End of tenancy cleaning in Foots Cray, booked in minutes

How do you get a deposit back on a 1930s Cray Road detached where the front-reception fireplace has been carrying a soot ring under a 1980s gas-fire surround since the year you signed the lease? You do not leave the original tile-fireplace surround for the inventory clerk to torch first. Monster Cleaning has worked the Foots Cray patch since 2014, from the inter-war detached homes along Cray Road and Eastbury Avenue, through the High Street Foots Cray semis, the post-war LCC infill on the St Mary Cray fringe, and the modern blocks dropped in around Sidcup station. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Three-bed Cray Road detached from £339, full agent-approved.

Last updated April 2026. We cover DA14 5 across Foots Cray, the streets either side of Cray Road, the Foots Cray Meadows river-side fringe, the Five Arches Bridge end and the Sidcup-station feed-in, with same-week turnaround on most postcodes. The full Bexley end of tenancy hub lists every Welling, Sidcup, Erith and Bexley town on the book, including Sidcup East end of tenancy on the A20-feed parade two stops north.

Why Foots Cray deposits get deducted

Average private rent across Bexley was £1,531 a month in March 2026, up 7.6% on the year against the wider London 1.7%, with the borough’s average house price at £406,000 in February 2026 (ONS Bexley housing prices tool). Foots Cray sits in the Cray Meadows ward in the south-east of the borough; cross the river east at the Five Arches and you are heading toward St Mary Cray and the Bromley boundary. A three-bed inter-war detached on Cray Road rents at around £1,750 to £1,950, a smaller two-bed semi on the High Street Foots Cray runs at roughly £1,450, and a one-bed flat in one of the modern infill blocks down toward Sidcup station sits at £1,150 to £1,250. Deposits land in the £1,400 to £2,200 band. One missed clerk-flag on the tile-fireplace surround or the kitchen extractor can lose the better part of a month’s rent.

The housing stock in Foots Cray is narrower than people expect, and it is not the same mix as the wider Sidcup or Welling rounds. The clear majority is the inter-war detached and semi-detached on Cray Road, Eastbury Avenue and the streets running off the High Street: brick-and-render two-storey, hipped roof, small front garden behind a low brick wall, an original tile fireplace in the front reception and a leaded-light front bay that most landlords have left in place. The second band is the post-war LCC infill running east toward the St Mary Cray fringe – small council-built three-bed terraces and short-court flats put up after the war on what had been smallholdings adjoining the river. The third is a thin band of small modern blocks dropped in along the High Street and down toward Sidcup station through the 2010s. A clerk on a Cray Road detached is not looking for the same line items as a clerk on a 1950s LCC terrace.

Foots Cray Meadows is the local lung – around 100 hectares of meadow, woodland and river flood plain along the River Cray, with the Five Arches Bridge sitting near the Sidcup Place end. The streets backing onto the Meadows pick up summer footfall and the dog-walking traffic crossing toward the Five Arches, and the path-verge dust comes in through the front bay window the same way it does on any green edge. That is a cleaning detail, not a tourism note.

Thames Water supplies DA14 from the chalk aquifers under the North Downs, and the public hardness map puts Foots Cray and the wider Cray valley in the very-hard band, around 290 to 310 parts per million calcium carbonate (Thames Water hardness data). The mineral ridge on the bath taps and the lower edge of the shower-screen runner films back inside ten days, and clerks rotating through Robinson Jackson Sidcup, Sinclair Hammelton, Andrews, Acorn and Dexters Sidcup check the chrome specifically because the calcium line photographs as a deposit-deducible.

Renters’ Rights Act 2025 – what changed on 1 May 2026

Section 21 no-fault evictions were abolished one week ago. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and the headline reforms commenced on 1 May 2026: rolling periodic tenancies replace the old fixed-term assured shorthold, and any Section 21 notice served on or before 28 April 2026 has to be acted on with a possession claim by 1 August 2026 or it falls. From a tenant’s point of view the deposit-return route is now the cleanest way out of a tenancy, and the inventory check-out walk has more weight than it did six months ago because the deposit dispute is the main remaining lever (Shelter private renting guidance).

The bar moved.

Clerks walk DA14 5 slower than they did last summer.

