiction by month four. Build a short review into the same meeting where the build programme is updated, and tell your supplier when a block slips — that is far easier to accommodate than a release that turns up to a plot which is not ready.

Delivery timing is confirmed when the order or quotation is finalised, and the day for larger loads is arranged with you, so the practical thing you can control is giving as much notice as possible for each release. Note too that Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland, offshore and certain remote postcodes may be excluded or surcharged; that is always confirmed before an order is processed, so raise the postcode at quotation stage rather than at release stage. Full detail is on the delivery page.

Availability risk over a long phase

The longer the programme, the more likely something in the specification changes underneath you. Door colours and worktop décors get discontinued. Appliance models get superseded — usually by something similar, occasionally by something with a different aperture that no longer suits the housing specified.

Three things reduce the exposure. Agree the full package up front so quantities are known across every phase rather than discovered plot by plot. Where a décor or a colour is doing a lot of design work, ask about it early rather than assuming it will still be there at phase four. And keep a small snag holding of the visible items — doors, end panels, handles — to the end of the phase, because those are what get damaged on site and what is hardest to match later.

If the specification is still open, a published bundle deal is a sensible starting point for a repeatable plot kitchen, since the whole complete kitchen is already assembled as a package. Prices and promotional inclusions change, so check the current position on the collection.

Frequently asked questions