Chatham check-out clerks photograph the shower screen edge-on against the window, because chalk film shows white in raking light and the water here lays a fresh coat down within a fortnight of the last clean. That is the test an end of tenancy clean in this town has to survive.
We are Monster Cleaning, working Chatham since 2014 at a fixed price by bedroom count, fixed quotes on packaged jobs, every visit backed by a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 and we will price the job in a few minutes.
Last updated July 2026. We cover ME4 and ME5 in full: the town centre and New Road, Luton, Davis Estate, Princes Park, Walderslade, Hempstead and the dockside blocks at Chatham Waters. This page sits inside the county directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Kent.
What a Medway inventory clerk is paid to find
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
When you moved in, somebody walked the property and wrote a report describing every surface, usually with photos, usually with the words “professionally cleaned” somewhere near the top. That document is the exam paper.
- At check-out a clerk walks the same rooms with the report open.
- They mark anything that has slipped below the check-in entry, beyond fair wear and tear.
- Each of those marks is chargeable against your deposit.
You are not being judged against a reasonable Saturday of scrubbing. You are being judged against the professional clean that happened before your boxes arrived, which is why a mop and good intentions so often come up short.
The agents along Railway Street and the High Street brief these walks, and the clerks who work Medway know the local stock well enough to go straight to the weak points:
- the oven’s inner glass
- the shower screen
- the airing cupboard on an older semi
- the letter-box flap on a converted flat
If a deduction lands
If a deduction does land and you think it is wrong, the deposit schemes run free adjudication. Tenancy Deposit Scheme is the one we see most on Medway lets, and Shelter’s deposit guidance walks through the steps.
Adjudicators decide on evidence. A dated, timestamped photo set from a professional clean wins those arguments more reliably than any letter, which is why every Chatham job leaves with one.
The five-week sum behind every Chatham deposit
The deposit on a Chatham let follows Medway rents, and those are still climbing.
- Average Medway rent
- £1,238 a month in May 2026, up 3.3% on the year, with a one-bed averaging £900 (ONS private rent figures, June 2026 release).
- The legal cap
- The law caps a deposit at five weeks’ rent for tenancies under £50,000 a year.
- The typical deposit
- Five weeks of the Medway average works out a shade over £1,400.
That is the number sitting on the table when the clerk starts the walk.
The deposit grew with the rent, and the appetite to hold it back grew with both.
Chatham’s renter population skews toward London commuters, because the high-speed service out of Chatham station reaches St Pancras in around three quarters of an hour and the same money rents twice the house here that it rents in zone 3. Agents know exactly what those deposits are worth.
A landlord who watched the rent climb £100 in two years has also watched the deposit climb £500, and a £500 difference changes how hard people look at an oven.
The tenants who lose that fight are almost never the messy ones. They are the ones who cleaned hard with the wrong products and no camera.
The hill decides the house: Chatham street by street
The hill decides everything here. Chatham starts at the river and climbs, and the housing changes as it goes.
The bottom: the Pentagon and the High Street
At the bottom sit the Pentagon, the High Street and the flats above the shops along Military Road, small one and two-beds with long histories and short tenancies.
The slope: New Road and the terraces
Up the slope, the Victorian terraces take over: New Road running along the contour with its tall bay-fronted rows, and the tighter streets off it, Ordnance Street, Rochester Street, the roads around Fort Pitt.
High ceilings, deep skirtings, alcoves, the odd dado rail. Clerks working these terraces walk the hallway with a torch because skirting tops and the underside of the front bay are where a hurried clean shows first.
Luton, Davis Estate and ME5
- Luton
- Down the valley on the Gillingham side, the HMO belt. The Luton Road corridor mixes ex-council walk-ups with terraces carved into house-shares, and on those jobs the clerk checks the inside of your front door, the letter-box flap and the first metre of hallway, because that is what the tenancy makes yours.
- Davis Estate
- Further up, 1930s and post-war bay semis along Magpie Hall Road and Wayfield Road, where the airing cupboard around the hot-water cylinder collects a watermark ring that inventory clerks in this postcode look for by habit.
