The first thing a clerk does in an East Dulwich conversion is run a thumbnail down the bathroom tap and look at the shower glass edge-on against the window, because the hard Thames water leaves a scale film here that a quick wipe never shifts, and that one dull line quietly clips deposits all over SE22 0. So end of tenancy cleaning in Dulwich Hill has to be built for the person writing the check-out report, not for a glance round the door: checklist-led, deposit-focused, £30 per hour per cleaner on a part job, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the clerk’s own notes. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price in about three minutes.
Last updated June 2026. We cover the Dulwich Hill ward across SE22 0 and SE22 8 in full: the terraces off Lordship Lane and Melbourne Grove, the grid around North Cross Road and Goose Green, Crystal Palace Road and Barry Road, and the estates off Dog Kennel Hill. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Southwark.
What the check-out clerk marks first in East Dulwich
Start with the mechanism, because almost nobody does, and it decides the whole thing. When you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote a report describing every surface, usually with photos, often with the word “clean” against the kitchen and bathroom. Those words were true that day, because the place had just been done professionally. At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares it line by line. Anything materially worse than the move-in entry, beyond fair wear and tear, is chargeable against the deposit. You are being marked against a professional clean, which is exactly why a mop and a free Saturday rarely gets you there.
The money is not abstract. On the SE22 hand-backs we get called in to rescue, the deductions land in a familiar order: scale on the taps and showerhead, grout in the kitchen and bathroom, the gaps behind the cooker and fridge, carpets in a bedroom that has had a bed on it for years, and the picture rail and cornice line a short stick never reaches. Put a couple of those against a five-week deposit on a flat renting near £1,700 and the sum makes itself. Most tenants only run that sum after they have tried, failed the check-out, and lost the first round.
The first round is the cheap one to win.
Why is the clerk so thorough here? Because the deposit is large and the agent is on the hook for protecting it, so the walk is genuinely adversarial and the report goes straight to the deposit scheme. That is not unfair. It just means you turn up with evidence, not optimism, which means cleaning to the report and photographing the result.
Dulwich Hill, East Dulwich and which one your postcode is
A quick word on the name, because it confuses people. Dulwich Hill is the Southwark council ward that covers the heart of East Dulwich, drawn up in the 2018 boundary review out of parts of the old East Dulwich, College and Peckham Rye wards. It elects two councillors and runs to roughly Lordship Lane, Goose Green and the streets either side. It is not a separate village, there is no “Dulwich Hill” high street, and it is not Dulwich Village, which sits west in SE21 around the old College and the picture gallery, nor Dulwich Wood on the wooded slope further south. If your postcode opens SE22, you are in East Dulwich and we are quoting East Dulwich stock, whatever the ward map calls it.
That matters for a clean, because the housing here has a clear character and it is not the grander stock a mile west. East Dulwich is mostly tight Victorian and Edwardian terraces in yellow London stock brick, built between the 1880s and the 1910s on the farmland the old maps mark as Friern. Streets radiate off Lordship Lane and around Goose Green, a fair slice sits inside or against a conservation area, and Southwark planning leans hard on keeping the original frontages, sash windows and railings. So a clerk here expects period detail in good order: a clean picture rail, an intact cornice, window boxes dusted top and bottom, and original hall tile wiped rather than mopped to a smear.
There is no Dulwich Hill high street. If your postcode opens SE22, you are in East Dulwich.
What the chalk does to an SE22 bathroom
This is the single thing that loses more East Dulwich deposits than anything except a neglected oven. Thames Water draws off the chalk and gravel of the Thames valley, and the supply here runs hard, around 290 to 310 parts per million of calcium carbonate, which is hard to very hard on the usual scale. Leave a bathroom tidy but not properly descaled and it fails the walk on three near-certain items: the inside of the kettle, the rim of the basin waste, and the showerhead.
The clerk knows where to look. A thumbnail down the tap, the shower screen held edge-on to the light, the showerhead pulled in close. Scale set into chrome is not a quick job. We run a soft-acid stage across the chrome, take the showerhead off the wall to soak it where it is a hand-shower or give a fixed rainfall head a long soak in place, and finish with a soft-cloth buff. On an older terrace bathroom the radiator valves and any vintage taps get the same, gentler where the plating is thin so we do not strip it. The aim is to leave something that photographs clean from any angle, because a scale rim is easy to argue with a clerk when you have done the work, and easy to lose when you have not.
Grout is the partner problem. Kitchen and bathroom grout is the line between a pass and a deduction here more often than carpets are. We scrub it rather than wipe it, and where it has gone past saving in a long tenancy we photograph it before we start, so a clerk cannot bill you for staining that was already there at move-in. That dated photo settles more disputes than any argument does.
