On a Cornwall Gardens split flat the inventory clerk spends the first ten minutes in the entrance hall, not the kitchen: down on the original parquet edge where a year of Gloucester Road grit has ground in against the skirting, then out under the Ionic porch to check the encaustic tile grout.
That is where a five-figure South Kensington deposit is won or lost, and it is the bit a rushed clean always misses. We do the SW7 hand-back clean to the 57-point agent-approved checklist, at a fixed price by bedroom count, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.
Last updated June 2026. We cover SW7 4 and SW7 5: Gloucester Road itself, Cornwall Gardens, Stanhope Gardens, Hereford Square, the Cornwall and Queen’s Gate mews fringes, Ashburn Place and the Cromwell Road frontage. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Kensington and Chelsea.
Why does the entrance hall decide a Gloucester Road deposit?
End of tenancy cleaning
from £156
For a studio, fixed by property size, agreed before we start.
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Because the check-in report told the clerk to look there, and because the finish is original.
- When you moved into a stuccoed split flat on this stretch, a clerk walked it and wrote a line-by-line inventory, almost always with photographs, almost always with the parquet vestibule and the Ionic-porch tile named as their own entries and marked “good” or “as new”. They were true on the day, because the flat had just been professionally cleaned.
- At check-out a different clerk walks it again and compares, line by line.
- Anything materially worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, is chargeable against your deposit.
You are marked against a professional clean, which is why a mop and a spare Sunday rarely gets a South Kensington flat over the line.
The money here is not abstract. On the SW7 deposits held in a scheme, five figures is ordinary rather than exceptional, so the inspection is genuinely adversarial and the clerk is paid to find faults.
Three finishes fail more often than anything else on the split-terrace flats:
- the parquet edge band along the entrance-hall skirting and the cracked-board lines
- the encaustic Ionic-porch tile grout
- the lime haze on the original basin and bath-shower mixer
On the grand mansion-block flats the pattern shifts to the cornice perimeter high on the reception walls, the painted secondary stair, and the same period-fitting lime.
Two bits of law sit behind all of this.
- The Tenant Fees Act 2019
- A landlord cannot make professional cleaning a contractual condition, so nobody can force you to book us. It also caps your deposit at five weeks’ rent, which on Gloucester Road rents is still a very large sum.
- Damp
- Where we find genuine damp behind a wardrobe or in a cold bathroom corner we photograph it, because that is a landlord repair issue and not a tenant cleaning failure.
What 1 May 2026 changed for South Kensington move-outs
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026.
- Section 21
- No-fault eviction is gone.
- Existing tenancies
- Every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has become a periodic tenancy.
- Notice
- A tenant can now give two months’ notice at any point in the year rather than waiting out a fixed term.
Here is the part people get wrong. The cleaning side of a move-out did not change at all. The Tenant Fees Act still applies, the check-in benchmark still applies, and the deposit maths is what it was the week before.
What changed is timing, and timing bites hard on Gloucester Road, where the tenant pool is unusually international:
- diplomatic postings tied to the embassies off Kensington Palace Gardens
- corporate lets run through the serviced blocks
- academics on Imperial College contracts
- families on a single school year
Let those tenancies unwind on a rolling two months instead of a fixed end date and the hand-backs get more frequent and far less predictable.
The practical takeaway is dull and it pays for itself. Book the clean earlier than you used to. The slot you want, on the morning your clerk is coming, will be gone if you leave it to the day before.
The cleaning side of a move-out did not change at all.
The 57 things we work through, and the ones that lose deposits
Every Gloucester Road booking runs to a 57-point checklist built over a decade of South Kensington check-outs and tuned to what these clerks actually flag. The full list comes with the job.
Below is the focused version, the points that decide a SW7 hand-back, in the order the clerk walks a flat.
- Parquet entrance-hall floor: dust pass plus the edge band ground into the skirting line, and the grit sitting in the cracked-board joints
- Ionic-porch encaustic tile and grout under the canopy, where street dirt is walked in daily
- Cornice perimeter and picture-rail top in the high reception rooms, the band nobody reaches without a pole
- Bay-window putty bead and the corner of every pane on the original stuccoed frontage
- Original basin, bath and mixer descaled with a mild product that will not etch period chrome or brass plate
- Shower screen, tile grout floor to ceiling, tap aerators and the shower rose
- Oven hand-cleaned not wiped, the film between the door panes cleared where the glass comes apart, plus the extractor baffle and the integrated dishwasher seal
- Every cupboard inside and out including the carcase tops, and the gaps behind the fridge, washer and dishwasher
- Painted secondary stair and its dado on the mansion-block flats, and the wardrobe and cupboard interiors throughout
- Behind every radiator, the period cast-iron ones included, plus switches, sockets, door tops, the letter-flap and the meter cupboard
Two of those often need their own pass.