- Princes Park
- Then ME5 spreads south through Princes Park’s 1950s and 60s semis.
- Walderslade
- Walderslade’s interwar bungalows and 1970s estate streets.
- Hempstead
- Hempstead’s 1980s and 90s family houses, where the integral garage utility fails more check-outs than any room in the house.
Chatham Waters and the marina side
Down at the basin, Chatham Waters is the newest stock in town, glazed apartment blocks from 2018 onward with integrated appliances, induction hobs and engineered board underfoot. Those floors want the right product rather than a wet mop, which is what our hard floor cleaning crews carry.
The marina side of the water, St Mary’s Island and the streets around the Historic Dockyard, runs on different stock and has its own pages:
- Chatham Maritime for the island and basin
- Chatham Central and Brompton for the dockyard fringe and the Lines
This page is the whole town; those two are the close-ups.
Licensing is tightening around seven Medway wards
Two council decisions are reshaping the rental map, and both fall hardest on Chatham postcodes.
- Article 4 Direction
- In December 2025 Medway approved an Article 4 Direction covering seven wards, four of them local: Luton, Watling, Fort Pitt, and Chatham Central and Brompton, alongside both Gillingham wards and Strood North and Frindsbury. Since it took effect in January 2026, converting a family house into a small house-share in those wards needs full planning permission rather than the old automatic right.
- Additional and selective licensing
- A consultation closed on 31 May 2026, with the decision due at Cabinet over the summer. If it goes through as proposed, from November 2026 every private rental in those same seven wards will need a council licence, ordinary single-household lets included.
None of this changes what clean is expected at handover. What it changes is scrutiny. A licensed landlord gets inspected, keeps files, and treats the check-out report as part of the paperwork trail, so shared areas get walked properly:
- stairs
- communal kitchen
- shared bathrooms
- the bin store
If you are leaving a room in a share off Luton Road, the licence holder has standing to deduct for those areas. We price HMO common parts as ordinary rooms, no premium, and we photograph them the same way we photograph everything else.
What 1 May 2026 did and did not change
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 commenced on 1 May 2026.
- Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone.
- Every assured shorthold tenancy converted to a periodic one, so a Chatham tenant can now give two months’ notice at any point in the year.
- The cleaning obligations did not move an inch: the check-in benchmark still rules, the deposit cap still applies, and the clerk still walks the rooms the same way.
The real effect is timing. Move-outs now land all through the month instead of piling onto quarter days, which has made short-notice bookings easier and month-end only slightly less brutal.
Chalk water, and the film that fails bathrooms
Chatham drinks off the North Downs chalk. Southern Water supplies ME4 and ME5, and the hardness lands around 250 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, which is hard by every classification in use.
In practice that means every chrome surface carries a chalky bloom within a couple of weeks of being polished:
- the shower head
- the screen
- the tap bases
- the kettle in the kitchen
A clerk does not need a meter to find it. They run a thumbnail down the tap and hold the screen edge-on to the light.
Chalk film does not care how hard you scrubbed. It cares what you scrubbed with.
Supermarket kitchen spray does nothing to set limescale, which is why so many honest DIY check-outs still fail the bathroom. Our crews use a measured descaling soak with proper dwell time, then a rinse and a dry buff, and the difference is visible from the doorway.
The washing machine gets the same logic: the detergent drawer comes out and the door seal gets scrubbed, because Medway water leaves a grey crust in both places that reads as neglect on a report even when it is only chemistry.
Where limescale has etched into old chrome we photograph it before we start, so wear that predates you stays off your bill.
Where the 57 points earn their keep in Chatham
Every job runs against our 57-point agent-approved checklist, the same list the letting agents see. The full sheet comes with the booking confirmation. What follows is where it works hardest in this town’s stock.
The kitchen, starting with the oven
The oven, booked as an add-on from £31, is cleaned rather than wiped: racks out and soaked, door split where it can be so the brown film between the glass panes comes out, interior, fan and seals all done.