The stock changes street by street, not by the hill
There is no slope that sorts the housing here. It changes street by street, and the three kinds we meet most need three different methods.
The yellow-brick terraces off Lordship Lane
The bulk of the work. Two and three-bed terraces and conversions on Melbourne Grove, Crystal Palace Road, the North Cross Road grid and around Goose Green, mostly 1880s to 1910s, yellow stock brick, timber sash windows, tiled front paths and original cornicing inside. The clerk goes for the picture rail above six feet first, then the cornice plasterwork in the front bay, then the window boxes where dust collects top and bottom, then the under-stair cupboard floor nobody has touched in two years. We use a soft duster on a pole for the cornice, because it chips under a hard cloth, and we work the sash in stages: dust the upper box, soft-cloth the glass, then the frame, reveal and sill.
The ex-council estates off Dog Kennel Hill
The Dog Kennel Hill Estate is the run of 1930s Neo-Georgian blocks behind the Sainsbury’s, named after old hunts; Dawson’s Heights is the stepped 1960s estate up on Overhill Road, the pair of ziggurats you can see from half of south London. Different problems: solid floors, some original steel windows, a communal stair the clerk does not score but the caretaker notices. Inside, a flat here gets the same 57 points as a terrace, with extra care on window reveals where condensation has marked the paint and on a kitchen often in longer use than a conversion’s.
The modern infill and new conversions
Scattered through SE22 are newer infill flats and recent conversions with engineered floors, integrated appliances and shower enclosures rather than over-bath screens. These read cleaner on paper but the inventory is fussier: the enclosure tracks, the integrated fridge seals, the extractor canopy. We clean to whatever the move-in report named, line by line.
We are on this round most weeks, and the agents we hand back to are the Lordship Lane names: Pedder, Acorn at number 98, KFH a few doors down, Roy Brooks and Winkworth. Tell us who holds the inventory and we prep against their template before we arrive. The same teams cover the streets over the boundary toward Peckham Rye, so a job on the edge of the ward is no trouble.
The 57 points, and where the hours actually go
Every booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of local check-outs and tuned to what SE22 clerks flag. The full list comes with the job. Here is the shape of it, and where the time goes.
The kitchen, where most of the deposit is decided
The oven is stripped, not wiped: racks soaked, the door glass split so the brown film between the panels comes out, interior, fan, element and seals all done. The hob and its controls come apart, the extractor is degreased and the filter soaked or swapped. Every cupboard inside and out, including the awkward deep corners in the older terrace kitchens. Fridge and freezer once you have defrosted them. The cooker, fridge and washing machine are pulled out so the gaps behind and under them are cleaned, then put back. The washing machine drum, drawer and door seal, which is one of the first things a clerk opens. Sink, taps, drainer and plughole descaled, because the hard water never gives those a miss. Tiles and grout scrubbed. Floor pulled back where it lifts, then washed.
The bathroom, the other place it goes wrong
Scale off the taps, showerhead, screen and tiles first, with the careful approach on older or thinly plated chrome. Grout scrubbed back as far as honest effort takes it, photographed first where it is clearly past saving. Toilet done properly, inside, under the rim, base, hinges and behind the pedestal. Shower screen both sides, tracks and the sealant bead. Bath, taps, overflow and plughole. Mirror and cabinet, and behind them where they pull off the wall. Extractor vent wiped. Floor into the corners and behind the loo.
Bedrooms, living rooms and the bits between
Inside every wardrobe, drawer and built-in cupboard. Skirting, picture rail, dado, cornice and door tops. Window glass inside, frame, reveal and sill. Light fittings, switches and sockets. Radiators behind, under and on top, which takes longer on an old cast-iron one than a modern panel. Walls spot-wiped for marks, with an honest line drawn, because nail holes and scuffs are a decorator’s bill, not yours to scrub away. Carpet vacuumed to the corners; boards or parquet vacuumed then soft-mopped. Then the shared parts: hall, stairs and landing, bannister and spindles, internal doors front, back and edge, alarms wiped, and a final walk-through against the check-out template before we leave, photographed room by room. That photo set is the evidence you keep.
Two jobs often need their own pass. Carpet shampoo on a hot-water extraction machine is written into some SE22 tenancies as a requirement, which is what the carpet cleaning add-on covers on the same visit. A much-used range cooker is worth the full strip the oven cleaning add-on gives it. Original tile or parquet in a hallway wants its own product rather than a general mop, which is the floor cleaning add-on.
What it costs, said plainly, and the sum nobody runs in time
No table here, because the prices are short enough to say in a sentence. End of tenancy cleaning in Dulwich Hill is £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed, £243 for a two-bed, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed. Those are full fixed prices with the 57-point checklist and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee already in them. No VAT line, no fuel surcharge, no extra for an upstairs flat with no lift. Carpet shampoo runs £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed’s carpeted area. Oven work, which is already part of the standard clean, is £77 single, £110 double and £114 on a 90cm range if you want the full strip as a standalone. A part job or a light top-up is £30 per hour per cleaner.
