End of tenancy cleaning throughout Cator Park

The park that built the postcode

Twenty acres of new parkland, dropped onto the footprint of the demolished Ferrier Estate, and the flats wrapped around it carry some of the highest fit-out specs south of the river. Cator Park anchors Berkeley’s £1bn Kidbrooke Village regeneration, a 5,000-home masterplan, and the park itself won the Sir David Attenborough Award for Enhancing Biodiversity. For a tenant the relevant part is simpler. The flats here are pristine. The inventory templates are long, and a clerk grades a Kidbrooke Village flat against the showroom condition it was handed over in.

An end of tenancy clean at Cator Park starts at £156 for a studio and £207 for a one-bed flat, rising to £243 for a two-bed, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed townhouse. Those are the figures most SE3 9FW moves land on. This page is everything around that number: why a brand-new flat loses a deposit more easily than an old one, which buildings we sign into, what the 57-point clean covers, and how the Greenwich licensing rules and the new tenancy law change your move-out.

Two-bed flats at Birch House, Cottam House and Conningham Court let at roughly £2,250 to £2,750 a calendar month through Foxtons Blackheath, Dexters and JLL. Three-bed townhouses on Pegler Square and Tizzard Grove move at £3,250 to £3,500. Under the Tenant Fees Act five-week cap that puts most deposits between £2,300 and £4,000. The landlords are a mix: buy-to-let owners who bought off-plan from Berkeley, build-to-rent operators, and shared-ownership leaseholders subletting through housing associations. All of them let through agents who run inventories at hotel spec. This is the Cator Park entry in our south-east London coverage, and it reports up to the wider Royal Borough of Greenwich hub for borough-wide context.

The estate even has its own railway again. Berkeley funded a new Kidbrooke station building, opened in April 2021 beside the village centre, on the Bexleyheath line into London Bridge, Cannon Street and Charing Cross in under twenty minutes. That commuter pull sets the rent, and the deposit follows the rent. It is also why a block beside the park turns over tenancies, and check-outs, faster than a quiet street further out in SE3 or SE9. We cover SE3 9FW, SE3 9YG, SE3 9FA, SE3 9FN and the surrounding Kidbrooke Village postcodes.

Why a new-build check-out is harder than an old one

Most people assume a two-year-old flat is the easy check-out. It is the hard one. A Victorian conversion is graded against a baseline that already had honest wear in it on the day you moved in, but a Kidbrooke Village flat was photographed spotless at check-in, so the clerk measures you against a showroom. A new flat loses its deposit on detail, not on grease.

The honest answer to why deposits get held back at Cator Park is that the fixtures are too pristine and the inventory templates too granular for a clean done with a rented Vax to pass. Limescale on the brushed-chrome rainfall shower in a Marsden House ensuite, one greasy fingerprint on the Corian island in Cottam House, a film of dust on the downlighter rims in a Waterlily Court ceiling. Any single one of those is a written deduction, because there is a clean handover photo to compare it against.

The specification is also uniform and high right across the estate, which means the same short list of mistakes turns up flat after flat. Integrated Siemens or Bosch dishwashers, Zanussi fridge-freezers, induction hobs, ceramic-glass ovens with telescopic runners, brushed-chrome Hansgrohe brassware, Karndean LVT or engineered oak, Corian or quartz worktops, mirrored wardrobes on soft-close runners, recessed downlighters, and floor-to-ceiling glazing opening onto balconies. Each surface has one correct method, and getting it wrong does damage that becomes its own deduction: wire wool on the brushed chrome, an acidic spray on the Corian, a steam mop on the Karndean.

Then there is the balcony. Almost every flat here has one, overlooking the park or the podium gardens, and the clerk photographs it at check-out. Glass balustrade, decking boards, the drainage channel, the underside of the cill. It gets scored like any room, so we treat it as a room.

The buildings we sign into

The thing that sets Cator Park apart from an ordinary SE3 let is the concierge layer. Birch House, Marsden House, Cottam House and the Blackheath Collection all sit under Berkeley’s resident-services umbrella, so the clerk’s check-out sheet feeds back to the building’s facilities team rather than staying between you and a private landlord. A patio-door track full of dust, a balcony drain blocked with leaves off the park, a streaked stainless lift mirror inside your own demise, all of it gets flagged and logged.