Bexley Council licensing across DA14 5 in 2026

Bexley’s selective licensing scheme operative on 13 January 2025 (running to 12 January 2030) covers the Belvedere ward only – it does not extend to the Cray Meadows ward (Bexley Council property licensing schemes). What does cover Foots Cray is the borough-wide non-immediate Article 4 Direction made on 16 September 2016, which removed permitted development rights for change-of-use into a small HMO; converting a Cray Road detached into a 3-to-6-occupant share now needs planning permission. The national mandatory HMO regime still applies to any property occupied by five or more people forming two or more households. By March 2025 the council had issued 139 licences under the Belvedere scheme, with the maximum financial penalty for unlicensed letting set at £30,000.

For a single-household let on Cray Road or off the High Street the standard EOT covers it. For a five-share HMO on the Sidcup-station feed-in the licence-holder can deduct for shared-area condition – stairwells, communal kitchens and bin stores get walked separately. We price HMO common parts at standard room rates; you are not paying double.

What is particular about cleaning a Foots Cray Cray Road detached

The single most-flagged item on a DA14 5 Cray Road inventory walk is the original tile fireplace in the front reception. The 1930s detached homes were built with a coal-fire chimney breast in the through-room and most landlords left the tile-fronted surround in place under a 1980s gas-fire insert; the years before the insert went in left a soot ring on the upper face of the surround tile and on the cast-iron grate behind. The ring is not dirt; it is a thin carbon film that has bonded with the tile glaze. We dust the surround face with a soft horsehair brush, work the tile in slow circular passes with a slightly damp microfibre and a neutral pH cleaner, and finish the cast-iron grate dry. Power-washing or a wet scour cracks the glaze. We do not do it.

Behind that, two further items repeat across the Foots Cray patch. The leaded-light front bay on the better-preserved Cray Road and Eastbury Avenue plots – small rectangular panes set into a timber bay frame, the came between the panes carrying coal-era residue and modern road grit; we work pane by pane and dry-buff the came in the direction the glazier laid it. The other is the kitchen-extractor housing on the original side-galley layouts running off the back of the through-room: grease pools on the upper inside face where no daylight reaches it, and the previous tenant has rarely got a brush in there.

Common reasons we get re-called

• Tile-fireplace surround wet-scoured and the glaze hazed – the haze shows on a side-light photo and the clerk knows immediately the surround was scrubbed wrong.
• Soot ring polished off the front face but the cast-iron grate left dust-edged – clerks check the grate at the same moment they check the tile, and a sooted edge to the iron pulls the deduction back.
• Leaded-light bay wiped pane-on-pane with the came still grey – the came is the line a clerk torches; clean panes do not save it.
• Kitchen-extractor housing wiped on the visible face only – the upper inside surface holds a grease film that drips onto the hob the first time the next tenant runs a fry-up.
• Bath-tap chrome polished while wet – hard-water spotting reforms inside an hour and the clerk’s photo, taken on a different day, shows the calcium ring back in place.

“We were ending three years on a 1930s 3-bed detached on Cray Road, just the two of us, and we knew the front-reception fireplace was going to be the one that lost the deposit. The original tile surround had a soot ring under the 1980s gas-fire insert from years before we moved in, and the clerk Robinson Jackson Sidcup sent had been doing the Cray Road book a long time. Monster came on a Tuesday morning, two cleaners, started just after eight and were done by half four. They worked the tile-fireplace surround dry first with a soft brush, finished the tile face with a damp microfibre, dry-finished the cast-iron grate, descaled the upstairs bath chrome and the shower-screen runner, pulled the kitchen-extractor baffle, and walked the front-bay panes. The clerk arrived the next morning. Full £1,890 deposit back through tenancydepositscheme inside two weeks. The clean was £339, no extras. The young couple who took the keys asked for the office number on day one.” – Aimee and Dan, ex-tenants, Cray Road, Foots Cray DA14 5, March 2026

Streets and zones we cover across Foots Cray

We work the whole DA14 5 patch from the Sidcup-station feed-in down through the Cray Road spine to the Five Arches end of the Meadows:

• Cray Road and the streets running off it – the inter-war detached spine; clerks flag the original tile-fireplace surround and the leaded-light front bay
• High Street Foots Cray – inter-war semi-detached and small parade buildings; clerks check the original front-bay glazing and the kitchen-extractor housing on the side-galley layouts
• Eastbury Avenue and the streets behind – 1930s detached and semi mix with retained original front porches
• The streets running east toward the Five Arches Bridge and the Foots Cray Meadows river fringe – inter-war detached homes on the wider plots
• The post-war LCC infill on the St Mary Cray fringe – 1950s council-built three-bed terraces with picture rails and lino-over-floorboard kitchens
• The streets backing onto Foots Cray Meadows – the path-verge dust signature on front bays facing the meadow edge
• The Sidcup-station feed-in – bay-fronted terraces and small modern infill flats walking distance from the SE Trains line into Charing Cross and Cannon Street
• The streets close to Sidcup Place and the parade above the river – small commercial-and-flat buildings serving the High Street tail
• The post-war terraces backing onto Cray Wanderers’ old ground perimeter – 1950s council-built stock with stair-foot wear strips on family lets

If your address sits a few streets outside this list, ring the office. We almost certainly cover it.

What’s included in our Foots Cray end of tenancy clean

The Foots Cray EOT runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist. Below is the tight version – what gets touched in every room of every job.

• Kitchen oven: full strip, racks soaked separately, door internal pane glass cleaned between the layers
• Hob, splashback, extractor: baffle pulled and soaked, housing hand-degreased on the inside upper face where Cray Road side-galley grease pools
• Cupboards and drawers: inside, outside, top, behind and underneath every unit
• White goods: fridge and freezer fully defrosted and washed, dishwasher filter pulled and salt checked, washing-machine drawer and door seal scrubbed
• Sink and taps: proper paste descale soak on chrome, waste run with a hot kettle
• Tile grout and silicone: behind the hob worked with a soft-bristle brush, kitchen-floor edge bead checked
• Skirtings and switches: wiped throughout, light fittings dusted, sockets tops cleaned
• Bin and food cupboard: bin washed inside and out, cupboards lined if requested
• Bathroom bath, tray, screen: paste descale on showerhead and the lower screen-runner where Thames Water leaves the calcium ridge, rinsed twice
• WC bowl, rim, base, behind cistern: long-handled brush behind the porcelain, hinge wiped
• Bathroom chrome: sink, taps, plug, overflow, polished separately after the descale step
• Mirror, cabinet, shaver socket, extractor grille: all wiped, fan grille pulled if removable
• Wardrobes and drawers: inside and out, runners checked, rails wiped
• Bedroom-window reveals: condensation patches worked with a fungicidal wash, dwelt, rinsed twice, hand-buffed dry, no painting over
• Original tile-fireplace surround: the DA14 5 Cray Road line item – soot ring dry-brushed first with soft horsehair, tile face worked with a damp microfibre on neutral pH, cast-iron grate dry-finished
• Leaded-light front bay: on the retained Cray Road and Eastbury Avenue bays – pane by pane, came dry-buffed in the direction the glazier laid it
• Doors, frames, architraves: both sides wiped, hinges cleaned, tops dusted
• Skirtings throughout: hand-wiped, edges checked at corners
• Picture rails: on the post-war LCC infill terraces toward the St Mary Cray fringe – dust strip hand-wiped
• Windows inside-pane: all panes, frames wiped, locks dusted
• Carpets: vacuumed throughout; spot-treat marks (full hot-water-extraction shampoo is a priced add-on)
• Hard floors: mopped, edges hand-wiped, original red-and-black geometric porch tile on the Cray Road detached homes finished with a neutral pH cleaner
• Stairs and banister: spindles, handrail, under-stair cupboard where the gas meter sits
• Loft hatch: surround dust-edge cleaned where present
• Curtains and nets: shaken, nets washed if requested
• Furniture-back: behind beds, sofas, freestanding pieces
• Final torch walk: low side-light to catch what daylight hides on a winter check-out

End of tenancy is the hand-back clean. Deep clean is a once-a-year reset for staying. Regular weekly is for keeping it tidy. The list above is the first one.

