Borough end of tenancy cleaning

Walk the streets around Borough Underground in the third week of June and you can almost read the lettings calendar off the pavement. Hire vans double-parked on Lant Street. Mattresses propped by the bins on Tabard Street. Estate agent boards going up outside the mansion blocks off Marshalsea Road, all at once, because a few hundred King’s medics at the Guy’s campus finish placements and hand their keys back inside the same fortnight. I run Monster Cleaning, and since 2014 my teams have cleaned end-of-tenancy flats right across this patch of SE1, from the conservation terraces of Trinity Street through to the new towers near the Shard. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] to book.

Last updated May 2026. We cover the SE1 1 and SE1 9 postcodes with overlap into SE1 0. Borough sits inside the London Borough of Southwark.

The summer that sets the Borough deposit year

Most rental districts turn over all year. Borough turns over in waves, and the biggest wave breaks in July and August. The Guy’s campus of King’s College London sits a few minutes from Borough High Street, and its GKT medical school takes roughly 400 new students onto the standard programme every year, on top of the dental and nursing intake. A large share of them rent shared houses within walking distance, on Lant Street, Tabard Street, Pocock Street and Webber Street. When the academic year ends they leave more or less together. Landlords want those flats cleaned, checked and re-let before the next cohort arrives in September. So the check-out clerks work flat out for about six weeks, and the bar they set does not drop just because they are busy.

That rhythm shapes my whole year here. From late June I am scheduling student HMOs back to back, often same-day turnarounds for landlords with rolling lets who need the keys returned by lunchtime. The rest of the year is steadier and the mix changes: professional movers leaving the towers, families leaving the period flats, the odd corporate let ending on a fixed relocation date. The clean itself never gets easier in the rush. If anything the summer clerks are sharper, because they are doing twenty of these a week and they know exactly where last year’s tenant cut a corner.

So the honest first thing to know about a Borough move-out is timing. Book early if you are leaving in July. Saturday slots vanish first.

Three tenants, three completely different cleans

Borough is a small area with wildly mixed housing for somewhere in Zone 1. Within five minutes of the station you have early-19th-century terraces, solid interwar mansion blocks, and glass towers finished in the last twenty years. Three rough tenant types live in them, and each hands back a different cleaning problem. Knowing which one you are tells you where your deposit is most at risk.

The medic in the shared house

This is the summer brief. A three or four-bed off Lant Street or Tabard Street, shared by King’s students, let through an HMO landlord and turned around fast. The kitchens are the battleground. Older extractor systems clog with a year of fried-food grease, the oven has rarely been touched, and four people’s worth of fridge and freezer use leaves seals you would rather not photograph. Bathrooms see heavy daily use and limescale builds quickly on Borough’s hard water. The work is not delicate, it is just relentless, and there is a lot of it per square metre because every room is a bedroom.

The conservation tenant in the period flat

Trinity Street, Merrick Square, Trinity Church Square, Newcomen Street, the eastern stretch of Marshalsea Road. The terraces around Trinity Church Square and Merrick Square went up in the 1850s and the whole enclave is a conservation area, so the flats carved out of them keep their original features. Multi-pane sash windows. Cornicing and ceiling roses with deep relief that traps dust. Period skirtings and panel doors with brass furniture. The cleaning here is slow and careful rather than heavy. Sash runners need working pane by pane. Conservation-area paint finishes do not forgive an abrasive cream cleaner, so the wrong product on a skirting can itself become the deduction.

The professional in the tower

Empire Square off Long Lane, built across five buildings around 2007. Triptych Bankside, finished in 2022 with its two residential towers and 169 flats. Two Fifty One on Southwark Bridge Road, a 41-storey block with a concierge desk. Brigade Court in the old London Fire Brigade headquarters, and The Quill on Weston Street. The finishes change the job completely. Floor-to-ceiling glazing and glass balustrades show every streak and fingerprint. Floors are polished stone or wide-plank engineered timber that needs a pH-neutral clean, never a generic floor wash. Add underfloor heating grilles full of dust, integrated appliances hidden behind matching cabinet fronts, and balcony door tracks, and you have a clean that is all about surfaces a domestic tenant never thinks to touch.

The agents managing these flats are the usual SE1 names. Dexters at 54 Borough High Street, Foxtons London Bridge, Cluttons, Garrett Whitelock on Bermondsey Street, Stirling Ackroyd, Savills, Daniel Cobb, Reiss Samuels, Black Katz, McMahon and Partners on Newington Causeway, Circa London. Different stock, same expectation. The clerks they instruct know each archetype cold and inspect to suit.

