Coldharbour end of tenancy cleaning, sorted

The clerk who checks a flat off Coldharbour Lane heads for the bathroom silicone before the kettle has even boiled, because in this bit of Brixton the shower bead going black is the deduction they can bank. We have cleaned this corner of SW9 since 2014, from the slab blocks on the Loughborough Estate off Barrington Road to the split terraces above Electric Avenue. End of tenancy work here runs at the same rate we quote across south London, £30 per hour per cleaner, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee tied to the check-out report. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the SW9 8 and SW9 6 streets around central Brixton, Coldharbour Lane, Electric Avenue and the Loughborough Estate, with the SE5 5 fringe where the roads run towards Camberwell. This page sits inside the Lambeth directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Lambeth.

The report that quietly decides your deposit

Start with the mechanism, because almost nobody does and it is the whole game. When you moved into your flat, an inventory clerk walked it and wrote a report describing every surface, usually photographed, usually with “clean” or “as new” against the kitchen and bathroom because the place had just had a professional turnaround clean. At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares line by line. Anything worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, comes off your deposit. You are marked against a professional standard, which is why a mop and a spare Sunday rarely gets a Brixton flat over the line.

The money is not abstract. On the DIY check-outs we get called in to rescue around SW9, the deductions land in a pattern: sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds on the oven, eighty upward on grout and scale, more again for the gaps behind the fridge and washing machine, and a carpet clean written straight into a lot of the private tenancies here. Put that against a deposit of five weeks’ rent and the sum makes itself. The trouble is that central Brixton lets turn over fast, so a clerk on the Coldharbour Lane round is doing several of these a week and is paid to find fault, not to wave you through. You turn up with evidence rather than optimism.

The licence on your landlord’s wall, and what it changed

Since 1 September 2025 most private lets in central Brixton need a selective licence. Lambeth’s second selective scheme runs for five years, to 2025-2030, and covers nineteen wards, only Vauxhall and Waterloo and South Bank sit outside it. The old Coldharbour ward was split in the 2022 boundary review across Brixton North, Brixton Windrush, and Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction, and all three of those are inside the scheme, so wherever your flat sits in SW9 the licensing position is the same. Every home let to a single household or to two unrelated sharers has to be licensed. You can check an address on the Lambeth selective licensing page.

The licence costs £923 a property, paid in two instalments, with £50 off for an EPC of C or better and £75 off for accredited landlords. None of that comes out of your pocket as a tenant. It matters at hand-back for a different reason: a licensed property is inspected against fixed standards on the kitchen, the bathroom and the shared parts, so the bar a clerk holds your clean to is now set in writing rather than left to the agent’s mood on the day.

A second scheme sits alongside it. Lambeth has run borough-wide additional licensing for houses in multiple occupation since 9 December 2021, so a shared flat with three or four people from different households needs an HMO licence, and a house of five or more falls under mandatory HMO licensing. Plenty of the split terraces above Coldharbour Lane are let room by room, and the standard on a licensed HMO is tighter on the shared kitchen and bathroom than on a single-household flat. The cleaning bar at the end of a shared tenancy is the bar the licence sets, not the one you remember from the day you moved in.

The cleaning bar at the end of a shared tenancy is the bar the licence sets, not the one you remember from the day you moved in.

The other piece of law behind all this is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, in force from 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone, and every assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic one, so a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point in the year. The cleaning side of a move-out did not change at all. Five weeks’ rent stays the deposit cap below £50,000 a year, the landlord still has 30 days to protect it in an approved scheme, and fair wear and tear still applies. What shifted is timing: a high-churn area like Brixton now turns over even less predictably, so book the clean earlier than you used to, because the slot you want will be gone if you wait.

Brixton stock, street by street, and what each one fails on

What ties this corner together is density and age rather than any one building type. Inside a few hundred yards you get a 1950s council estate, a surviving line of Victorian terraces, warehouse conversions near the railway and a layer of newer infill, and each fails an inventory check its own way. A clerk who works the Coldharbour Lane spine every week knows which way before they have their coat off.