What it costs in Foots Cray

Studios start at £156. One-beds £207. Two-beds £243. Three-beds £339. Four-beds £425. Add £36 per bedroom for carpet shampoo, £77 for a single oven, £110 for a double, £114 for a 90cm range, and £115 for whole-flat carpet on a two-bed. Pricing is fixed-price not hourly, the 57-point agent-approved checklist applied, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee included. No VAT add-on, no fuel surcharge across DA14 5, no premium for the streets running into the St Mary Cray fringe or the Five Arches end of the Meadows. Hourly bespoke work where a full EOT is overkill runs at £30 per cleaner.

For comparison, the National Living Wage rose to £12.21 an hour in April 2025 and is moving to £12.71 from April 2026 (gov.uk minimum wage rates).

What your Foots Cray letting agent will actually check

1. Original tile-fireplace surround on the Cray Road detached – soot ring on the upper tile face, cast-iron grate dust-edge
2. Leaded-light front bay – came between the panes, dry-buff direction
3. Kitchen-extractor housing inside upper face – grease film
4. Oven door glass between layers – browned residue
5. Bath-tap chrome and shower-screen runner – calcium ridge
6. WC base, behind cistern, hinge gap
7. Fridge and freezer seals – mould lines on rubber
8. Washing-machine drawer rear and door seal
9. Skirtings throughout, especially behind freestanding furniture
10. Bedroom-window reveals on the LCC fringe terraces – condensation patch
11. Stair carpet at the foot of the stairs and the half-landing turn
12. Inside-pane glass on every window, frame, lock
13. Light-switch tops and socket-front edges
14. Front porch tile on the surviving original red-and-black geometric Cray Road porches

How booking works

1. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Tell us the postcode (DA14 5), the bedroom count, and your move-out date.
2. We confirm a fixed quote on the call. Carpet add-on, oven type, and access quirks (resident-only bays on a few inner side-streets, the High Street loading restriction outside school-run hours, narrow-lane access on the streets backing onto Foots Cray Meadows) get talked through then.
3. We email a written confirmation with the start time and team lead’s name.
4. The team arrives, usually two cleaners on the High Street semis and three on a four-bed Cray Road detached. They work to the 57-point checklist. Photos taken on completion if you want them for the deposit file.
5. Inventory clerk attends within 48 hours. If they flag anything on our checklist, we come back free. If they flag something outside the checklist (a pre-existing chip in a fireplace tile, a curtain yellowed with age), that is an inventory dispute and we will back you up with our photos.

Related services and neighbouring areas

If you are booking the end of tenancy clean, common add-ons:

• Carpet shampoo and stain treatment – the hallway runner on the long Cray Road detached homes, and the foot-of-stairs patch on family lets
• Standalone oven cleaning – if the rest of the property is fine and only the cooker recess on the side galley let you down
• Window cleaning – external glazing on the retained 1930s leaded-light front bays
• Upholstery cleaning – landlord furniture on the part-furnished High Street semis
• Hard floor restoration – original red-and-black geometric porch tile on a few of the surviving Cray Road and Eastbury Avenue front porches
• After-builders cleaning – if the landlord ran works between tenancies

Neighbouring areas we cover for end of tenancy across the wider Bexley patch:

• Bexley end of tenancy – the borough hub with every neighbourhood we cover
• Sidcup East end of tenancy – the A20-feed parade two stops north on the Sidcup line
• North Cray end of tenancy – the rural Cray valley villages east of the Bexley boundary
• East Wickham end of tenancy – the inter-war pebbledash semi spine on Wickham Lane
• Lamorbey end of tenancy – the inter-war semis west of Sidcup, near Lamorbey Park

We work with 300+ letting agents across our London, Kent and Surrey books, and to date we have helped recover over £1.2m in deposits across the same patch.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in Foots Cray?

From £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed flat in one of the Sidcup-station feed-in modern blocks, £243 for a two-bed semi off the High Street Foots Cray, £339 for a three-bed inter-war detached on Cray Road or Eastbury Avenue, and £425 for a four-bed detached. Carpet shampoo and double-oven add-ons are priced separately. The price is fixed, not hourly.

How long does the clean take?

A one-bed flat in one of the Sidcup-station modern blocks takes four to five hours with two cleaners. A three-bed Cray Road detached runs seven to eight hours with two cleaners, mostly because the original tile-fireplace surround and the leaded-light front bay slow the work. A four-bed detached is a long day. We do not rush by the clock; we work to the checklist.