- Bedroom carpets
- Professional hot-water extraction is written into a lot of these tenancies as a hard line at check-out, which is what the carpet add-on covers on the same visit.
- Parquet halls
- These stay a dust-and-edge job, because the clerk wants a clean surface, not a re-finish.
We photograph each completed point, before and after, and the timestamped set goes out with the invoice as your evidence pack.
What 300ppm water does to a period South Kensington bathroom
South Kensington sits deep in London’s hard-water zone. Thames Water runs the SW7 supply at roughly 300ppm calcium carbonate, near the top of the national range, because the water drains off the Chilterns chalk before it reaches the taps.
That single fact loses more deposits on this road than anything except the oven. Calcium builds on taps, shower rose, screen and tile joints faster than tenants expect, and a wipe with a cloth does nothing to it.
The clerk checks for it:
- a thumbnail down the tap
- the screen held edge-on to the light
- the rose pulled in close
The catch on Gloucester Road is the age of the fittings. On the split-terrace flats and the older mansion blocks the basin and the bath-shower mixer are often original Victorian or Edwardian chrome and brass, and the brute-force descaler a modern flat would shrug off will strip the plating on those.
So the lime work here is slow and careful, a mild acid left to do the job rather than scrubbed hard, because a scratched original mixer is a bigger deduction than the deposit ever was.
Grout is the other quiet one, the line between a pass and a charge more often than carpets are. Where a run of it is genuinely past saving in a long let we photograph the state first, so the clerk cannot bill you for wear that was already in the check-in pictures.
That dated photo has settled more disputes than any argument has.
Gloucester Road street by street: the stock changes as you walk it
Gloucester Road runs nearly a mile, from the Cromwell Road junction by the tube down to Old Brompton Road, and the housing changes completely along it.
A serviced studio at the Cromwell Road end and a seven-window lateral on Cornwall Gardens share a postcode district and almost nothing else, so one method does not pass all of it. We work SW7 in three kinds of stock.
The stuccoed split-terrace flats: Cornwall Gardens, Stanhope Gardens, Hereford Square
This is the genuine Gloucester Road specialism. Cornwall Gardens was laid out for the Broadwood estate by Thomas Cundy III and built between 1863 and 1877, and it is Grade II listed:
- a relentless run of Italianate white stucco
- four storeys over a basement with attic above
- Ionic porches
- a continuous first-floor balustrade
Nearly every house on Cornwall Gardens, Stanhope Gardens and Hereford Square was carved into flats over the last century: upper-and-mansard, lower-and-garden, the odd whole freehold.
They keep the original parquet in the entrance vestibule and the lower stair, and the encaustic tile under the porch, which is exactly why the clerk starts there. Bay-window pane corners, balustrade dust and the period basin lime round out the list.
The mansion blocks fronting Gloucester Road itself
Along the road between the tube and the Old Brompton Road junction the stock turns to grand 1880s and 1890s mansion-block flats, and they fail on what grand blocks always fail on:
- cornice-perimeter dust twelve feet up in the reception rooms
- the painted secondary stair and its dado
- the mastic grime around the stucco bay
- a century of chalk hardness on the original basin
It is a heavier, taller job than the split flats at the same price. This is the hotel-and-embassy end near the museums quarter, so access runs through concierge desks and porters as often as a key safe.
The mews fringe and the modern infill
- Converted mews
- Off the squares sit the coach-house flats above old garages on the Cornwall and Queen’s Gate mews fringes, where the giveaway is cobble-step grit at the front door and dust in the original loft beams.
- Luxury blocks
- Behind Cornwall Gardens and along the Old Brompton Road edge are the 1990s and 2000s luxury blocks: integrated kitchens, wall-panel heating controls, and far more carpet than the period stock.
- Serviced apartments
- Ashburn Place and the Cromwell Road frontage carry the serviced-apartment stock that turns over fastest of all.
Not sure which side of a boundary your flat sits, or whether it counts as South Kensington, Earl’s Court or Queen’s Gate for the round? Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode and we will tell you in about ten seconds.