Borough is a small area with wildly mixed housing for somewhere in Zone 1.

Where the deposit sits, and the law that moved the goalposts

Average monthly private rent in Southwark reached £2,388 in February 2026 on ONS figures, up about 1.7% on the year and a touch above the London-wide average. SE1 1 around Borough station sits above that borough mean. One-bed flats around Borough High Street, Empire Square and Triptych typically let at £2,200 to £3,200 a month, and two-beds in the towers run past £3,500. Put that against the five-week deposit cap and you are looking at £2,500 to £4,000 held in a scheme account at check-out. Sometimes it comes back in one clean transfer. Sometimes it leaks away, £40 for a greasy extractor here, £85 for unwashed sash windows there, until a chunk of it is gone.

Three schemes hold that money. Your deposit is protected with TDS, DPS or mydeposits, and all three run a free adjudication service if you and your landlord cannot agree on deductions. They decide on evidence. A check-in inventory, a check-out report, dated photographs, and any invoices either side produces. Shelter sets out the dispute route plainly if your agent drags their feet on releasing the balance.

What the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 changed

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in October 2025, and the bulk of it took effect from 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone. Assured shorthold tenancies have converted to periodic assured tenancies, so fixed terms fall away. Rent increases are limited to once a year. The part that matters most at a move-out is quieter than the headlines: deposit deductions now have to be evidenced properly, against a signed, dated inventory and check-out report with photographs to back them up. A vague “professional cleaning required” line with nothing behind it is contestable.

That helps the careful tenant and exposes the careless one. If the check-out report flags a greasy oven and you have no check-in photo and no cleaning invoice, you will pay for it. If the report is thin and you hold a Monster Cleaning invoice with the 57-point checklist itemised and timestamped, the adjudicator leans your way. We email that paperwork to whatever address you give us on the day we finish, so it is sitting in your inbox before any dispute starts. Across more than a decade of SE1 work, that single piece of evidence has settled more arguments than any amount of after-the-fact protest.

Two licences over one square mile

Borough is one of the few patches of London where a single street can fall under two separate licensing schemes at once, and that quietly raises the cleaning bar at check-out. Southwark Council runs a borough-wide additional HMO licensing scheme from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2027, covering any house in multiple occupation with three or more tenants from two or more households. A separate mandatory scheme covers the larger five-plus-tenant HMOs. On top of that, from 1 November 2023 the council added selective licensing across the London Bridge and West Bermondsey ward, which takes in much of the Borough rental stock. So a shared medic house off Tabard Street can need an HMO licence, while a one-bed let in the same ward sits under selective licensing. The full picture is on the Southwark Council licensing page.

Why does a tenant moving out care about the landlord’s licence? Because a licence comes with written conditions, and those conditions include keeping the property in good order at each turnover. A licensed flat handed back filthy is a compliance problem for the landlord, not just an annoyance, since the council can ask to see check-out evidence when it audits. The result on the ground is simple. Landlords of licensed Borough properties lean harder on a professional clean at the end of a tenancy, and they instruct clerks who inspect more closely. The deposit deduction for poor cleaning is more likely to stick because the landlord has a paper reason to insist on it.

The 57 points, room by room

Every Borough job runs to the same 57-point inventory-spec checklist, scaled to the size of the flat. It maps to the standards used by Dexters, Foxtons, Cluttons, Garrett Whitelock, Stirling Ackroyd, Savills, Daniel Cobb and Circa London, so a clerk from any of them finds the boxes already ticked. Here is what the checklist actually covers.

Kitchen

The kitchen is where most deductions start, so it gets the most attention.

• Oven interior stripped down: racks, side runners, base tray, and the door glass inside and between the panes where they come apart
• Hob, splashback and extractor degreased, with filters soaked and fan blades brushed
• Fridge and freezer washed inside and out, seals included, defrosted on request
• Washing machine and dishwasher: drawers and filters cleared, seals wiped, drums cleaned
• Microwave done inside and out, turntable and roller ring washed
• Cupboards and drawers emptied, vacuumed, wiped, handles polished
• Worktops, tiles and grout degreased; sink and taps descaled and the plug holes cleared
• Bins washed and deodorised, floor swept and mopped into the corners

Bathrooms

Hard water makes the bathroom the second front, and limescale is the enemy.