That glass is the single most-failed line on Medway check-outs, and if it is the only thing your agent flagged, standalone oven cleaning covers it without the full package. Then the rest of the room in order:
- Hob and trim, induction bezels in the Chatham Waters blocks, gas rings and spillage wells in the older terraces
- Extractor hood degreased, baffle or mesh filter pulled and soaked
- Every cupboard and drawer inside and out, tops included
- Fridge and freezer washed through once defrosted, seals scrubbed; appliances pulled forward so the gaps behind get done
- Sink, taps and plug strainer descaled, splashback polished, floor mopped last and left dry
Bathrooms
Descaling first, for the reasons above, then the slower work.
- The WC gets done fully: rim, hinges, base, behind the pedestal and the floor under the cistern.
- Grout is scrubbed where shower water hits it and photographed first where it is honestly past saving, so the clerk cannot bill you for history.
- Mirrors, cabinet, shaver socket, the extractor grille with its brown felt of dust, the towel rail and the radiator behind it.
- Then the floor, by hand into the corners.
Bedrooms, living rooms, hallways and the rest
- Wardrobes and drawers inside and out
- Skirting boards, and the picture rails and dado where the terraces have them
- Window frames, sills and locks on the inside, with the older sashes on the hill streets taken slowly
- Carpets vacuumed in two directions and spot-treated
- Internal doors both sides, including the top edge nobody dusts
- Switches and sockets, light fittings, behind whatever furniture stays
Machine shampooing is the carpet cleaning add-on, worth booking where a tenancy agreement demands a receipt.
On Davis Estate semis the under-stair cupboard and the airing cupboard get their own checklist lines because the local clerks give them their own torch time. The visit ends with a walk-through in low light, camera out, every room.
What it costs, and what it is protecting
These are full fixed prices, kit and products included, no surprise on the invoice.
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio (above the High Street, Pentagon end) | 3–4 hours, 2 cleaners | £176 |
| 1-bed flat (New Road terraces, Luton corridor) | 4–5 hours, 2 cleaners | £227 |
| 2-bed flat or terrace (Chatham Waters, The Brook) | 5–6 hours, 2 cleaners | £263 |
| 3-bed semi (Davis Estate, Princes Park, Walderslade) | 6–8 hours, 3 cleaners | £359 |
| 4-bed house (Hempstead, Lordswood fringe) | 8–9 hours, 3 cleaners | £445 |
| Carpet shampoo add-on | Same visit | £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room |
| Oven booked standalone | 1.5–2 hours | £97 single, £130 double |
- Carpets in a two-bed
- The whole carpeted area shampoos for £94.
- Range cooker
- A 90cm range cooker is £62.
- Odd-shaped jobs
- A single room in a share or a partial clean someone else abandoned run by the hour at £30 per cleaner.
- Mid-tenancy reset
- That is a deep clean, from £206, which covers two cleaners for at least three hours and the kit.
A heavy job gets named as heavy on the phone, not after.
Run the sum the deposit forces. A £263 two-bed clean protecting £1,400 is not a hard decision, and the guarantee is the part that makes it safe: any cleaning line flagged within 48 hours gets re-done free.
We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and the work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. Those numbers are the whole pitch. The rest of this page is just the local detail behind them.
Four jobs get mixed up on the phone, so here is the sorting.
- End of tenancy clean
- Built to pass the check-out against the check-in report, property empty, fixed package price, 48-hour guarantee attached. The subject of this page.
- Deep clean
- A deep clean is the same intensity pointed at a home you are keeping. Lived-in, no inventory framing, priced by the hour.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing weekly or fortnightly upkeep with the same cleaner, from £23 an hour; see domestic cleaning.
- One-off team clean
- A standalone blitz by a team, from £206 for two cleaners and at least three hours, with the kit included. Useful before a landlord inspection mid-tenancy.
Booking it: keys, hills and the one-way loop
Booking takes one call or email, and the access plan gets settled on the same call.
- Ring 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com with the postcode, the bedroom count and the move-out date. The quote is fixed on the call.
