The flat above the shop on Lordship Lane
Lordship Lane is the A2216, and it runs the whole way from Goose Green down to Wood Vale. Half the flats we clean in East Dulwich sit on or just off that line, often above one of the shops: a one-bed over the butcher, a maisonette over a coffee place, a two-bed in a converted terrace on Melbourne Grove or Crystal Palace Road. SE22 is a borough of split houses. Between 1871 and 1881 the developers put up more than 5,000 houses around here, most of them the tall Victorian and Edwardian terraces that have since been carved into flats, and those conversions are the properties that turn up on our calendar.
If you are moving out of one of them, here is the short version. We do deposit-back end of tenancy cleaning across East Dulwich and the rest of SE22, priced by the size of the property rather than by the hour, and the work is built to pass the check-out inventory the first time. That is the whole job. The rest of this page is the detail: what the local letting agents check, why the period housing makes it harder, what the law actually says about cleaning charges, and how to book it around the Saturday market.
We have been doing this for years, mostly within a couple of miles of here. East Dulwich, Dulwich Village over the hill, Peckham Rye on the other side. The pattern is always the same. A young family is leaving a rented terrace because they have finally bought somewhere, or a couple is moving on after the landlord put the rent up, and the deposit they paid two or three years ago is the deposit for the next place. They cannot afford to lose a slice of it to a cleaning line on the check-out report.
People who do not know SE22 think of it as one of the posher corners of south London, and the rents say they are not wrong. What that misses is how much of East Dulwich is rented rather than owned, and how much of the rented stock is the streets between the stations: the long terraces running off Lordship Lane towards Peckham Rye on one side and up towards Dulwich on the other. East Dulwich Grove, Crystal Palace Road, Ondine Road, Tintagel Crescent, the roads around Goose Green. These are the addresses we drive to. The houses are handsome from the street and a handful of work inside, which is the whole story of cleaning round here.
East Dulwich has changed a lot in twenty years. It went from a place people moved to because Dulwich Village proper was out of reach, to a destination in its own right, with the pushchairs on Lordship Lane to prove it. The renting population skews young and professional, often couples who will move once a baby arrives, and that churn is good for us and bad for deposits. People in their first or second rented flat have not done an end of tenancy clean before, do not know what a clerk looks for, and find out the hard way when the check-out report lands. We would rather they found out from us first.
What a Goose Green ward licence actually means
East Dulwich sits in the Goose Green ward, and that ward matters for renters more than most people realise. Southwark Council runs two selective licensing schemes, and Goose Green is in the first one, which started on 1 March 2022 and runs for five years. That is older than a lot of landlords think it is. The second scheme, the one that started on 1 November 2023, covers different wards (Dulwich Hill, Dulwich Wood, Peckham Rye, Nunhead and Queens Road, and ten more), so do not assume the dates you read on a Peckham page apply to you here.
Selective licensing means a landlord renting out an ordinary flat or house in the ward needs a licence from the council to do it legally. On top of that, Southwark runs an additional HMO licensing scheme borough-wide, also from 1 March 2022, which catches houses shared by three or four unrelated people and certain converted blocks. None of this is your job as the outgoing tenant. It matters because a licensed landlord, or the agent acting for one, tends to run a proper check-in and check-out inventory, and that inventory is the document your clean gets measured against.
There is a knock-on effect worth understanding. A landlord who has gone to the trouble of getting a licence has usually also signed up with a managing agent, and a managing agent does things by the book. They commission an independent inventory clerk at check-in and another at check-out, rather than the landlord having a quick look round and deciding on the spot. That is better for you in the long run, because an independent report is harder to argue with in both directions, but it also means the standard is set in writing on day one and you are held to it on the last day. A vague handshake tenancy is easier to leave; a documented one is fairer but stricter.
The other thing licensing does is concentrate the lettings business in a handful of agents who know the ward inside out. Walk Lordship Lane and Grove Vale and you will pass them. Those are the firms whose check-out reports we see most, and whose clerks we have effectively been cleaning for over years of jobs. When our name is on the cleaning paperwork attached to a check-out, an agent who has dealt with us before tends to wave it through rather than send a clerk back for a second look. That recognition is worth more than any wording on a leaflet.
East Dulwich sits in the Goose Green ward, and that ward matters for renters more than most people realise.
So the licence is not an abstraction. It is the reason the clerk turns up with a tablet, photographs the oven glass, and writes down the state of the grout. A few terms come up again and again when a deposit is in play, and they are worth getting straight before you book anything.
- Check-in inventory
- The report made at the start of the tenancy, recording the condition and cleanliness of every room. Your clean is judged against this, not against some abstract idea of spotless. If you never got a copy, ask the agent for one now.