Do you guarantee my deposit back?

We cannot guarantee the deposit because the inventory has many lines we do not touch (paint, wear and tear, the landlord’s furniture). What we guarantee is the cleaning side: if the inventory clerk flags any cleaning issue within 48 hours of our visit, we come back at no charge and put it right. 97% of our jobs pass the inventory first time.

Are you insured?

Yes. Public liability cover is in place at £5m. We are Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House number 9919639, trading since 2014. Insurance certificate available on request.

Do I need to be there for the clean?

No. Most DA14 5 clients drop a key with the letting agent on Sidcup High Street, often Robinson Jackson Sidcup or Sinclair Hammelton, or use a key safe on the front porch. We send a written check-out report by email when we leave.

Do you bring all the cleaning products?

Yes. The proper hard-water descaler, the soft horsehair brushes for the original tile-fireplace soot rings on the Cray Road detached homes, the dry-buff microfibres for any leaded-light came, and the hot-water-extraction kit for the carpet add-on. You do not need to leave anything behind.

What if my landlord uses a specific inventory company?

Tell us the firm when you book. We have worked with most of the inventory clerks who rotate through Robinson Jackson Sidcup, Sinclair Hammelton, Andrews, Acorn and Dexters Sidcup across DA14 5, and we know which ones lean strict on which categories.

Do you clean the original tile fireplace and the front bay on the Cray Road detached?

Yes. The original tile-fireplace surround and, where present, the leaded-light front bay are both included in the standard end of tenancy clean. We dry-brush the surround face with soft horsehair, work the tile face with a damp microfibre on neutral pH, dry-finish the cast-iron grate, and on the bay we work pane by pane and dry-buff the came in the right direction. No extra charge.

How do you handle the soot ring under a 1980s gas-fire insert?

We do not wet-scour it. The soot ring is a thin carbon film bonded with the tile glaze; a wet abrasive scour hazes the glaze and the haze shows on a side-light photo. We dust the surround face dry first with soft horsehair, then work the tile in slow circular passes with a slightly damp microfibre and a neutral pH cleaner, and finish the cast-iron grate dry. Power-washing cracks the glaze.

Do you handle HMO common parts under Bexley’s licensing regime?

Yes. HMO common parts (stairs, hallway, shared kitchen, shared bathroom) get priced as standard rooms. Foots Cray sits in the Cray Meadows ward and is not covered by Bexley’s Belvedere selective licensing scheme, but the borough’s 16 September 2016 Article 4 Direction still requires planning permission for small HMO conversion on a Cray Road detached. The national mandatory HMO licensing regime applies to any property with five or more occupants forming two or more households.

What about hard-water mineral scale on chrome shower fittings?

Thames Water across DA14 runs at around 290 to 310 parts per million, very-hard band. We use a proper paste descale with the right dwell time, then polish dry. The lower edge of the shower-screen runner is where the line item lands on the inventory walk most often.

Can you do same-week or next-day jobs in DA14 5?

Usually yes for the Foots Cray patch. Same-day is harder but we sometimes manage it for a smaller flat. Phone the office, do not rely on email for short-notice work.

What payment methods do you accept?

Bank transfer is the cleanest method. Card payment over the phone is available via Stripe. Cash on the day is fine on smaller jobs but ask first. We do not take cheques.

Do you cover the streets backing onto Foots Cray Meadows and the Five Arches?

Yes. The whole DA14 5 patch is on our regular round, including the streets running east to the Five Arches Bridge, the Meadows-fronting plots, and the streets toward the St Mary Cray fringe. Resident-only parking on a few of the inner side-streets means the team may walk a short distance from the nearest legal bay; we factor that in.

Where can I read more about my rights as a tenant?

The deposit-protection schemes publish plain-English guides: Tenancy Deposit Scheme tenant pages, mydeposits and DPS. Shelter’s housing advice on private renting covers the new periodic tenancy regime in detail.

Ready to book?

Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the postcode, bedroom count and move-out date. Three-bed Cray Road inter-war detached from £339, agent-approved, original tile-fireplace surround dry-worked properly, 48-hour re-clean if the clerk flags anything on the 57-point checklist.