On St Mary’s Island the clerk goes for the balcony slider runner before anything else. Grit blows in off the Medway, it collects in that aluminium channel, and no tenant has ever hoovered it. That is the shape of end of tenancy work on Chatham Maritime: modern flats, integrated everything, glass on three sides, and a check-out judged against a finish that was six months old when you moved in.
We have cleaned this peninsula since 2014. Fixed prices per property, £30 per hour per cleaner where a job is odd or partial, and a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.
Last updated June 2026. We cover ME4 4 across the whole Maritime peninsula and St Mary’s Island, plus the flats and conversions on the Historic Dockyard side. This page sits inside the county directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Kent.
What it means to hand back a flat on a managed estate
End of tenancy cleaning
from £176
For a studio, fixed by property size, agreed before we start.
Get your price0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
Chatham Maritime is not an old part of Chatham with new flats dropped into it. It is a 150-acre peninsula of former dockyard land that was built out from scratch.
- Built
- Work started in 1998 and the last homes were handed over in March 2024.
- Homes
- 1,700 of them in total, more than 250 of them affordable housing.
- Builder
- Countryside Homes, now part of the Vistry Group, working with Homes England.
- Age of the stock
- Every property on the Island is somewhere between two and twenty-eight years old, and a lot of them have only ever had one or two tenants in them.
That matters more than it sounds. The check-in report on a flat like yours was written against a builder’s finish, or against a professional clean done between two short tenancies. There is no forty-year layer of other people’s grime for the clerk to write off as wear and tear.
Everything they find is recent, and recent means yours. The clerks who walk this estate know the stock is young and they mark it accordingly. That is why a Maritime check-out can feel harsher than one on a tired terrace a mile inland carrying the same rent.
The other half of it is that somebody is always managing something here. Three sets of paperwork come with the flat:
- the estate’s managing body;
- on most of the blocks, a block landlord with a service charge;
- usually a letting agent, sat between you and the owner.
None of them talk to each other, and all of them want their bit signed off before you see your money.
The rentcharge letter in your move-out pile
Here is the Island quirk nobody warns you about. Every home on St Mary’s Island carries an annual rentcharge collected by the Chatham Maritime Trust, the non-profit that looks after the estate.
- What it funds
- The parkland, the riverside, HMS Chatham Bridge and the upkeep of the public bits.
- The 2026-27 charge
- A fixed £1 plus a variable element of £117.80 per bedroom. The variable part moves each year with the Retail Price Index.
- Two-bed house
- £236.61 for the year.
- Azure sector
- Homes in the last phase built sit higher: £307.84 on a two-bed.
- Invoices
- They go out for 1 April and want paying inside 21 days.
Who it lands on depends on what you rent:
- A house on the Island: the charge belongs to the owner, not to you, unless your agreement says something unusual.
- A flat or a maisonette: you will probably never see the word. The block freeholder pays the collective rentcharge and takes it back through the service charge, which is your landlord’s bill and not yours either.
Rentcharges also do not pay for the maintenance of your block or its grounds; that is the service charge doing a different job.
None of this is a cleaning matter. We mention it because it lands in the same paperwork pile in the same fortnight, and tenants ring us about it having read something frightening on a forum.
The honest answer is short. It is not your bill. Ask the agent to confirm it in writing if you want it off your mind, then go back to worrying about the oven.
It is not your bill. Ask the agent to confirm it in writing if you want it off your mind, then go back to worrying about the oven.
Article 4 stops at the water, and what 1 May 2026 did instead
Medway is a unitary authority, so Medway Council handles all of this, not Kent County Council, whatever the county directory above might suggest.
- Article 4 direction
- In effect from 22 January 2026 and confirmed on 5 May 2026. It removes the permitted development right to turn a family house into a small shared house.
- The wards it names
- Seven: Chatham Central and Brompton, Fort Pitt, Gillingham North, Gillingham South, Luton, Strood North and Frindsbury, and Watling. St Mary’s Island is not on that list. Neither the peninsula nor the Island sits inside it.
