How we got here
Arrival started as something much simpler and more manual. Rosie Kirk, our founder, moved into her first flat in Manchester after graduating and spent six weeks navigating five separate supplier registrations — receiving eleven different welcome emails, setting up five direct debits with different amounts on different dates, and still ending up with a corrected gas bill three months later because the opening meter reading had been estimated.
The original Arrival service was more hands-on: new movers submitted their details and a small team handled all five supplier registrations manually on their behalf. It worked — people genuinely valued having someone else manage the admin — but doing it entirely by hand has a ceiling. The past year has been spent building the technology to do this at scale: registration integrations with energy, water, council tax, and broadband providers; a consolidated billing layer; and an account dashboard that gives customers a single view of all five services.
Why Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire first
We started in Greater Manchester because that's where we're based and where we know the supplier landscape, the council tax authority landscape, and the broadband infrastructure best. United Utilities covers water across the North West; the Greater Manchester Combined Authority boroughs each have their own council tax structures; and Openreach's fibre rollout in the region is well advanced, meaning FTTP broadband is available at a significant proportion of addresses.
We added West Yorkshire — specifically the Leeds, Bradford, and Kirklees areas — because Yorkshire Water's integrations were a natural extension from United Utilities, and because Leeds has a large and active rental market with a similar demographic to Manchester. The two regions are closely connected: many people who rent in Leeds have previously rented in Manchester, and vice versa.
Together, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire represent over 5 million households, with a combined rental sector that includes some of the largest student and young professional populations in England outside London. It's a meaningful starting point.
What's included at launch
When you register with Arrival today, you get:
- One-form setup: A single 10-minute form at move-in that covers all five utility registrations. We handle the supplier contact, meter reading submissions, broadband booking, and council tax registration in the background.
- Consolidated monthly direct debit: One payment per month covering electricity, gas, water, broadband, and council tax. The amount reflects actual usage for energy and water, plus fixed costs for broadband and council tax. You can see the per-utility breakdown in your dashboard at any time.
- Usage dashboard: Daily electricity and gas consumption from your smart meter (where installed), monthly water usage, current broadband speeds, and the next council tax payment date — all in one view.
- Single point of contact for disputes: If any supplier issue arises, you contact Arrival and we handle it on your behalf — whether that's a billing error, a supply fault, or a complaint that needs escalating through OFGEM or Ofwat's complaint pathways.
- Smooth move-out: When you leave, you notify Arrival once. We coordinate final meter readings, close all five accounts, and handle any credit refunds through your consolidated account.
What we don't do yet
Arrival is regional. There are things we don't yet cover:
We don't yet cover Scotland or Wales, where different utility regulatory frameworks (and, in Scotland, a different council tax system) require separate integration work. We don't yet have partnerships with all broadband infrastructure providers — currently we can book installations on Openreach infrastructure, covering most addresses, but CityFibre and some other alternative networks are being integrated. And we don't yet handle landlord-included utilities scenarios, where the landlord holds the energy or broadband account and passes the cost through rent.
We're saying this clearly rather than quietly hoping nobody notices these gaps — it's a better experience for everyone if you know what's covered before you sign up, rather than discovering a limitation after you've already started the setup process. We're not saying Arrival is the right fit for every household in these regions yet; if your situation involves landlord-included utilities, properties with specialist metering, or a requirement for a specific niche broadband provider, it's worth checking the FAQ first.
Pricing
Arrival's service fee covers the account management, billing consolidation, and dispute resolution layer. The underlying utility costs are passed through at the rates Arrival negotiates with OFGEM-registered suppliers in the region — not marked up. Full pricing details are on the product page, and you can see an estimated monthly total before committing to a setup.
Getting started
If you're moving into a property in Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire — or if you're already living in the region and want to consolidate existing accounts — you can create your Arrival account at joinarrival.com/login/register.html. The setup form takes approximately 10 minutes. We'll send you a confirmation email with a timeline for each service going live, typically within 2 working days for energy and water, and 10–14 days for broadband installation.
For anyone moving outside our current coverage area, you can register your interest at joinarrival.com and we'll notify you when we expand to your city. We're planning to announce our next coverage area before the end of 2026.
We started this because moving is hard enough without five separate supplier sign-ups on top of it. The first step is making that simpler in the two regions we know well.