Local end of tenancy cleaning in Borough Market

The clue to cleaning a Borough Market flat is hanging in the air the day you move in. This is London’s oldest food market, trading in some form since the 12th century, wholesale until the mid-1990s and a retail food hall ever since, and the flats wrapped around it live with the consequences. Frying smoke, market grit dragged off the cobbles, a film of food grease on anything above head height. I run Monster Cleaning, and since 2014 we have been handing SE1 deposits back to tenants from Stoney Street to Bedale Street, Park Street to Borough High Street. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] to book a slot.

Last updated May 2026. Coverage runs across SE1 1 and SE1 9, with overlap into SE1 0 and SE1 2. Borough Market sits in the London Borough of Southwark.

What the oldest food market does to a flat

Walk Stoney Street at seven in the morning and the place is already working. Delivery cages, fish ice melting into the gutter, the first coffee grinders going. That is the backdrop to your tenancy, and it leaves a mark a suburban semi never gets. The flats here are not dirtier than anywhere else. They are dirtier in specific, awkward places, and the clerk who checks you out knows exactly which ones.

Food-trade air is greasy air. It rises, it drifts through an open sash, and it lands on the surfaces nobody wipes between deep cleans: the tops of kitchen units, picture rails, the curve of a cast iron column, the upper panes of tall windows. Add the grit. Borough High Street, Southwark Street and the cobbled lanes off the market hall push a fine, gritty dust into every entrance hall, and it tracks through a flat on the soles of your shoes until it sits in the carpet pile and along the skirtings. None of that is hard to shift if you know it is there and you go looking for it, which is the whole job.

The market made this an awkward postcode to clean. It also made it a careful one to live in.

Most of the agents I deal with around here, Cluttons over at Tower Bridge, Garrett Whitelock on Bermondsey Street, Stirling Ackroyd, Dexters at London Bridge, Savills and Circa London at Bankside, brief inventory clerks who have worked SE1 for years and treat the food-market grease as a given. They pull fridge seals back, run a finger along an extractor blade, and photograph the back of the radiator pipework, because they have learned that this is where a Borough Market flat quietly fails. The bar is high. The deductions, when they come, are surgical rather than sweeping.

Food-trade air is greasy air.

The money sitting on the table at check-out

Average monthly private rent in London hit £2,280 in March 2026 on the ONS measure, and central SE1 sits well above that. A one-bed in a Stoney Street conversion or a Park Street loft routinely lets at £2,400 to £3,200 a calendar month. Put that against the five-week deposit cap and you are looking at something like £2,800 to £3,700 held in a scheme account, waiting either to come back to you whole or to leak away one deduction at a time because the oven extractor was greasy and the sashes were never done on the inside.

That is real money, and it is the reason this clean is worth doing properly rather than in a panic the night before. A deduction here is not loose change. It is a month’s shopping, a deposit on the next place, the thing standing between you and a clean break from the flat. The deposit on a Borough Market rental is large enough that an agent will happily spend an hour finding fault, and the clerk is paid to do exactly that.

The flat you took over the market is worth defending properly. Most people only realise that once the deductions land.

How the new rules changed the hand-back

The big change this spring is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, with most of it live from 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone. Assured shorthold tenancies have become periodic. Rent rises are capped to once a year through a Section 13 notice. The part that matters at check-out is quieter than any of that: the burden of proof on deposit deductions has been rebalanced, and a landlord now has to evidence a deduction against a signed, dated inventory and a check-out report with photographs to back it.

This cuts both ways, and it is worth understanding which way it cuts for you. If the check-out report flags greasy oven racks and you have no comparable check-in photo, you pay. If the report is sloppy and you are holding a Monster Cleaning invoice with the 57-point checklist itemised against it, the adjudicator leans your way. We email a timestamped invoice and a checklist confirmation to whatever address you give us, and the three big schemes, TDS, DPS and mydeposits, all take that paperwork as evidence when a deduction is contested.

A few words get thrown around in this process as if everyone already knows them. Here is what they actually mean for your hand-back.

Check-in inventory

The dated report and photos taken the day you moved in. The clerk grades your final clean against that document, not against some general idea of “clean”, so the standard is the condition you arrived to.

Check-out report

The clerk’s inspection at the end of the tenancy. Under the new rules it has to carry photographs and detail before a cleaning deduction will stand up.

Inventory-spec clean

A clean scoped to pass that report rather than to look tidy. It means oven interiors, fridge seals, behind appliances and full wet-room descaling, whether or not the room looks dirty.

Selective licence

A council permit a landlord needs to let certain SE1 homes, carrying written conditions on the property, including cleanliness at each turnover.