Access usually runs through the Berkeley resident app. Some blocks ask the outgoing tenant to grant the cleaning crew permission in advance, so the quickest bookings are the ones where you tell us the building and floor up front and we prompt you for the right access when we confirm. Our vans are marked. Our staff are uniformed. We sign in at the desk like any other contractor.

We cover every block fronting onto or within a few minutes of the park, plus the surrounding Kidbrooke streets:

• Pegler Square and the village centre
• Birch House, Cottam House and Conningham Court
• Marsden House and Waterlily Court, north and south buildings
• Centrum Court, Agora Court and Batchford House
• Tizzard Grove, Henley Cross and the Blackheath Collection townhouses
• Wallflower Avenue, Wallace Court and Cranfield Walk
• Faithful House and the Kidbrooke Square studios
• Meridian Gate, City Point and the Sutcliffe Park fringe
• Kidbrooke Park Road, Kidbrooke Park Close and the mews on Saundby Lane and Handley Drive

If your flat is a Cator Park address that is not on that list, we still cover it. Those are the blocks we book most often, not a boundary.

What the 57-point clean covers

The 57-point checklist is not a marketing number. It is the room-by-room list a Kidbrooke Village clerk grades against, built around the new-build inventory templates Foxtons, Dexters, JLL, Heath Estates and Benham & Reeves use in SE3. The kitchen carries the most of it.

In the kitchen we strip the oven down to door glass, racks, trays and the bottom plate, then clear the carbon off the interior, the fan housing and the element, caustic-dipping the removable parts and detailing the rest in situ. The induction hob is cleaned with a non-abrasive ceramic-glass product only. The extractor filter comes out, gets degreased and goes back. The integrated fridge-freezer is defrosted, shelves and seals washed, drip tray emptied, kickboard wiped. The dishwasher filter, spray arms and door seal are done and the salt and rinse-aid topped. The Corian or quartz worktop gets a pH-neutral cleaner and nothing acidic. The sink and brushed-chrome mixer are descaled, every cupboard is cleaned inside and out, and the Karndean or oak floor is swept then damp-mopped with a manufacturer-approved product.

Bathrooms and ensuites are the second front, and SE3 is a hard-water pocket, so scale is the enemy. We descale the rainfall head and handset, polish the valve face, lift the shower-tray drain cover and clear the hair trap, strip limescale off both sides of the glass screen including the seal channel, treat the tile grout, do the bath and sealant, the vanity unit, basin and mixer, the mirrored cabinet inside, the WC pan, hidden frame, flush plate and rim, the heated towel rail, and the extractor grille. Limescale at the base of a chrome tap is the single most common thing a clerk circles here.

Bedrooms and living areas come next. Mirrored wardrobes inside and out, soft-close runners cleared of dust, the top shelf especially. Skirting, architraves and door tops. Downlighter rims and lenses in every room. Window glass, frames, ironmongery, trickle vents and reveals. The floor-to-ceiling glazed doors get the top track cleared and the bottom track vacuumed and damp-cleaned. The balcony is done in full: glass both sides, decking or porcelain, the drainage channel, the cill and any external light. Floors are vacuumed throughout, with carpet extraction available as an add-on, and the MVHR grilles are wiped clean rather than dismantled.

Throughout: the entrance hall, video-entry handset and any keypad, the washer-dryer drum, soap drawer and seal, the storage and bike cupboards inside the demise, every switch, socket and thermostat, the bin and recycling cupboard, and a final fingerprint sweep on all the glass, done last. Anything that genuinely cannot be cleaned, a chipped tile or a blown downlighter, gets photographed and flagged rather than left for the clerk to find.

The surfaces that cost deposits here

Inventory clerks working SE3 9FW for Foxtons Blackheath, Dexters, JLL Greenwich, Heath Estates and Benham & Reeves run a near-identical sheet on every Kidbrooke Village flat. After years of cleaning these blocks you learn where the pen lands first, and it is the same handful of places nearly every time.