• Limescale stripped from showerheads, taps, screens and tiles, which on Borough water is the slow part
• Grout deep-cleaned and brightened
• Toilet done inside, under the rim, around the hinges, the base and the pipework behind
• Bath, shower tray and screens descaled and polished
• Mirrors, vanity units and cabinets cleared and polished
• Extractor grilles, towel rails and radiators wiped; floor mopped and skirtings detailed
• Silicone sealant checked and flagged where mould has set into it rather than sitting on top

Bedrooms and living areas

Here the work changes with the stock, from cornicing in the terraces to glass in the towers.

• Cornicing, ceiling roses and picture rails dusted, the careful bit in the Trinity Street and Merrick Square period flats
• Sash windows worked pane by pane: glass, frames, sills, runners, locks and catches
• Floor-to-ceiling glazing left streak-free both sides where access allows, the slow bit at Empire Square, Triptych and Two Fifty One
• Polished stone, polished concrete and engineered timber floors cleaned pH-neutral, no sealer damage
• Underfloor heating grilles dusted and vacuumed
• Skirtings, doorframes, doors and brass furniture wiped and polished
• Light fittings, shades and pendants dusted; sockets, switches and thermostat plates wiped
• Radiators front, back and pipework; wardrobes and built-in storage emptied and wiped inside and out
• Mirrors, glass balustrades and picture frames polished; curtains and blinds vacuumed or wiped to suit the fabric
• Balcony and sliding-door tracks brushed and vacuumed; carpets and rugs vacuumed, with stain treatment as an add-on

Throughout the flat

Then the parts that run across every room get their own pass.

• All hard floors mopped with the right cleaner for the surface
• All carpets vacuumed, including under any loose furniture left behind
• Internal doors, frames and handles wiped both sides
• Cobwebs and dust cleared from ceiling corners
• Communal cupboards, hallway storage and meter cupboards cleared
• A final walk-through and snag-list with you or your agent before we leave

What a Borough hand-back costs

SE1 1 prices reflect access, parking and the heavier scope on tower glazing and period stock. We confirm a fixed quote in writing before booking, locked once we have seen a few photos or done a short video walk-through. No surprise top-ups on the day.

The high-spec towers at Empire Square, Triptych or Two Fifty One tend to land at the upper end of each band, because two storeys of glass and a stone floor simply take longer. Period flats around Trinity Street and Merrick Square sit high in the bracket too, for the sash windows and the cornicing. A standard student HMO usually falls mid-range despite the grease, because the rooms are plain boxes once the kitchen and bathrooms are done.

Those figures are not decoration. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and across that work we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. The 97% first-time pass rate is the number I care about most, because it means almost every clean clears the check-out without a second visit. When one does not, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers it.

What the clerk opens, and in what order

SE1 1 clerks are sharp because the deposits are large. Twelve years of standing through Borough check-outs has taught me the running order, near enough. A clerk works fast and predictable, and it usually goes like this.

1. Oven first, with a torch: racks, base, and the door glass between the panes if it splits
2. Cooker extractor filter pulled out and turned over
3. Fridge seal peeled back to check the gasket folds for mould
4. Washing machine soap drawer out and inspected for scale and grime
5. Behind and under the bath panel, where damp and hair collect
6. Under the toilet rim, checked with a phone camera or a mirror
7. Shower screen seals and tile grout for any mould bloom
8. Limescale on tap aerators and shower roses
9. Up to the cornicing, ceiling roses and picture rails in the period flats
10. Sash runners, catches and the inside face of the lower pane
11. Tops of doorframes, picture frames and any tall furniture
12. Polished stone or concrete floors for haze and edge detailing
13. Glass balustrades and floor-to-ceiling windows for streaks and prints in the towers
14. Underfloor heating grilles and balcony tracks on the new-builds
15. The communal cupboard, meter cupboard and any storage allocated to the flat

Notice how much of that list is invisible to the person who lived there. Nobody cleans the inside of a fridge seal as part of a normal weekend tidy. That gap, between a flat that looks clean and a flat that survives an inventory inspection, is the whole reason this service exists.

Which clean you actually need

People ring up asking for the wrong thing all the time, usually because the words get muddled. A move-out clean, a deep clean and a regular clean are three different jobs at three different prices. Here is the plain version.