Why a licensed SE1 flat gets checked harder

Southwark runs more rental licensing than most London boroughs, and it changes how hard a flat gets inspected. A borough-wide additional HMO scheme runs from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2027, covering houses in multiple occupation with three or more tenants from two or more households. A mandatory scheme sits on top for the larger HMOs of five or more tenants. There are two selective licensing schemes as well: Scheme 1 covers Newington, Champion Hill, Faraday, St Giles and Goose Green, while Scheme 2 adds fourteen further wards, among them London Bridge and West Bermondsey, which butts straight up against Borough Market. The detail is all on the Southwark Council licensing page.

Here is why that lands on your clean. A licensed flat comes with written conditions that bind the landlord, and several of them touch cleanliness at the point a tenancy turns over. A licensed property handed back filthy is a genuine problem for the landlord, because the council can ask to see check-out evidence as part of a compliance audit. So landlords of licensed flats lean harder on a professional clean at the end, and the clerks they hire look closer. If your flat is licensed, assume the inspection will be thorough and brief us accordingly.

Three kinds of flat, three different cleans

Within a three-minute walk of the market hall you get three completely different homes, and each one fails its check-out in its own way. We carry kit for all three in the van, because a single round can take in a Victorian loft, a Georgian terrace and a glass tower in one morning.

The warehouse conversion comes first, because it is the signature Borough Market home: Park Street, Stoney Street, Cathedral Street, Bedale Street, Clink Street. Exposed brick, original cast iron columns, polished concrete or reclaimed timber, double-height ceilings, steel-frame windows. The dust traps are the ones you would never think to look at, the tops of the columns, the gaps between brick courses, the runners of a sliding industrial door, the underside of a mezzanine. We bring step ladders, soft brushes for the brick, microfibres, and pH-neutral floor cleaner that will not strip the sealer off the concrete.

The Georgian and early Victorian terrace is the Trinity Church Square and Merrick Square stock, plus Newcomen Street and Marshalsea Road. Multi-pane sash windows, cornicing, ceiling roses with deep relief, period skirtings, panel doors with brass furniture. The work is patient rather than heavy. Every surface has to come back to a presentable state without lifting the conservation-area paint, and the sashes alone can eat an hour.

The contemporary new-build is Borough Yards, One Tower Bridge, NEO Bankside, Bankside Lofts and the Quill on Weston Street. Floor-to-ceiling glazing, glass balustrades, stone or wide-plank engineered floors, integrated appliances hidden behind matching cabinet fronts. Here the time goes on streak-free glass at scale, on fingerprints off every cabinet door, and on the dust that collects in underfloor heating grilles and balcony track runners.

The streets and pockets we are in most weeks:

• Stoney Street, Park Street, Bedale Street and Cathedral Street
• Borough High Street, Southwark Street and Marshalsea Road
• Clink Street, Winchester Walk and Redcross Way
• Trinity Church Square, Merrick Square and Newcomen Street
• Union Street, Great Suffolk Street, Lavington Street
• Borough Yards, One Tower Bridge, NEO Bankside
• The Quill, Bankside Lofts and Empire Square
• St Thomas Street, Snowsfields, Crucifix Lane and Tabard Street

The 57-point clean, from oven to cornice

The 57-point checklist is the same scope on every job, scaled to the size of the flat. It matches the inventory standards used by Cluttons, Garrett Whitelock, Stirling Ackroyd, Dexters, Savills, Circa London and Oliver Jaques. The figures below are the ones we stand behind, and they show up again in the stat band because they are worth repeating.

In the kitchen, which is where the food-trade grease bites hardest:

• Oven stripped down, racks and runners and base tray degreased, door glass cleaned between the panes where it comes apart
• Hob, splashback and burner heads degreased and descaled
• Extractor hood wiped, filters pulled and soaked, fan blades brushed
• Fridge and freezer washed through, shelves out, seals cleaned in the folds
• Washing machine drawer descaled, seal wiped, drum and filter checked
• Dishwasher filter cleared, seal wiped, salt and rinse-aid topped where it takes them
• Cupboards and drawers emptied, vacuumed, wiped inside and out
• Worktops, tiles, grout, sink and taps degreased, descaled and polished
• Floor swept and mopped, edges and corners done by hand

In the bathrooms, where hard SE1 water leaves its own evidence:

• Limescale off showerheads, taps, screens and tiles
• Grout deep-cleaned and brightened, sealant checked and any mould flagged
• Toilet done inside, under the rim, around the hinges and down to the pipework
• Bath, shower tray and screens descaled and polished
• Mirrors, vanity units and cabinets cleared and polished
• Extractor grilles dusted, towel rails and radiators wiped, floor mopped to the skirtings

In the bedrooms and living areas, which is where the period and warehouse features need a careful hand:

• Cast iron column tops dusted and wiped, the spot a clerk goes for first in a conversion
• Exposed brick soft-brushed and vacuumed, never scrubbed red
• Cornicing, ceiling roses and picture rails dusted in the period flats
• Sash windows done on both panes, frames, sills, runners and catches
• Floor-to-ceiling glazing cleaned streak-free both sides where access allows
• Polished concrete and engineered timber given a pH-neutral clean that leaves the sealer alone
• Skirtings, doorframes, doors and brass furniture wiped and polished
• Light fittings, sockets, switches and thermostat plates dusted and wiped
• Radiators front, back and pipework, then wardrobes and built-in storage cleared inside and out
• Carpets and rugs vacuumed, with stain treatment available as an add-on

And throughout the flat:

• Hard floors mopped with the right cleaner for each surface
• Cobweb and dust off the ceiling corners
• Internal doors, frames and handles wiped both sides
• Meter cupboards, hallway storage and any allocated communal space cleared
• A final walk-through and a snag-list with whoever booked us, before we leave site

What a Borough Market hand-back costs

SE1 prices sit a touch above a quiet suburb, for two honest reasons: the access is awkward and the scope is heavier on warehouse and period stock. We confirm every quote in writing before you book, and we lock it once we have seen photos or done a quick video walk-through, so there is no number creeping up on the day.

New-builds at Borough Yards, One Tower Bridge or NEO Bankside tend to land at the top of their bracket, because the floor-to-ceiling glass alone adds time. Trinity Church Square flats with original sashes and cornicing sit high in the range for the same reason: the careful detail work takes longer than a flat surface ever does. A plain one-bed loft with standard windows comes in lower. We will tell you which end you are at when we quote.

The lanes, the parking and getting us in

I will be straight about the worst part of working here, which is the parking. The lanes around the market hall, Stoney Street, Bedale Street, Winchester Walk, are cobbled, narrow and half the time closed to vehicles while the market is trading, so we load in on foot more often than we would like and we plan around the trading hours. It is the one genuine headache of an SE1 round, and we have got good at it because there is no other option.

Access for the clean itself is usually the easy bit, because most of these flats are agent-managed. Cluttons at Tower Bridge, Garrett Whitelock on Bermondsey Street, Stirling Ackroyd, Dexters at 54 Borough High Street and Savills all hold keys for the properties they run, so we collect from the office. If you are the keyholder you can drop keys with the agent, use a key-safe, or set up a porter handover at One Tower Bridge or Borough Yards. We confirm whatever the arrangement is in writing before the day.

Booking itself is short. Here is the whole of it.

1. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the address and the number of bedrooms.
2. Send three or four photos, the kitchen, the oven inside, the bathroom and anything unusual like exposed brick or cast iron, or do a 60-second video walk-through.
3. We come back with a fixed quote and a slot, usually inside 24 to 48 hours, and email the booking with the 57-point checklist attached.
4. The team arrives with all the kit and the consumables, works the checklist, and walks you or your agent through the finished flat before leaving.
5. If anything cleaning-related is flagged at check-out within 48 hours, we come back and put it right at no charge under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

Saturdays are standard. Sundays and bank holidays we can usually do with a little notice.

End of tenancy, deep clean or a regular tidy

People ring asking for the wrong one all the time, so it is worth being clear about which clean does what. An end of tenancy clean is the only one scoped to pass an inventory check.

If you are moving out, you want the end of tenancy clean, because the deep clean leaves off the one thing the clerk is looking for, which is the itemised paperwork tying the work to the inventory. If you are staying put and just want the flat reset after a hard winter, the deep clean is the better value. The regular clean is for upkeep and nothing else.

Add-ons and where we go from here

The jobs people most often bolt onto an SE1 end of tenancy:

• Oven cleaning on its own, if the rest of the flat is your project and the oven is the bit you dread
• Carpet steam cleaning for living rooms and bedrooms, to lift the market grit out of the pile
• Upholstery cleaning for sofas left behind in a furnished let
• Window cleaning for the floor-to-ceiling glazing in the new-builds
• Floor cleaning for polished concrete, engineered timber and stone
• Removals run alongside the clean on the same day
• After builders cleaning when a flat is being handed over straight off a renovation

And the neighbouring patches we cover, if your move is taking you a little further out:

• Bermondsey, SE1 and SE16
• London Bridge, a few minutes north
• Bankside along the river
• Waterloo to the west
• Elephant and Castle to the south
• The Southwark borough hub for everywhere else in the borough

Residential is what we do day to day, but there is a separate commercial cleaning arm for offices and small retail units, which is quoted on a different basis. If you are clearing a stall storeroom or a small unit near the market rather than a flat, ring and ask for that side.

Borough Market end of tenancy questions

Do you guarantee my deposit back?