The oven door inner glass comes first, because carbon caught between the panes is a deposit standard and an easy charge to justify against a clean handover photo. A grease-blocked extractor filter is a deduction on its own. After that it is the brushed-chrome brassware, where limescale collects at the base of every tap and around the rainfall head, then the hidden silicone seal channel on the shower screen, then the WC hidden frame and the rim jets.

Here are the spots tenants forget and clerks never do:

• Recessed downlighter rims, all of them, in every room, the moment ceiling light rakes across them
• The patio-door bottom track and the trickle-vent grilles above the glazing
• Balcony glass on both faces, plus the bottom seal channel and the decking drainage gap
• Mirrored wardrobe runners and the dust strip along the top
• Skirting tops and door tops, the finger-swipe test a clerk does on the way out
• Inside the washer-dryer drum and the soap drawer
• The bin and recycling cupboard, and the video-entry handset by the door

None of it is hard to clean. All of it gets missed by a tenant doing the flat in an afternoon, and on a new-build the misses add up faster because each one stands out against a spotless baseline. The high-spec surfaces make it worse. The wrong product turns a cleaning job into a damage charge: steam lifts the wear layer on Karndean, an acidic spray dulls Corian, and wire wool scratches brushed chrome for good. Method matters here.

A new flat loses its deposit on detail, not on grease.

One tenant put it more plainly than we can. She had a two-bed in Marsden House let through Foxtons Blackheath, with the check-out booked for the same morning the new tenant moved in and the concierge present, and a four-page clerk’s sheet to get through. Our team went in the day before and spent five hours on the flat, balcony glass and the bin cupboard inside the demise included. She had the full £2,975 deposit back the following Tuesday.

What a Cator Park clean costs

Honest, fixed pricing, set by bedroom count because that is what an inventory actually measures. The figures below are starting prices for a flat in average condition, pre-cleaned and not heavily soiled, and we only adjust upward after we have seen the flat or detailed photos, and only with your sign-off in writing.

All prices include VAT, materials, equipment and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. We do not charge mileage, parking or congestion charge inside Greater London. Full price list here.

Every one of those jobs runs to the same 57-point agent-approved checklist, which is the list the inventory clerks themselves work from. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London, and over the years that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. The 97% first-time pass rate is why a Blackheath agent takes our report at face value instead of sending a clerk back round. None of that is a boast. It is the reason the deductions do not land.

The rules that decide your deposit

A clean is only half the deposit story. The other half is the law on how the money is held and how a deduction has to be proved, and it changed this spring. The terms below are the ones that decide a cleaning dispute at Cator Park.

Deposit protection

Your landlord has to protect the deposit in one of three government-approved schemes within 30 days and give you the details. The three are TDS, DPS and mydeposits. Miss the deadline and your position on any deduction is stronger.

Check-in inventory

The dated report and photos taken the day you moved in. On a Kidbrooke Village flat that handover record is showroom-spotless, which is exactly why the check-out is held to such a high bar. If you were never given one, say so early.

Fair wear and tear

The gradual decline any lived-in home suffers. A landlord cannot charge you to clean off honest wear, but grease, scale and dust are not wear, and that is the ground most cleaning deductions are actually fought on.

Scheme adjudication

Each scheme runs a free, independent adjudication that weighs both sides on the evidence, and a check-out report from a Kidbrooke Village concierge desk is dated, photographic and granular. Documented evidence wins these cases.

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live across England on 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault eviction is gone, periodic tenancies are the default, and the decent homes standard now reaches the private rented sector. What has not changed is the part that matters here: the deposit still has to be protected, and any deduction still has to be evidenced against the inventory. For a Cator Park tenant the practical effect is that agents are sharper than ever on documenting move-in versus move-out condition, because the route to recovering possession is narrower and disputes go straight to the scheme adjudicator.

The rule that decides these cases is simple. Evidence beats opinion. Photograph the flat as you leave, keep the cleaning receipt, and keep the checklist a professional cleaner worked to, because a documented clean from a firm the agent already knows carries weight a tenant’s own scrub never will. That backing is also why our work comes with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the clerk or the agent flags anything we cleaned, we are back free within 48 hours to put it right before any deduction is agreed. With a 97% first-time pass rate the call rarely comes, but it lets you promise the agent a fix rather than start an argument.