End of tenancy clean

The full 57-point inventory-spec job: oven interior, behind and inside appliances, a complete wet-room descale, the lot, with a timestamped checklist for your records. This is the one that defends a deposit, and it is what a letting agent means when they ask for a professional clean. From £195.

Deep clean

The same heavy scope minus the inventory paperwork. It suits owners, long-term residents or a flat going up for sale, where there is no deposit and no clerk to satisfy. Charged at £30 an hour per cleaner.

Regular clean

A maintenance tidy of agreed rooms, no oven interior or descale unless you ask. Weekly, fortnightly or monthly, at £22 to £19 an hour. Useful during a tenancy, not the right tool for a move-out.

Check-in inventory

The dated, photographed record of a flat’s condition at the start of a tenancy. Your check-out is judged against it, which is why a good check-in photo is worth so much if a deduction is ever disputed.

48-hour re-clean guarantee

If a clerk or landlord flags anything cleaning-related within 48 hours of our visit, we come back and put it right at no charge. It is why the 97% first-time pass rate matters so little to your wallet on the rare miss.

If you are moving out with a deposit on the line, you want the end of tenancy clean. Always.

Booking, concierge desks and key-safes

Access in Borough splits along the same lines as the housing. The towers have concierge desks, so handover at Empire Square, Triptych or Two Fifty One is usually a porter letting us in against a booking we have confirmed in writing. The period flats and mansion blocks run on agent key collection or a key-safe. Dexters at 54 Borough High Street, Foxtons London Bridge, Cluttons, Garrett Whitelock and Stirling Ackroyd all hold keys for the properties they manage. You rarely need to be there at all, which suits the medics who have already moved home for the summer.

Parking is the genuine headache, and I will not pretend otherwise. The streets around Borough High Street, Tabard Street and Long Lane are tight, controlled most of the day, and there is nowhere to leave a van for a six-hour clean without thinking about it first. We sort permits where the client can provide one, and we plan loading around the controlled hours. It is a solvable problem, but it is the worst part of working here and it is worth flagging when you book so we bring the right number of hands and do not waste an hour circling.

Booking itself is quick:

1. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the address and the number of bedrooms.
2. Send three or four photos, kitchen, oven interior, bathroom, and anything unusual like cornicing or a wall of glass, or do a 60-second video.
3. We confirm a fixed price and a slot, usually inside 24 to 48 hours, with a written booking and the 57-point checklist attached.
4. The team arrives with all kit and consumables, works the checklist, and walks you or your agent round the finished flat.
5. If anything is flagged at check-out within 48 hours, we return and re-clean the snag free under the guarantee.

Add-ons, and where Borough ends

Plenty of Borough jobs need more than the standard scope, and bundling them into one visit is cheaper and quicker than booking separately. The most common extras:

• Oven cleaning on its own if the rest of the flat is your project and only the cooker beats you
• Carpet steam cleaning for bedrooms and living rooms before a clerk runs a torch over the pile
• Upholstery cleaning for the sofas left behind in furnished lets
• Window cleaning for the floor-to-ceiling glazing at Empire Square, Triptych and Two Fifty One
• Floor cleaning for polished concrete, stone and engineered timber that needs the right pH
• Removals run alongside the move-out clean so the flat is empty before we start
• After builders cleaning when a renovation or fit-out has just finished

We work well beyond Borough too, across the same slice of SE1 and into the neighbouring areas:

• Borough Market, the streets right around the food market and the cathedral
• London Bridge, the station quarter and the towers near the Shard
• Bankside, the riverside stretch by Tate Modern
• Bermondsey, SE1 and SE16, with its warehouse conversions
• Elephant and Castle, SE1 and SE17, just down the Walworth Road
• Waterloo, the South Bank end of SE1
• Southwark borough hub for the wider picture across the borough

Borough end of tenancy questions

Do you guarantee my deposit back?

We guarantee the clean, not the deposit, because the deposit decision sits with the scheme and not with us. Our 48-hour re-clean guarantee means that if your agent or landlord flags anything cleaning-related at check-out, we come back at no cost and put it right. Across the 300+ letting agents we work with we run a 97% first-time pass rate, and we email you a timestamped 57-point checklist so the cleaning side is defended if any dispute goes to adjudication.

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

A one-bed at Empire Square or Triptych is usually a four to six hour job for a team of two or three. A two-bed period flat on Trinity Street or Merrick Square with sash windows and cornicing runs five to seven hours. A three or four-bed student HMO off Lant Street or Tabard Street can take all day, because the kitchen grease and the bathroom turnover are the heaviest part of the whole brief.