The Loughborough Estate is the biggest single piece of housing here and it sets the tone. The London County Council architects designed it under Leslie Martin and built it between 1954 and 1957 on a bomb-damaged site between Brixton and Camberwell, over a thousand homes in a mix of eleven-storey slab blocks around Barrington Road and lower blocks that borrowed from Le Corbusier. It still runs on that original layout, with shared walkways and painted stair cores, and the flats are compact. Three failure points come straight out of the design. The bathroom silicone blackens around the tray because the weak original extractor cannot shift the steam, so the bead has to be scrubbed back line by line rather than wiped. Where a flat still has storage heaters the fins fill with dust in a fixed pattern and the clerk runs a torch down them. And the kitchen extractor hides a grease film you do not see until the cover is off. Hand-backs on the Estate often run through the management office rather than a high-street agent, and the painted balcony slab outside the kitchen window is part of the demise on many blocks, so the grime along it is yours to clear.

The terrace stretch above Coldharbour Lane is a different animal. The 1850s and 1860s houses around Akerman Road, Cowley Road and the Vassall Road border were split into upper and lower flats decades ago, and they fail on what tall ceilings collect. Picture-rail dust is the commonest, because most tenants never own a step-ladder and never reach it. Then the kitchen tile grout, any original cast-iron register grate left in a front room, and the extractor on the back extension where one was fitted. Many of these run as licensed shares, so the shared kitchen and bathroom carry the tighter standard.

The private lets over the shops on Coldharbour Lane and the flats near Brixton station are a third type again, flats above the market parades, warehouse conversions and newer build strung along the railway towards Loughborough Junction. These fail on the integrated cooker hood, the slot-vent extractor housing that has to come out to reach the trap behind it, and the en-suite shower-screen seal, rather than on anything period. Keating Estates at 427 Coldharbour Lane, Marsh and Parsons a few doors down at 400 to 402, and Foxtons on Brixton Road handle a good slice of these, and their clerks lift the extractor cover as routine now the licensing inspectors have started flagging it.

Getting in on moving day is the awkward part. The controlled parking zone runs through the day across most of the SW9 8 streets and the Estate has little kerb of its own, so plenty of hand-backs happen without a van in the road at all, the outgoing tenant having shifted the last of it up Coldharbour Lane on the bus or out on the Victoria line from Brixton. We drop the kit and move the van rather than sit on a single yellow. This is a different job from the ex-council heights of Brixton Hill, the railway-cottage feel of Loughborough Junction, the mansion blocks of Stockwell, and the period wealth up towards Herne Hill and across to Clapham. The Brixton-market and Electric-Avenue corridor, terrace and estate side by side and gentrifying fast, is its own thing.

The water does half the damage in a Brixton bathroom

South London runs on hard water. The supply along the Coldharbour Lane spine sits at roughly 293 parts per million of calcium carbonate, firmly in the very-hard band, and you can check the reading for a postcode on thameswater.co.uk. On a compact Brixton flat that hardness is the quiet cause of half the bathroom failures. Kettles fur within weeks. Shower glass spots after two showers if nobody squeegees it. Taps grow a scale collar at the base, and the waste rim in the basin grows a milky ring you can lift with a thumbnail.

The trick is to descale before you pull the deposit off, not after. We soak the kettle, the shower head and the tap aerators in a mild acid solution overnight, and by morning the scale lifts in a single wipe instead of three passes. Same logic on the screen and the tiles: give the deposit time to let go and you are not scrubbing glass for twenty minutes. Clerks on this round look for the collar at the tap base and the spotting on the screen, because those two tells say a flat was wiped over rather than properly descaled.

The trick is to descale before you pull the deposit off, not after.

The 57 things we work through, room by room

Every hand-back runs the same kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living, throughout order, because the kitchen is where the hours go and the bathroom is where the deposit is won or lost. The full 57-point agent-approved checklist comes with the job, or we walk you through it before we start. Here is the shape of it.

Kitchen

Behind the cooker first, then the oven inside, the door glass split apart so the brown film between the panes comes out, and the grill pan. The hood filter is degreased: a single-pull mesh on an Estate flat, a slot-vent housing on the newer build that has to come out to reach the trap behind it. Hob, trim and splashback, then the tile grout at the scale line. Sink, drain rim and overflow. The tap descaled, aerator and collar included. Cupboards inside and out, with the top-of-cupboard shelf that always gets skipped. Skirtings, then the floor washed and dried, bins emptied and rinsed.