Greenwich licensing and the Kidbrooke blocks

There is a local rule worth knowing before you move. The Royal Borough of Greenwich runs a borough-wide Additional HMO Licensing scheme from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028, covering every HMO of three or more occupants from two or more households. A Cator Park flat let to three sharers falls under it wherever in Kidbrooke Village the block sits.

Cator Park is not inside the borough’s Selective Licensing footprint. That scheme covers parts of Plumstead, Glyndon, Shooters Hill, Woolwich Common and Woolwich Arsenal until 30 September 2027, well to the east of here. Mandatory HMO licensing still applies borough-wide for properties with five or more occupants. The licence conditions cover cleanliness of communal areas, kitchen and bathroom hygiene, and an end-of-tenancy inspection regime, and the detail is on the Royal Borough of Greenwich housing pages.

What it means in practice is that a shared flat which has been through a council inspection gets a closer check-out, not a lighter one, and the onus sits on the landlord to hold the right safety documents rather than on you. Licensing raises the bar on the move-out condition. It does not lower it.

Booking around the concierge and the station

Booking is a phone call. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the building, the floor, the bedroom count and whether you have a balcony or terrace, and you get a fixed, itemised quote within the hour with the slot confirmed in the same email. No survey visit. We turn up the day before check-out, two cleaners for a one or two-bed and three for a townhouse, marked vans, uniformed staff, signed in at the concierge desk. Whoever is meeting the clerk gets a ten-minute walk-through with the team lead before we leave, and anything you flag we fix on the spot.

A word on access, because Kidbrooke Village has its quirks. The resident parking around the village centre and Pegler Square is the worst part of working here, permit-controlled and full by mid-morning, so a crew with a boot of kit should not be circling for a bay. If your block has a loading area or a visitor permit through the resident app, sort it before the day. The podium-level blocks can also mean a long carry from the nearest drop-off, which is worth telling us when you book so we bring the right trolley.

Timing is the thing people underestimate. The check-out is booked for a set hour, the clean has to be finished and any carpet dry before the clerk arrives, so book the clean for the day before the check-out where you can rather than gambling on a same-morning turnaround. Move out first, leave the water and electricity on, defrost the fridge-freezer, and we clean the empty flat properly rather than around your boxes.

If a removals run is part of the same week, we handle that too, so the move and the clean stay on one schedule. And if the flat is an older Kidbrooke Park Road conversion that has been let for years rather than a new Berkeley block, a full deep cleaning service sometimes makes more sense than a standard end-of-tenancy clean, and we will tell you straight which one your property needs.

Cator Park services and the neighbouring streets

Most Cator Park jobs come with an add-on or two, and they slot into the same visit. Oven cleaning is the caustic-dip detail clean, single from £77, and it is the one add-on we would never skip on a check-out. Carpet cleaning is hot-water extraction with Prochem solutions at £36 a bedroom, which suits the bedroom wall-to-wall in flats that have hard floors everywhere else. Where a sofa or mattress came with the let, Upholstery cleaning handles the fabric the inventory lists as the landlord’s.

The high-spec floors here often want their own treatment, so Hard floor care covers Karndean, engineered oak and porcelain tile, and Window cleaning does the internal glass on high-floor flats a tenant cannot safely reach. If the move itself needs doing, Removals runs studio to four-bed packages. Builder’s dust is its own job. Where a flat is a fresh handover straight from Berkeley, After-builders cleaning is the right product rather than a standard clean.

We work the whole of this corner of the borough, so if your move takes you to a neighbouring patch we cover the same service across it. Nearby we clean Blackheath, Kidbrooke (the wider neighbourhood), Lee, Eltham and Charlton, and the full borough picture sits on the Royal Borough of Greenwich hub. A landlord with flats across several of these blocks can use one firm for the lot. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] to book.

Cator Park end of tenancy questions

Do you have permission to access the Cator Park apartment buildings?

Yes. We have cleaned Kidbrooke Village flats since the first phases handed over, and our crews sign in at the concierge desks at Birch House, Marsden House, Cottam House and the Blackheath Collection regularly. Some buildings ask the resident to grant access through the Berkeley resident app, so tell us which block you are in and we will prompt you for the right permission when you book.