Run the maths the way the deposit makes you. A one-bed at £207 to protect a five-week deposit on a flat renting near £1,700 is not really a decision. The work costs a fraction of what is at stake, and the failed check-out is the expensive route to the same place.
Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape. A long tenancy with heavy wear, a pet household, or somewhere that has not had a deep clean in years costs more, and we say so on the phone, not after. There is a reason the agents working Lordship Lane keep our number. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and over the years the work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions.
It is worth being clear which job you are buying, because three of them get muddled.
- End of tenancy clean
- Built to pass the inventory and get the deposit back, against the letting agent’s benchmark, with the flat empty and the 48-hour guarantee on it, priced flat by the bedroom count.
- Deep clean
- A reset of a home you are keeping, lived in, with no clerk test on the other side. Not a hand-back job, from £30 an hour per cleaner.
- Regular clean
- Ongoing maintenance, weekly or fortnightly. Our domestic cleaning starts at £22 an hour weekly, £24 fortnightly.
A North Cross Road job from May
“Three of us had shared a two-bed conversion just off North Cross Road for a year and a bit, all working, nobody with any time. The shower had gone properly furred up from the hard water and the oven was a state none of us wanted to own. Roy Brooks had us down for a check-out on the Friday. Monster sent two cleaners on the Wednesday, about five hours, took the showerhead off to soak it, split the oven door and did the carpet in the one bedroom that needed it. The clerk passed it with no cleaning deductions and we had the full deposit back the next week. Cost us £243 plus a bit for the carpet, split three ways. Cheapest part of moving, honestly.”
Priya, ex-tenant, SE22 0, May 2026
That is a fair example of the East Dulwich pattern: a sharer let, a hard-water bathroom nobody had kept on top of, an oven left too long, and an agent who actually checks. The clean cost a fraction of the deposit, and what turned it was the dated photos that went out with the receipt, the part a rushed DIY clean never has when the agent pushes back.
Licensing, the law, and booking the slot
Two bits of paperwork sit behind a move-out here, and it pays to know which is which.
First, licensing. Southwark’s second selective licensing scheme runs from 1 November 2023 to 31 October 2028 and names the Dulwich Hill ward in the designation. It covers ordinary single-family lets, not only shared houses, so a let terrace off Crystal Palace Road needs a licence at £945, and that licence carries a condition about the home being clean and in repair at the end of a tenancy. A house shared by three or more people from more than one household is an HMO under Southwark’s additional licensing scheme, borough-wide since 1 March 2022; five or more sharers move into the mandatory national scheme. None of this changes the clean, but it does mean the clerk’s report carries more weight, because it can feed back to the licence.
Second, the law on the clean itself. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 means your landlord cannot make a professional clean a contract term, so nobody can force you to book us. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026 and ended Section 21, turning assured shorthold tenancies into periodic ones, but it left the cleaning obligations untouched. The real effect in SE22 is timing: notice is given on a rolling basis now, so move-outs are a little less bunched and harder to predict, which is an argument for booking earlier rather than later.
Booking is short. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the postcode, the bedroom count, the check-out date and whether the place is furnished. We send a fixed quote back the same working day, no site visit for a standard flat or terrace. You confirm by email and pay a small deposit on a card link, balance on the day. We arrive with a team sized for the property, hand back to the agent, and if the clerk flags a cleaning item inside 48 hours we come back and redo that area free. If the move also needs the van, we do removals on the same booking, which helps on the tight permit streets off Lordship Lane where several trips turn into a problem. End of the month is the crush here, so the earlier you give us the date, the better the slot.
Questions we get asked
How much is end of tenancy cleaning for a one-bed flat in Dulwich Hill?
A one-bed flat is £207, with the full 57-point agent-approved checklist and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee in the price. On a conversion flat off Melbourne Grove or North Cross Road we usually quote that flat rate and suggest the living-room carpet shampoo as the only add-on. There is no separate charge for an upstairs flat with no lift, which catches people out elsewhere.
What does a whole house cost, and is the four-bed really more than the three-bed?
Yes. A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. The four-bed costs more because it is more rooms and more floor, not because of where it sits. A four-bed terrace on Crystal Palace Road or Barry Road is the £425 job; the price does not move for the postcode.
Is Dulwich Hill the same as East Dulwich?
For a quote, treat them as the same place. Dulwich Hill is the Southwark council ward covering the heart of East Dulwich around Lordship Lane and Goose Green, named in the 2018 boundary review. It is not a separate village and not Dulwich Village, which sits west in SE21 around the old College. If your postcode starts SE22, we are quoting the same East Dulwich stock either way.