Bathroom

This is the failure point, so it gets the time it needs. Bath, tray and screen descaled. The silicone bead scrubbed back along the tray and the bath rim, and on a long-let flat that alone is a forty-minute job. Tiles and grout. The shower head soaks overnight in a mild acid solution, then runs on the spray cycle to clear the residue. Toilet bowl, rim, hinges, behind the pan and the cistern lid. Basin, tap and overflow. Mirror, extractor grille, floor and skirting. And the trickle-vent on the window, which fills with dust by the second year and is exactly where the clerk shines the torch.

Bedrooms and living rooms

Where a flat has storage heaters the fins are vacuumed and wiped fin by fin with the upholstery brush, because the dust sits in a band and a quick pass leaves the heaviest of it behind. Wardrobe inside and out, top shelf, runner tracks. Window frames, sills and trickle-vents. Carpet vacuumed twice in opposite directions to lift the pile. Picture-rail dust on the Akerman Road and Cowley Road conversions, the line most tenants never reach. Curtain pole and brackets dusted, skirtings done.

Throughout

Every door top, handle, light switch and socket faceplate. Light fittings dusted. The shared-stair side of the front door wiped, because that is the first thing a clerk sees on the walk-up. The smoke-alarm housing dusted, since the white plastic greys and gets flagged. Internal stairs where a flat has them, the letterbox brush, and inside the airing cupboard the boiler housing and any exposed lagging. The checklist is built for the hand-back and nothing else. Book a deep clean or a regular clean instead and we drop the inventory-fail items and pick up the lived-in ones, because a flat you are staying in does not need its trickle-vents photographed.

Two jobs often need their own pass. A professional carpet clean is written into a fair few of the private tenancies here, which is what the carpet cleaning add-on covers on the same visit. And if the oven is the worst thing in the flat, standalone oven cleaning handles it on its own.

It helps to know the words the report is written in, because those words decide the deposit.

End of tenancy clean

The hand-back clean, built to the check-in inventory standard and designed for sign-off, with the flat empty and the 48-hour guarantee on it at £30 an hour per cleaner.

Deep clean

The same depth of work for someone who is staying, lived-in, with no formal standard to hit. We go harder on the surfaces you use and skip the inventory-fail checks a clerk would make. From £30 an hour.

Regular domestic clean

Ongoing upkeep on a home you live in, a domestic clean from £22 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly, not aimed at any report.

Fair wear and tear

The line between honest ageing, which a landlord cannot charge for, and dirt or damage, which they can. Shelter sets out where the line falls and how to dispute a deduction.

What it costs here, and the sum nobody runs in time

Brixton is priced on our standard tier, the same figures we quote across south London, and it is not a premium neighbourhood, so ignore anyone quoting inflated central-London rates for SW9. A studio starts at £156 and a one-bed at £207, which is where most Estate flats land. A two-bed is £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. Carpet shampoo is £36 a bedroom and £43 a living room, or £115 for the whole carpeted area of a two-bed, and a single-room one-bed takes the £36 add-on rather than the whole-flat figure. Oven add-ons are £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range. If you only want a top-up rather than a full hand-back, it is £30 an hour per cleaner. Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape; a heavy pet or smoker’s flat costs more, and we say so on the phone, not on the invoice.

The timings are honest because the flats are a known quantity. Two cleaners on an Estate one-bed, full hand-back with the silicone and the heater fins, run about five and a half hours. A studio is three to four. A two-bed conversion on Akerman Road or Cowley Road runs nearer six and a half, because of the picture-rail dust and the back-extension extractor. A one-bed at £207 to protect a deposit of five weeks’ rent is not really a decision, and most people only work that out after they have already lost a round of it.

Every Brixton booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If a clerk flags a line item that was on our checklist, we come back inside 48 hours and re-clean it at no charge, provided you tell us inside the window and nobody has moved in. Our 97% first-time pass rate across our Greater London work means the call-back is rare, but it is there in writing. There is a reason agents on this stretch know us: we are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and over the years that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions.

Booking is plain. You phone with the postcode, the property type, the move-out date and any add-on, and we quote on the call from the fixed tier, no survey visit in nearly every case. We hold the slot without a deposit, so you pay on the day once the work is signed off. For a slab-block one-bed we can usually fit you in inside 48 hours; for a two-bed terrace with carpets we like three to five days’ notice, so the team and a carpet machine come on the same van. Nearby ground we also cover includes Brixton, Brixton Hill, Loughborough Junction, Stockwell and Herne Hill, with the rest of the borough on the Lambeth directory linked at the top of this page.