How much is end of tenancy cleaning at Cator Park?

From £156 for a studio at Kidbrooke Square, £207 for a one-bed in Birch House or Cottam House, £243 for a two-bed in Conningham Court or Waterlily Court, £339 for a three-bed flat or townhouse on Pegler Square or Tizzard Grove, and £425 for a four-bed in the Blackheath Collection. Every price includes VAT, materials, equipment and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

How long does the clean take?

A one-bed at Cator Park is usually 4 to 5 hours for a two-person crew. A two-bed runs 5 to 6 hours. A three-bed townhouse with a garden patio is a full seven-hour day with three cleaners. We do not rush. Every job runs to the 57-point checklist however long that takes.

Will my deposit come back?

Our first-time pass rate across SE3 sits at 97%, and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers the rest. If the inventory clerk flags something we missed, we come back free within 48 hours. We cannot promise the agent’s verdict on damage or wear, but we can promise the cleaning meets the 57-point standard they grade against.

Do you clean the balcony?

Yes, on every Cator Park job, and never as an add-on. Glass balustrade both sides, decking or porcelain tile, the drainage channel, the cill and any external light. The balcony is the single most overlooked area in Kidbrooke Village check-out reports, so we treat it as part of the standard clean.

What about the concierge gym fobs and key cards?

Fob returns are between you and the building management, not us. We will wipe down any fob readers, video-entry handset and intercom panel inside your own flat as part of the 57-point checklist, but handing the fobs back at the concierge desk is your job.

Can you clean the carpets too?

Yes. Hot-water extraction with Prochem-grade solutions: £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £115 for a whole two-bed flat. Most Cator Park flats have Karndean or engineered oak in the living areas and carpet only in the bedrooms, which usually works out at about £90 for a two-bed carpet add-on.

Do you clean Karndean and engineered oak floors safely?

Yes. Both need a pH-neutral cleaner and minimum-moisture mopping, and the wrong technique is a damage charge in itself. Steam wrecks Karndean and standing water lifts engineered oak. Our crews are trained on every flooring spec used across Kidbrooke Village.

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

Almost always. We hold same-day capacity for SE3 because Kidbrooke Village check-outs are so often confirmed late. Call 0333 555 2076 before 11am and we can usually fit you in that afternoon or the next morning.

What if my landlord is Berkeley’s build-to-rent arm rather than a private landlord?

It changes nothing for the cleaning spec. The build-to-rent managers run check-outs to the same standard as Foxtons or Dexters, sometimes stricter, because they are protecting the building’s long-term reputation rather than one tenancy. Our 57-point checklist is built to match either.

Do you bring your own equipment and materials?

Yes. Vacuums, mops, buckets, cloths, every chemical, a ladder for high-level work, caustic-dip oven trays and professional limescale treatment. You provide nothing.

Do you need water and electricity?

Yes, both have to be on. If the meter readings are done and the supply is being switched, tell us in advance and we will work around the timing.

What if there is still furniture in the flat?

We cannot run a proper end-of-tenancy clean around furniture, so the flat needs to be empty before we arrive or we book a deep clean instead. If you need help shifting the last few items, our removals service pairs with the clean and starts at £50 for single items.

Can you handle the Kidbrooke Village bin chute and recycling cupboards?

The bin chute itself belongs to the building. The bin and recycling cupboard inside your own flat is ours, and every Cator Park clean covers it inside and out.

What payment methods do you accept?

Bank transfer, all major debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Payment is on completion, never upfront, and the receipt is emailed within an hour.

Are you insured?

Yes. £5m public liability cover and £10m employer liability cover. Both certificates are available on request, and we email them straight to building management offices when they ask.

What if I am not happy with the clean?

Call us, send photos, and we come back within 48 hours to re-clean the specific items free of charge. That guarantee is in writing. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents and have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions, so getting the result right matters to us.

Where do I read about my tenancy rights?

The deposit scheme that holds your money sets out the dispute process: TDS, DPS and mydeposits each publish how cleaning disputes are decided, and the Royal Borough of Greenwich housing pages cover local rules.