We guarantee the clean, not the deposit decision, because that sits with the scheme rather than with us. What we promise is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if your agent or landlord flags anything cleaning-related at check-out, we come back and put it right at no cost. Across the 300+ letting agents we work with we hold a 97% first-time pass rate, so the cleaning side of any dispute is well defended.

How long does an end of tenancy clean take in a typical Borough Market flat?

A one-bed warehouse conversion on Park Street or Stoney Street is usually four to six hours for a team of two or three. A two-bed Trinity Church Square flat with sash windows and cornicing runs five to seven. A new-build two-bed at Borough Yards or One Tower Bridge comes in around six to eight, because the floor-to-ceiling glazing eats the time.

Why is cleaning a flat near the market any different?

Food-trade air is greasy and it settles high up, on unit tops, picture rails, column tops and the upper panes of tall windows, while the cobbled lanes push gritty dust into entrance halls and carpets. None of it is hard to shift once you know to look for it, which is why we go to those spots first rather than last.

Can you do same-day or next-day bookings?

Often, especially midweek. Saturday slots in SE1 fill fast, so book early in the week if you can. Same-day is sometimes possible when a team has a cancellation, so for anything urgent call rather than email and we will tell you straight what is free.

Do you bring all your own equipment and chemicals?

Yes. Vacuums, steam cleaners, step ladders for high cast iron columns and glass balustrades, microfibres, pH-neutral cleaners for polished concrete, descalers for the hard SE1 water and the oven products. You do not need to leave us anything except access to the flat.

How do we get access if I have already moved out?

The usual SE1 route is agent key collection. Cluttons at Tower Bridge, Garrett Whitelock on Bermondsey Street, Stirling Ackroyd, Dexters at 54 Borough High Street and Savills all hold keys for managed flats. If you are the keyholder, drop keys at the agent office or use a key-safe, and we confirm the arrangement in writing before the booking.

Will you clean the windows inside and out?

Inside, always. Outside depends on access: anything you can reach through a tilt-and-turn or a sash, yes. Anything that needs external scaffolding, cradle access at One Tower Bridge or NEO Bankside, or a pole-fed window cleaner, no. We flag what we can and cannot reach at the quote stage so there are no surprises.

Do you handle warehouse conversions with exposed brick and cast iron?

Yes, it is a routine SE1 brief for us. We use soft brushes and vacuums on the brick and microfibres on the cast iron, and we keep abrasive products well away from the patinas these features are valued for. If your conversion has a feature you are worried about, send a photo and we will tell you the approach in writing first.

What if my landlord uses a strict inventory clerk?

Good, honestly. We clean to inventory-spec as standard, so a strict clerk finds less to flag because the underside of the toilet rim, the fridge seal folds, behind the appliances and the tops of the columns are already done before they arrive. Send us the inventory company name in advance if you have it, since we know most of the local clerks.

Can you clean carpets and upholstery in the same visit?

Yes, and it is almost always cheaper to combine them. Carpets are steam cleaned with hot extraction at £36 per bedroom or £43 for a living room, with a whole 2-bed at £115. Upholstery starts at £40 for an armchair and runs to £110 for a corner sofa. Add it to the end of tenancy quote upfront for a combined price.

Do you do the windows on the Borough Yards and One Tower Bridge new-builds?

The internal face of all the glazing, yes. The external face on those towers is generally maintained by the building facilities team using cradle or rope access, so it falls outside our scope and outside most lettings inventories anyway.

How do I pay?

Card, bank transfer or cash on completion. We issue an invoice by email with the company details on it, and you pay after the job is finished and you have walked it. A fair few agents reimburse the cost from a rolling float, so it is worth asking yours before you book.

Are you insured?

Yes. Public liability up to £2 million, employer liability, and treatment cover for accidental damage. Certificates are available on request before the job starts, and agents who want them on file can have them.

What if I cannot be there for the clean?

Very common in SE1, and not a problem. Hand keys to the agent, leave them in a key-safe, or set up a porter handover at One Tower Bridge or Borough Yards. We send before-and-after photos by WhatsApp or email, so you have your own evidence even when you are not on site.

Do you clean Borough Yards retail or commercial premises?

Residential is our core, but we run a separate commercial cleaning arm for offices and small retail units near the market. It is quoted on a different basis to a flat, so call and ask for that side and we will talk it through.

Book your Borough Market clean

Call 0333 555 2076, email [email protected], or send a WhatsApp with photos of the kitchen, the bathroom and any unusual feature. We will come back within a couple of hours with a fixed price, a date and the booking confirmation. Twelve years of SE1 end of tenancy work behind us, 300+ letting agents on the books, and we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. The oldest food market in London earns a careful clean, and that is the only kind we do.