- Licensing consultation
- The council has also consulted on selective licensing for privately rented homes and additional licensing for smaller shared houses, aimed at those same seven wards, with final proposals due at Cabinet in summer 2026. Again, not here.
So if you are moving out of a Maritime flat, none of the licensing paperwork that dominates a Brompton or a Luton hand-back applies to you. It is one of the very few ways the Island is easier than the rest of Chatham.
What does apply is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, live since 1 May 2026:
- Section 21 no-fault eviction is gone.
- Every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic one.
- You can give two months’ notice whenever you like instead of waiting for a fixed term to run down.
Your cleaning obligations did not move an inch. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 still stops a landlord writing professional cleaning into the contract as a condition, and the check-in report is still the benchmark you are marked against.
What changed is rhythm. Hand-backs used to cluster at the end of a fixed term. Now they arrive when people feel like leaving, which on an estate full of one and two-year lets means more of them, spread thinner, and harder to plan around.
Chalk water, glass everywhere, and a two-week clock
The water here comes off chalk and it is hard. You already know that if you have ever descaled a kettle in this postcode. What tenants underestimate is how fast it shows on the fittings the Maritime is full of:
- chrome rainshower heads
- big frameless shower screens
- mixer taps
- a glass panel running the length of the bathroom instead of tiles
Wipe it with a cloth and it looks clean wet and cloudy dry. The film is back inside a fortnight. The clerk holds the screen edge-on against the light and it is the first thing they see.
Limescale on chrome needs chemistry and dwell time more than scrubbing, so this is how we do it:
- We soak it in weak acid.
- We wait, and give the acid time to work.
- We rinse, then polish afterwards.
Do it wrong and in a hurry and you leave a dull patch on the chrome that is worse than the scale was, and that is a fitting the landlord can charge you for. It is why a bathroom the size of a lift takes longer here than people expect.
Glass is the other tax on the day: floor-to-ceiling sliders, balcony balustrades, screens. Working against it:
- salt in the air off the estuary;
- condensation drift on the inside;
- any standard glass spray, which will streak if you do not squeegee it in one pass top to bottom.
- Two-storey blocks
- Fine.
- Anything higher
- The outside face of the glass becomes a reach problem we quote separately, because pretending otherwise on the phone would be a lie you find out about on the day.
Wipe it with a cloth and it looks clean wet and cloudy dry.
Room by room, on stock where nothing is older than 1998
Every booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist. It is the same list across our patch, but the weight sits differently here, because the stock is different.
- What you will not find
- No original floorboards, no cornicing, no cast-iron rads.
- What you will
- Integrated appliances, engineered board, downlighters, and a lot of glass.
The kitchen, which is where it is won
The oven gets more than a wipe: racks out to soak, door glass split where the door design allows so the brown film between the panes actually comes out, then the fan, element, seals and interior by hand.
The extractor panel comes off and the baffle filter goes into a hot soak. That one step is the most common thing a Maritime check-out picks up, because the housing ducts up into the ceiling void where nobody has ever looked.
Then the rest of the kitchen:
- Every cupboard inside, outside, on top and underneath
- The integrated fridge and freezer, defrosted by you, cleaned through by us, seals included
- Dishwasher filter out and scrubbed
- The washing machine drum, drawer and door seal; the gasket is where hard water leaves a grey crust that reads as neglect
- Sink, taps and waste descaled
- Grout brushed, splashback done, hob and seal line scrubbed
- Floor mopped last, once the dust has finished falling
The bathroom, which is where it is lost
- Rainshower head, screen, runner, mixer and overflow descaled properly, with the dwell time it needs
- Toilet inside, under the rim, hinge bolts, base and behind the pan
- Bath and tray, including the underside of the taps
- Mirror, cabinet, shaver socket and the extractor grille, which always comes off browner than anyone expects
- Grout scrubbed back as far as honest effort goes, photographed first where it is past saving
- Floor into the corners and behind the pedestal
Bedrooms, living space and the bits between
- Wardrobe slider tracks vacuumed then wiped, because dust and hair clog the runner and a slider that sticks gets written up
- Balcony slider glass, runner channel and frame
- Skirtings, door tops, frames, handles, hinges
- Recessed downlighters and the dust ring around each rim
- Switches, sockets, thermostat, and the intercom handset, which is covered in finger oil and never gets touched
- Behind and under everything freestanding
- Radiators and the strip of floor behind them
- Carpets vacuumed in two directions with marks spot-treated; a full shampoo is a separate line if you want it
- Blinds slat by slat
Then a last walk with a torch, because low light finds what daylight hides, and photographs of every room before we lock up.