- Check-out report
- The inspection at the end, usually by an independent clerk, compared line by line against the check-in. This is where cleaning gets flagged, so it is the document our work is built to satisfy.
- Deposit protection scheme
- By law your deposit sits in one of three government-backed schemes, and the rules are set out on the gov.uk tenancy deposit protection pages. The scheme holds the money and runs a free dispute service if you and the landlord cannot agree.
- Fair wear and tear
- Normal deterioration from everyday living, which a landlord cannot charge you for. Cleaning is separate. Wear and tear covers the worn carpet; it does not cover the grease you never wiped off the extractor hood.
The checklist the Lordship Lane agents sign off
We work to a 57-point checklist. It is not something we invented to look thorough; it is built around what inventory clerks in this part of south London actually mark down, line by line, on the check-out. Ovens, hobs and extractor hoods. Limescale on taps, shower screens and tiles. The inside of every window, the reveals and the sills. Skirting boards, door tops, light switches, the kickboards under the kitchen units. Inside the kitchen cupboards and the fridge once it has been emptied and switched off. Bathrooms top to bottom, including the bit of grout behind the toilet that nobody looks at until a clerk does.
The list is why we pass. Our cleans clear the first inspection 97% of the time, and the figure holds because the work is checked against the same things the agent checks. There are a lot of agents on and around Lordship Lane and Grove Vale, and we are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London, which means when the agent reads the name on our paperwork they usually already know it. Over the years that has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. That is not a rounding error. That is real money handed back to people who were about to lose it.
And if the clerk does flag something, we fix it. The service comes with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If the inventory clerk or the agent challenges the standard of the work within that window, we send a team back to put it right, free, no argument about whose fault it was. Most cleans never need it. The guarantee is there because the inspection is the only test that counts, and we would rather come back than have you lose a penny.
One practical point. We do not charge by the hour, because an hourly job is a rushed job. We price by the size of the property and stay until the checklist is done, even if that means most of the day on a four-bedroom terrace. You will not get a cleaner watching the clock at the four-hour mark.
Why Edwardian conversions eat deposits
SE22 housing is older and more awkward than the new flats going up nearer the river, and that is exactly why deposits get bitten here. A converted terrace has features a modern flat simply does not, and each one is a place a clean can fall short. Take the sash windows. A typical East Dulwich flat has them in every room, the panes split into small sections, the cords and the reveals collecting dust and old paint flakes that an inventory clerk will notice on a bright morning. They take time to do properly.
Then there are the floors. A lot of these conversions have the original boards, stripped and varnished, and they show every mark. There are picture rails and deep skirting that gather dust along the top. There are cast-iron fireplaces left in for character. The kitchens are often shoehorned into a back addition, with units fitted tight against an old chimney breast, so the gaps and the kickboards trap grease in a way a clean modern galley never would. None of it is hard. It is just more, and people underestimate how much more.
It is just more, and people underestimate how much more.
The bathrooms in these conversions are their own job. A lot of them were fitted into a box room or a slice of a landing years ago, so the tiling runs into awkward corners, the sealant goes black where the room never quite dries out, and limescale builds up fast because the water round here is hard. A clerk will run a finger along the grout and look at the shower screen against the light. We do the limescale on the taps, the screen, the tiles and the showerhead, and we get into the corners that a quick wipe skips. It is slow work and there is no shortcut to it.
Kitchens are where most of the time goes. The extractor hood over the hob collects a film of grease you only see when you start wiping it; the splashback behind the hob holds the spatter from every fry-up; the top of the wall units, above eye level, gathers a sticky dust that is grease and air mixed together. Then the appliances. If the fridge-freezer, the washing machine or the dishwasher came with the flat, the clerk checks inside and behind them, the door seals included. We clean the lot, but it is the reason a kitchen in an old conversion takes longer than the rest of the flat put together.
Gardens are the other one. Plenty of the ground-floor flats off Lordship Lane and around Goose Green come with a share of the original long garden, and a check-out can include the patio, the path and the state of the back step. We are a cleaning firm, not a gardening one, but we will flag it so you are not caught out by a line on the report you did not expect. The point of all this is simple. The features that make an East Dulwich flat lovely to live in are the same features that make the end of tenancy clean longer than the one your mate had in a new-build in Nine Elms.
The cleaning charge they cannot make you pay
Here is a thing a lot of tenants do not know, and some agents would rather you did not. A landlord cannot make you pay for professional cleaning as a blanket condition of the tenancy. Those fees are banned. Shelter sets it out plainly on its guide to cleaning and other deductions: a clause demanding you pay for a professional clean is not fair, and a professional standard is only a fair benchmark if the place was cleaned to that standard before you moved in. So the check-in report cuts both ways. It protects the landlord, and it protects you.