- Access gets sorted then too. The one-way loop around the town centre and the permit streets on the hill mean the van needs a plan; terrace streets off New Road are the tightest, and Chatham Waters wants a lift booking through the building manager.
- You get written confirmation with the start time and the team lead’s name.
- Two to four cleaners arrive with everything, work the 57-point list, and photograph each room on completion.
- The clerk walks the property. Anything flagged inside 48 hours brings us back free. Anything flagged outside the cleaning scope, a paint scuff, a sun-faded curtain, is an inventory dispute rather than a cleaning one, and our photo set backs you up in it.
Moving as well as cleaning? Our removals crews coordinate with the cleaning team so the van and the mops do not queue for the same kerb.
And if your next address is one town over, the same teams cover Rochester and Gillingham, with the rest of the county on the Kent hub linked at the top of this page.
Questions we get asked
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in Chatham?
A studio is £176, a one-bed £227, a two-bed £263, a three-bed £359 and a four-bed £445. Those are fixed package prices with the 57-point checklist and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee included. Part jobs and single rooms run at £30 per hour per cleaner.
How long does the clean take?
A two-bed flat usually takes two cleaners five to six hours. A three-bed Davis Estate or Walderslade semi runs closer to seven or eight with a third pair of hands on the carpets. Studios and single rooms are a morning.
Do you clean single rooms in shared houses?
Yes, all the time, mostly along the Luton Road corridor and around The Brook. A room plus your share of the kitchen and bathrooms normally takes two cleaners three to four hours at £30 per hour each. The licence holder can deduct for shared-area condition, so we photograph those areas as standard.
Will Medway’s new licensing scheme change what I have to clean?
No. The selective licensing scheme planned for November 2026 changes the paperwork a landlord needs, not the standard a tenant hands back. Check-outs in the seven affected wards are already being walked more carefully though, because a licensed landlord expects inspections.
What does Chatham’s hard water do to a bathroom?
It lays a chalk film on shower screens, tap bases and kettle elements within a couple of weeks. The supply here comes off the North Downs chalk at roughly 250 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, firmly in the hard band. We shift it with a measured descaling soak and a polish, never a supermarket spray.
Do you guarantee my deposit back?
We guarantee the cleaning, not the deposit, because the clerk also walks paint, wear and the landlord’s furniture. If any cleaning line is flagged within 48 hours of our visit we return free.
Do I need to be there while you clean?
No. Most Chatham clients leave a key with the letting agent or a key safe code with our office. We send photos and a written summary when we finish, which is the evidence pack for the deposit file.
Do you cover Walderslade, Hempstead and Princes Park?
Yes, all of ME5. Interwar bungalows on Walderslade Road, the 1970s estate streets above them, Hempstead’s 1980s and 1990s family houses and the semis around Princes Park are all regular bookings.
What about St Mary’s Island and the Historic Dockyard side?
Covered, and busy. Those addresses have their own pages because the stock is different, mostly 1990s-onward marina housing and dockside blocks. Same teams, same prices, same guarantee.
Is carpet cleaning included in the price?
Vacuuming is. Machine shampooing is an add-on: £29 per bedroom, £36 for a living room, £94 for two bedrooms and a living room. If your tenancy agreement requires professional carpet cleaning with a receipt, book the add-on and it goes on the invoice.
What happens if the agent flags something after you have cleaned?
Tell us within 48 hours and we come back at no charge. That is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee, and we have used it on roughly three jobs in every hundred since 2014.
How much notice do you need?
Two or three working days is comfortable. Month-end fills first, and although tenancies went periodic in May 2026 and move-out dates have spread, the last Friday of the month is still the crunch. Same-day is occasionally possible if a team is finishing in Rochester or Gillingham.
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 with the postcode, the size and the date. Pricing takes a few minutes.
- Out of hours, email office@monstercleaning.com and the office rings you back in the morning.
- A couple of phone photos of the kitchen and bathroom sharpen the quote, especially on the bigger Walderslade and Hempstead houses.
Booked, cleaned, photographed, guaranteed for 48 hours. That is the whole process.