What it costs, and the sum most people run backwards
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio or small apartment | 3-4 hours, 1 cleaner | From £176 |
| 1-bed flat, Maritime or Island | 5-7 hours, 2 cleaners | From £227 |
| 2-bed apartment or live-work unit | 7-9 hours, 2 cleaners | From £263 |
| 3-bed townhouse, St Mary’s Island | Full day, 2-3 cleaners | From £359 |
| 4-bed townhouse or larger waterfront house | Full day, 3 cleaners | From £445 |
| Carpet shampoo on the same visit | Add 1-2 hours | £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, £94 for two bedrooms and a living room |
| Oven, if that is all the agent flagged | 1.5-2 hours | £97 single, £130 double, £163 range |
| Part-job or something unusual | By the hour | £30 per cleaner |
Those are full prices with kit, products and travel in them. Upper floors cost nothing extra, with or without a lift.
They assume a flat in ordinary lived-in shape. These cost more, and we say so on the call rather than on the invoice:
- a pet household
- a smoker
- three years without a deep clean
Now run it the way the deposit makes you. A two-bed on the Island carrying a deposit north of £1,300 against a £263 clean is plain arithmetic, and yet almost everybody runs it the other way round:
- they try it themselves on a Sunday;
- they fail the check-out and lose a chunk of the money;
- only then do they price the clean.
The first round is always the cheap one to win. If a job does not pass first time, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee brings us back for nothing, so long as you tell us inside the window and nobody has moved in.
Over the years that work has helped tenants keep £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents who send us the jobs they would rather not argue about.
Four different jobs get muddled on the phone, so it is worth naming them.
- End of tenancy clean
- The hand-back. Empty flat, checklist, judged against the check-in report, with the 48-hour guarantee on it. Fixed price by property size.
- Deep clean
- A reset for a home you are staying in. No inventory, no benchmark, no guarantee needed, because nobody is marking it. From £206 for two cleaners and at least three hours, with the kit included.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing upkeep on a rota, the same cleaner kept on the home, from £23 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly.
- One-off team clean
- A different thing again: a team in for a day on a place that needs it, from £206, which is two cleaners for at least three hours with the kit included. Not the retainer.
Booking it around the lift, the barrier and the front desk
Move-out day on the Maritime is a logistics problem more than a cleaning one, and the bits that go wrong are always the same bits.
- Ring 0333 555 2076. Postcode, bedrooms, hand-back date, and anything you already know is bad. Three minutes and you have a fixed number.
- Tell us the access. Which block, whether there is a barrier, whether the lift needs booking with the block manager, whether it is a front desk or a key safe or the agent holding keys. This is the single biggest cause of a wasted morning here and it takes ten seconds to sort in advance.
- Empty the flat first. Furniture out, rubbish gone. We do removals too if you would rather the move and the clean sat on one booking, which helps when the loading bay is shared and a van cannot just idle outside.
- Photos and an itemised invoice land by email the same day. That is your evidence pack.
- Check-out happens. Anything cleaning-related flagged inside 48 hours, we come back free.
Two more things, one of them an honest grumble:
- Parking
- The estate has its own arrangements and they are not the same street to street, so tell us what your block does rather than assuming we can just pull up.
- End of the month
- If you are leaving then, book early. Everyone goes on the same three days and always has.
Questions we get asked
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost on Chatham Maritime?