Questions we get asked

Do you cover the whole of central Brixton and the old Coldharbour ward?

Yes. We work the SW9 8 and SW9 6 streets around central Brixton and the SE5 5 fringe towards Camberwell, including the Loughborough Estate, Coldharbour Lane, Electric Avenue, Akerman Road, Cowley Road, Vassall Road, Barrington Road and the flats around Brixton station. The 2022 boundary review split the old Coldharbour ward across Brixton North, Brixton Windrush, and Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction, and we cover all three.

What does end of tenancy cleaning cost on the Loughborough Estate?

Studio £156, one-bed £207, two-bed £243, three-bed £339 on the fixed tier. Most Estate flats are studios and one-beds, so the bulk of jobs land at £156 or £207. Add £77 for a single oven if the original cooker is still in, and carpet shampoo on a one-bed is £36 a bedroom, since most slab-block one-beds have only one carpeted room. Brixton is not a premium area, so these are the same figures we quote across south London.

How long does a Brixton flat take?

Two cleaners on a one-bed, full hand-back including the bathroom silicone and, where fitted, the storage-heater fins, run about five and a half hours. Studios run three to four. Two-bed conversions on Akerman Road or Cowley Road run nearer six and a half, because of the picture-rail dust and the back-extension extractor.

Do I need a licence, or does my landlord?

Your landlord does. Selective and HMO licensing both fall on the landlord or the letting agent, not on you and not on the cleaner. What it means for you at hand-back is that the flat is held to a fixed inspection standard on kitchen and bathroom hygiene, and our 57-point checklist is written to that standard.

Will you do the trickle-vents and the storage-heater fins?

Yes, both. On the flats that have storage heaters the fins are an inspection point because the dust builds visibly, so we vacuum each fin with the upholstery brush head and then wipe it with a damp cloth. The window trickle-vents get the same treatment.

Do you do oven cleaning at the same time?

Yes. A single oven add-on is £77, a double is £110 and a 90cm range is £114. We use a low-fume process that strips the door glass between the panes and the grill pan back to a clean finish.

What if the inventory clerk fails the clean?

The 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers it. If the clerk’s report flags a line item that was on our checklist, we come back inside 48 hours and re-clean that item at no charge. The 97% first-time pass rate across our Greater London work means the call-back is rare, but it is there in writing.

Do you take card payment on the day?

Card and bank transfer are both fine. We do not take a deposit at booking. You pay on the day, after the flat is signed off.

How much notice do you need on a Brixton booking?

For a slab-block one-bed we can usually fit you in inside 48 hours. For a two-bed Akerman Road conversion, or anything where carpets are a major add-on, three to five days is more comfortable, because we like to send a two-cleaner team and a carpet machine on the same van.

Do you cover the terrace conversions above Coldharbour Lane?

Yes. Akerman Road, Cowley Road and Vassall Road are on our standard route. The 1850s and 1860s terrace stretch is a different job from the 1950s slab blocks, with more picture-rail dust, the odd cast-iron register grate, and a back-extension extractor the newer build near the railway does not have.

I rent a room in a shared house, does that change the clean?

It can. A shared house let to three or more people from different households is a licensed HMO in Lambeth, and the standard on the shared kitchen and bathroom is tighter than on a single-household flat. If you are only responsible for your own room we quote on the room plus a share of the communal areas; if the whole house is changing hands we treat it as a full hand-back across every shared space.

Where can I check my deposit is properly protected?

Through the three government-approved schemes: the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, mydeposits and DPS. If your landlord has not protected it within 30 days you can claim one to three times the deposit through the County Court, and Shelter walks through the steps.

Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change the clean?

No. From 1 May 2026 Section 21 evictions are gone and assured shorthold tenancies have converted to periodic ones, so notice can come at any point. The cleaning obligations at hand-back are unchanged. The real effect in Brixton is more frequent and less predictable move-outs, so book as early as you can.

Book the Brixton clean

Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Tell us the postcode, the property type and the move-out date, and we will quote on the call.