Does Southwark’s selective licensing scheme apply to my Dulwich Hill rental?
Most likely yes. Southwark’s second selective licensing scheme runs from 1 November 2023 to 31 October 2028 and names the Dulwich Hill ward in the designation. It covers ordinary single-family lets, not just shared houses, so a let terrace off Lordship Lane needs a licence at £945. The licence carries a condition about the home being clean and in repair at the end of a tenancy, which is why the clerk’s report carries more weight than it used to.
What if my flat is a shared house with three or more sharers?
Then it is likely an HMO under Southwark’s additional licensing scheme, which has run borough-wide since 1 March 2022 for houses shared by three or more people from more than one household. Five or more sharers move you into the mandatory national scheme. We clean plenty of sharer houses off Crystal Palace Road and around Goose Green, and the check-out standard is the same whoever holds the licence.
Did the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change what I have to clean?
No. The Act went live on 1 May 2026 and scrapped Section 21, turning assured shorthold tenancies into periodic ones, but it left the cleaning side of a move-out exactly as it was. A landlord still cannot make a professional clean a contract term, under the 2019 Tenant Fees Act. What changed is timing: notice is given on a rolling basis now, so move-outs in SE22 are harder to predict. Book a little earlier than you would have.
Why does the hard water matter for getting my deposit back?
Because Thames Water runs hard here, around 290 to 310 parts per million of calcium carbonate, and the chalk leaves a dull film on taps, glass and the showerhead that a normal wipe will not shift. A clerk runs a thumbnail down the tap and looks at the screen edge-on against the light. We descale the chrome with a soft-acid stage, soak the showerhead off the wall where it is a hand-shower, and buff it back. Done properly, it passes; left alone, it is a near-certain deduction.
Do you clean the ex-council flats on the Dog Kennel Hill Estate?
Yes, regularly. The Dog Kennel Hill Estate is the 1930s Neo-Georgian blocks behind the Sainsbury’s, and Dawson’s Heights is the stepped 1960s estate up on Overhill Road. Both have their quirks: solid floors, older steel windows on some blocks, communal stairs the clerk does not score but the caretaker notices. The flats get the same 57-point clean as a terrace, and a tidy ex-council two-bed is the £243 job.
Are the carpets shampooed as part of the standard price?
No, carpet shampoo is a separate add-on: £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed’s carpeted area. Many East Dulwich conversions have stripped boards or engineered wood through the living space, so plenty of jobs need no carpet work at all. Where there is a bedroom carpet that has had a bed on it for three years, we will say on the call whether it is worth booking.
Is the oven included, or is that extra?
The oven interior, racks, glass and trays are inside the standard clean already. The oven add-on, £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range, is for a full strip-down on a heavily used cooker where we split the door glass and lift the panels. On a family kitchen off Melbourne Grove with a much-used range, that deeper job is usually worth the extra.
Can you do a mid-week clean for a Friday check-out?
Yes, that is the normal pattern. We do most SE22 hand-backs on a Tuesday or Wednesday for a Thursday or Friday clerk visit, which leaves the 48-hour re-clean window open across the gap. End of the month is the busy stretch on Lordship Lane, so the earlier you give us the date the better the slot.
Do I need to be there during the clean?
No. Most clients leave a key with us or with the agent, whether that is Pedder, Acorn, KFH, Roy Brooks or Winkworth on Lordship Lane. We text on arrival, send a photo set when we finish, and you or the agent walk it afterwards. On a four-bed terrace the team leader will phone if anything outside the checklist is borderline.
What does the 48-hour re-clean guarantee actually cover?
If the check-out report flags a cleaning item within 48 hours of our visit, we come back and redo that area at no charge, provided nobody has moved in and the flat is as we left it. That is the policy behind our 97% first-time pass rate. It does not cover condition points like a paint scuff or a cracked tile, or things outside the checklist such as the garden or exterior glass above the ground floor.
What if the agent still proposes a deduction after the re-clean?
If it is for something we cleaned, send us the clerk’s photo and we settle it inside the window. If it is a condition charge, the deposit scheme adjudication is the route, and the larger Lordship Lane agents protect deposits with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, where the adjudicator wants dated receipts and photos. Tenants who are struggling can get free help from Shelter if a deduction is being challenged.
How does payment work?
A small deposit holds the booking, paid by card link. The balance is due on the day, by card or bank transfer to the office. We do not take cash on the day, and the receipt goes out by email the same evening, which is the document you want if a deduction is ever argued.
Other Monster Cleaning services in Dulwich Hill
Staying put rather than moving out? We also offer carpet cleaning in Dulwich Hill, oven cleaning in Dulwich Hill and domestic cleaning in Dulwich Hill.