Studio £176, one-bed £227, two-bed £263, three-bed £359, four-bed £445. Odd jobs and part-cleans run at £30 per hour per cleaner. Carpet shampoo and the bigger ovens are priced on top, and we tell you the figure on the phone rather than after the job.
Do you cover St Mary’s Island as well as the rest of the peninsula?
Yes. The Island is a large part of our Maritime book, along with the blocks on the south side of the water and the flats around the Historic Dockyard. We know the lift access, the visitor parking and the way the estate team works, so none of that slows the day down.
Is my flat inside the Article 4 area?
Almost certainly not. Medway’s Article 4 direction took effect on 22 January 2026 and names seven wards: Chatham Central and Brompton, Fort Pitt, Gillingham North, Gillingham South, Luton, Strood North and Frindsbury, and Watling. St Mary’s Island is not one of them, and the proposed licensing schemes target those same wards.
What is the rentcharge and does it affect my move-out?
It is an annual charge every home on St Mary’s Island carries, collected by the Chatham Maritime Trust, and it funds estate upkeep like the parkland and HMS Chatham Bridge. For 2026-27 it is a fixed £1 plus £117.80 per bedroom, RPI-linked, so a two-bed house comes to £236.61. If you rent a flat you almost certainly never see it: the block freeholder pays and recovers it through the service charge. It is not a cleaning matter and it is not your bill.
Did the Renters’ Rights Act change what I have to clean?
No. The Act went live on 1 May 2026, Section 21 is abolished, and existing assured shorthold tenancies converted to periodic ones. The cleaning side of a move-out is exactly what it was. What changed is timing: notice can land at any point in the year now, so hand-backs are less predictable and the good slots go earlier.
How long does the clean take?
A one-bed flat is usually five to seven hours with two cleaners. A two-bed runs closer to a full day. A three or four-bed townhouse on the Island is a full day with three of us. We work to the checklist rather than the clock, so if a room needs another hour it gets another hour.
Can you get the integrated appliances properly clean?
Yes, and this is most of the job here. The extractor panel comes off and the baffle filter goes in to soak. The dishwasher filter comes out. The fridge and freezer seals get scrubbed rather than wiped. A weekly cleaner does not usually pull any of that apart, which is exactly why it is the first thing flagged on a hand-back.
Do you guarantee I get my deposit back?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Paint, wear and tear, the landlord’s furniture and appliance damage are all lines we never touch. What we guarantee is the cleaning: if the clerk or agent flags a cleaning issue within 48 hours of our visit, we come back and fix it for nothing.
Do I need to be there when you clean?
No. Most people leave a key with the agent or the front desk. Tell us the arrangement at booking. We send a written report and a set of photos by email when we finish, and that photo set is what you want in your file if the check-out goes sideways.
Is this a first let? Does that change anything?
It can. A flat handed over new and let for the first time was signed off against a builder’s finish, and that is a high bar. Dust in the runner channels, plaster haze on glass, protective film residue on appliances: all of that gets read as your mess. We clean to the check-in photos when you send them over.
Are you insured, and who are you?
Monster Cleaning Ltd, trading since 2014. Public liability cover is in place and the certificate goes out on request. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents.
How much notice do you need?
Two to three days is usually enough here. Month-end is the pinch point, so if your hand-back is on the 30th or the 31st, give us a week. If it is tomorrow, ring anyway.
Get a price
Booking takes three steps
- Your postcode and the property. The form gives the price.
- A date that suits you. Seven days a week.
- We confirm it with you by phone or WhatsApp.
0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
Call 0333 555 2076. Postcode, size, hand-back date, and we price it on the call. Out of hours, email office@monstercleaning.com and someone rings you back first thing.
- A couple of photos of the kitchen and the shower screen sharpen the quote more than any description does.
- If your check-out is on the Island next week, we can almost certainly fit you in.
- If it is tomorrow, ring anyway.
Monster Cleaning Ltd, cleaning Kent and London since 2014. If a deposit case does end up in front of a scheme adjudicator, our invoice and photo report are admissible evidence, and Shelter’s guidance on tenancy deposits walks you through the steps.