What a landlord can do is deduct a reasonable amount if you leave the flat dirtier than the check-in recorded. That is where the deposit dispute happens, and it is where evidence wins. Shelter’s page on evidence for a deposit dispute is blunt about it: the schemes want dated photos and the two inventories side by side, and they prefer digital images because they can read the dates. If you book a professional clean, keep the receipt and take photos on the day. That receipt is your proof that the flat left in the state the report demanded.
The wider rules are tightening, too. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (you can read the Act itself on legislation.gov.uk) changes a good deal about assured tenancies in England, and it lands at a time when councils like Southwark are already running licensing hard. None of it changes the basic deal at the end of a tenancy. You leave the flat as clean as you found it, and you should get your deposit back. If there is a row, the dispute goes to the scheme.
It is worth knowing where your deposit actually is before you move out. By law it has to sit in one of the three protected schemes, and the landlord or agent had thirty days from taking it to put it there and tell you which one. If you never got that paperwork, ask for it now, because you cannot dispute a deduction cleanly if you do not know which scheme holds the money. Once you do know, the scheme’s free service is the route for any cleaning argument, and a professional clean with a receipt is the strongest hand you can walk in with.
One more useful pointer for timing. Citizens Advice notes on its guide to getting your deposit back that you usually have to take a claim to the scheme’s free dispute service within three months of moving out. So do not sit on it. If a cleaning deduction lands that you think is unfair, gather the photos and the receipt and raise it while the clock is still running.
The jobs that need a second van
A standard end of tenancy clean covers the flat top to bottom. Some jobs need more than that, and on the period housing around here they often do. We will tell you straight when an extra service is worth booking and when it is not, because adding things you do not need is just a way of taking your money.
Carpets are the common one. A hoover lifts the surface dust; it does not lift two years of ground-in traffic on a hall runner or a bedroom carpet, and the check-out clerk knows the difference. We use hot water extraction to pull the dirt out properly, and if your flat has carpet that the check-in described as clean, our carpet cleaning is usually the difference between a pass and a deduction. Same logic for soft furnishings. If a sofa, mattress or set of curtains came with the let, our upholstery cleaning brings them back to inventory condition.
The oven is the single most flagged item in any end of tenancy, anywhere, and SE22 is no exception. Grease bakes onto the glass and the racks and a domestic wipe will not shift it. Our oven cleaning means stripping the appliance down, doing the removable parts separately, and putting it back together clean inside and out. Windows are the other frequent add-on. We do the insides as part of the standard clean, but if the outsides need doing on a ground or first-floor flat, our window cleaning team brings water-fed poles to reach them.
Two more, depending on the day. If you want the place taken beyond inventory standard, say you are handing back a flat you have owned and let yourself, our deep cleaning goes further than a check-out demands. And if you are moving out and still have furniture to shift, we can pair the clean with removals so it happens in one go rather than two separate headaches. Once you are settled, our domestic cleaning is there if you want a regular clean in the new place. Most people just need the end of tenancy job and the carpets, though.
A word on the order things happen in, because it trips people up. The clean has to come after the flat is empty and after any furniture has gone, not before. There is no sense paying for a spotless flat and then dragging a sofa across it to the van. If we are doing the removals as well, we shift everything first, then clean the empty rooms, then hand back. If a separate firm is doing your move, book them for the morning and us for the afternoon, or us for the day after. We will work to whatever the agent has set as the key handover, but the sequence only works one way round.
Booking a clean around the Saturday market
Booking is meant to be quick. Ring us, tell us the postcode and how many bedrooms and bathrooms, and whether the carpets or the oven need doing on top. We price by the size of the flat, give you a fixed quote on the call, and book a slot. We work seven days a week, which matters in East Dulwich because move-out dates rarely fall on a convenient weekday and the agent often wants the keys back fast. The quickest way to get a date is to phone the 57-point checklist team on 0333 555 2076.
The one local thing to plan around is parking, and it is a genuine nuisance. North Cross Road runs its market every Saturday from nine until four, so the streets around Goose Green get tight on a Saturday morning, and Southwark’s controlled parking zones cover most of the residential roads off Lordship Lane through the day. Tell us where the flat is and we will sort the van out. If a permit is needed for the bay outside, let us know in advance. We would rather plan it than have the team circling Melbourne Grove looking for a space.
The team brings everything with them. Machines, cloths, the proper products, the lot, so you do not need to leave anything behind or buy supplies for them. They arrive, they start, and they stay until the checklist is done. On a one-bed flat that is a few hours; on a big four-bed terrace off East Dulwich Grove it can be most of the day, and we would rather take the day and do it once than rush it and have you call us back. You do not have to be there while it happens. Plenty of people leave a key, go to work, and come back to a finished flat.