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

Often yes on weekdays. Saturday slots in SE1 fill fast, so book early in the week if your move-out is at a weekend. Same-day is sometimes possible when a team has a cancellation, so call rather than email if your slot is urgent and we will tell you straight what we can do.

Do you bring all your own equipment and chemicals?

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

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

Most common in Borough is agent key collection. Dexters at 54 Borough High Street, Foxtons London Bridge, Cluttons, Garrett Whitelock and Stirling Ackroyd all hold keys for managed properties, and a key-safe works just as well if you are the keyholder. The towers at Empire Square, Triptych and Two Fifty One have a concierge handover. We confirm the access arrangement in writing before the booking so nobody is left standing on the pavement.

Will you clean the windows inside and out?

Inside, always. Outside depends on access, so anything reachable through a tilt-and-turn or a sash, yes. Anything that needs external scaffolding, cradle access at Empire Square or Triptych, or a pole-fed window cleaner, no. We tell you exactly what we can and cannot reach at quote stage rather than leaving you to find out on the day.

Do you handle period flats with cornicing and original sashes?

Yes, it is a routine Borough brief given the conservation terraces around Trinity Street and Merrick Square. We use soft brushes and microfibres on the cornicing, work the sash windows pane by pane including the runners and catches, and keep abrasive products well away from conservation-area paint finishes. If a feature worries you, send a photo and we will set out the approach in writing first.

What if my landlord uses a strict inventory clerk?

Good, honestly. We work to inventory-spec by default, so a strict clerk finds less to flag, not more. We already check the underside of the toilet rim, behind the appliances, inside the fridge seals and the tops of the cornicing before any clerk arrives. Send us the inventory company name in advance if you have it, because we know most of the local clerks and what each one looks for.

Can you clean carpets and upholstery in the same visit?

Yes, and it is almost always more efficient than a separate appointment. Carpets are steam cleaned with hot extraction at £36 a bedroom or £43 for a living room, with a whole two-bed at £115. Upholstery runs from £40 for an armchair, £55 for a two-seater, £75 for a three-seater and £110 for a corner sofa. Add it to the end-of-tenancy quote up front for a combined price.

Do you do windows on Empire Square, Triptych and Two Fifty One new-builds?

The internal face of all the glazing, yes, and that is what an inventory covers. The external face on those towers is maintained by the building’s facilities team using cradle or rope access, which sits outside our scope and outside the lettings inventory, so it is not something you will be charged a deduction for.

How do I pay?

Card, bank transfer or cash on completion, with an invoice issued by email carrying our full company details. You pay after we have finished and you or your agent have walked the flat. Plenty of agents reimburse the cost from a rolling float, so ask yours before booking if you would rather it came off the rent account.

Are you insured?

Yes. Public liability up to £2 million, employer’s liability, and treatment cover for accidental damage to the property while we work. Certificates are available on request before the job starts, which managing agents in SE1 sometimes ask to see.

Do you work bank holidays and weekends?

Saturdays are standard, Sundays on request, and bank holidays often available with a small premium. Move-out dates rarely respect the calendar, particularly the summer rush around the Guy’s campus, so we plan our rota around your hand-back date rather than the other way round.

What if I cannot be there for the clean?

Common in Borough, especially for students who have already left for the summer. Hand the keys to the agent, drop them in a key-safe, or arrange a concierge handover at Empire Square, Triptych or Two Fifty One. We send before-and-after photos by WhatsApp or email so you have your own evidence even when you are nowhere near SE1.

Do you cover Guy’s Hospital and King’s College Guy’s Campus student lets?

Constantly, and it is our busiest summer work. The HMO turnover on Lant Street, Tabard Street, Pocock Street and Webber Street peaks in July and August, and we schedule those weeks around the King’s term-end calendar. For landlords with rolling lets we can turn a flat around the same day so the next tenant moves straight in.

Book your Borough clean

Call 0333 555 2076, email [email protected], or send a WhatsApp with photos of the kitchen, the bathroom and anything out of the ordinary. We come back within a couple of hours with a fixed price, a date and the booking confirmation. Twelve years of SE1 move-outs behind us, a 48-hour re-clean guarantee on every job, and a checklist built to survive the sharpest clerk on Borough High Street. Whatever shape your Borough flat takes, period, mansion block or tower, we know how to hand it back clean.