Most of our customers around here do not drive to the job themselves, and they do not need to. East Dulwich station is a five-minute walk from the Goose Green junction, with Southern trains into London Bridge in about a quarter of an hour, and the Overground is a short hop away at Peckham Rye or Denmark Hill. The buses help too: the 37, 40, 176, 185 and P13 all serve the area. You can hand us the keys, go to work, and come back to a flat that is ready for the clerk.
Timing the clean against the check-out is the bit that catches people out. Agents in East Dulwich often want the check-out inventory done the same day you hand the keys back, sometimes the morning after. So the clean needs to be the last thing that happens in the flat, after the last box has gone. Book it too early and you will be living in a cleaned flat for three days and undoing the work; book it for the day before the clerk comes and you have a buffer if anything needs a second pass. We will talk you through the timing on the call, because getting it right is half the battle and it costs nothing to plan.
After the clean, we send you the paperwork. If the inventory clerk raises anything within the 48-hour re-clean window, you call us and we come back. That is the guarantee, and it is the reason the 97% first-time pass rate is not the end of the story for the handful of jobs that need a second look.
Where we work around SE22
We cover East Dulwich and the streets right around it, and we run the same end of tenancy service across the neighbouring areas, so if your move is just over the boundary we have probably already cleaned on your road. The geography of south-east London is a maze of postcodes that bleed into each other, and the housing stock is much the same from one to the next: terraces, conversions, the odd ex-council block.
Over the hill there is end of tenancy cleaning in Dulwich and the streets around Dulwich Village, with the estate covenants that keep the place looking the way it does. North of here we work in Camberwell and down towards Denmark Hill around the hospital. East, across the park, are Peckham Rye and Peckham proper, plus Nunhead on the far side. West and up the hill you have Herne Hill, and further out we cover Honor Oak and Forest Hill. It is all the same team and the same checklist, wherever your tenancy ends. If you are not sure we reach your postcode, the quickest thing is to ask us on the contact page or have a look at the wider end of tenancy cleaning service.
East Dulwich end of tenancy questions
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in East Dulwich?
The price depends on the size of the flat, not the hours worked. We quote on the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, plus any extras like carpets or the oven, and we give you a fixed figure on the phone before anything is booked. Because so much of the housing in SE22 is converted Victorian and Edwardian terraces, a flat here can be larger than the same number of rooms in a new-build, so it is always worth getting an actual quote rather than guessing. Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode and we will price it.
Will the clean pass my letting agent’s check-out inventory?
That is the whole point of the service. We clean against a 57-point checklist built around what inventory clerks in this part of south London mark down, and our cleans pass the first inspection 97% of the time. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, so the agents around Lordship Lane and Grove Vale usually recognise our paperwork. If the clerk flags anything inside the 48-hour re-clean window, we come back and fix it for free.
Can my landlord force me to pay for professional cleaning?
No, not as a blanket condition. A tenancy clause demanding you pay for a professional clean is a banned fee, and a professional standard is only a fair benchmark if the flat was cleaned to that standard before you moved in. The detail is on Shelter’s cleaning deductions guide. What a landlord can do is deduct a reasonable amount if you leave the flat dirtier than the check-in report recorded, which is exactly what a proper end of tenancy clean prevents.
Is East Dulwich in a Southwark licensing area?
Yes. East Dulwich is in the Goose Green ward, which is part of Southwark’s first selective licensing scheme, running from 1 March 2022 for five years. There is also a borough-wide additional HMO licensing scheme from the same date. This is the landlord’s responsibility, not yours, but it tends to mean a properly run check-in and check-out inventory, which is the document your clean is measured against.
What do you need from me on the day?
The flat needs to be empty of your belongings, with the electricity on, hot water running and the fridge-freezer switched off and defrosted. We cannot clean around boxes, and we cannot do a frozen freezer. If access or parking is tricky near Goose Green, especially on a Saturday with the North Cross Road market on, tell us in advance and we will plan the van around it.
Do you clean carpets and ovens as part of it?
The oven is included in a standard end of tenancy clean, stripped down and done inside and out, because it is the most flagged item on any check-out. Carpets are a separate add-on, done with hot water extraction rather than just a hoover, and on a flat with carpet the check-in described as clean it is usually worth booking. Tell us what is in the flat and we will say honestly whether you need the extra or not.
How quickly can you come, and what if there is a problem after?
We work seven days a week and can usually fit in a clean at short notice, which helps when an agent wants the keys back fast. After the job we send you the paperwork. If the inventory clerk or agent challenges the work within 48 hours, you call us and we send a team back to put it right at no cost. Keep your receipt and a few dated photos from the day, because under the deposit rules that evidence is what settles a dispute.