What it costs, and the maths nobody runs until the deposit is at stake
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio or serviced flat (Cromwell Road, Ashburn Place) | 3-4 hours, 1-2 cleaners | From £156 |
| One-bed conversion or mews flat | 4-5 hours, 2 cleaners | From £207 |
| Two-bed split-terrace or mansion flat | 5-7 hours, 2-3 cleaners | From £243 |
| Three-bed lateral or mansion flat | 6-8 hours, 3 cleaners | From £339 |
| Four-bed lateral (Cornwall Gardens, Stanhope Gardens) | 8-10 hours, 3-4 cleaners | From £425 |
| Carpet shampoo add-on | Same visit | From £29 a room |
| Oven as a standalone spec | 1.5-2 hours | From £77 |
The inventory scrutiny on the parquet-and-porch finish is real extra work on Gloucester Road, and a period lateral on Cornwall Gardens or Stanhope Gardens is larger than a borough-average flat. Those jobs get more hours and a bigger team at the same price for the bedroom count.
The add-ons stay at the ordinary rate:
- Carpet
- £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room and £94 for two bedrooms and a living room.
- Oven
- £31 for a single and £62 for a double or a 90cm range.
- By the hour
- For a top-up team rather than a full hand-back, it is £30 per cleaner, kit and products included.
Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape; a long let with heavy wear needs more time, and we say so on the phone, not after.
Run the maths the way the deposit makes you. A one-bed at £207 to protect a deposit capped at five weeks’ rent, on Gloucester Road rents, is barely a decision.
Every booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the clerk flags a cleaning point within 48 hours of us finishing, we come back and put it right free, as long as you tell us in that window and nobody has moved in.
We are on the books of 300+ letting agents who recognise our signed checklist, and over the years tenants working this way have recovered £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. That last number is really the whole job.
Three different jobs get muddled at move-out, and it is worth booking the right one.
- Check-in inventory report
- The document the clerk writes on day one describing every surface, with photos. It is the benchmark your check-out is judged against, which is why we clean to it rather than to a generic idea of clean.
- End-of-tenancy clean
- Built to pass that inventory and get a deposit back, against the letting-agent benchmark, with the flat empty and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee on it, at a fixed price by bedroom count or £30 per cleaner per hour for a part property.
- Deep clean
- A reset of a home you are keeping, lived-in, with no formal standard to hit and no clerk arriving. From £186: £26 per cleaner per hour for two cleaners and at least three hours, plus £30 for kit.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing upkeep on a weekly or fortnightly rota, from £23 an hour, a different service and a different team.
Licensing, the clerk, and who actually needs a licence
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea runs mandatory HMO licensing, and on top of it a borough-wide additional HMO scheme.
- Additional HMO scheme
- It took effect on 1 June 2023 and runs to 31 May 2028. It catches houses in multiple occupation not already covered by the mandatory rules, which in practice means most shared houses and flats let to three or more people forming two or more households.
- Selective licensing
- There is no selective licensing scheme in the borough, so an ordinary single-household or single-family let needs no licence at all.
Most Gloucester Road hand-backs are exactly that kind of let, so no licence is in play. But if you are a landlord with a sharer let on a converted upper flat the additional scheme applies and the clerk will ask about it.
The clerks the SW7 agents send in are not generalists. They know the corridor.
- Knight Frank, Strutt and Parker, Hamptons and Marsh and Parsons each run their own clerk panels out of their South Kensington offices.
- Foxtons cover the SW7 patch.
- The serviced-let firms at the Cromwell Road end use their own.
The walk goes like this:
- parquet-and-porch first
- then the cornice perimeter, the bay-window bead and every pane corner
- the period basin lime, the extractor baffle and the dishwasher seal
- then the wardrobe interiors and behind every radiator with a torch
A well-documented job rarely gets an argument, which is the point of handing over a dated photo set rather than a promise.
Booking it, and the mews-and-permit problem
South Kensington bunches its check-outs at month-end, and the international lets add their own clustering around term dates and posting rotations, so the good slots go early. Ring ahead. The steps are simple.
- Ring 0333 555 2076. A price in a few minutes. Give us the postcode, the bedroom count, the check-out date and time, and the name of your letting agent, and mention anything the check-in report marked “good” or “as new”.
- We confirm a fixed price by return. No quote visit on a standard split flat or mansion-block flat, we have cleaned enough of them. Allow 7 to 10 days for an end-of-month slot, 3 to 5 mid-month.
- Flat empty when we arrive. Furniture out, personal things gone, rubbish cleared, so the team can reach the skirting, the cupboard carcases and the gaps behind the appliances.
- Photo proof at the end. Every room, before and after, timestamped against the 57-point checklist, with the invoice on company-headed paper. That is your evidence pack.
- Check-out happens. Anything the clerk flags inside 48 hours, we come back and fix free.
One honest note on access, because it is the real friction on this street. Tell us the arrangement when you book.
- Parking
- Gloucester Road and the squares off it are controlled-parking throughout, the bays are tight, and a mews address can mean the van cannot get close at all.
- Mansion blocks
- The way in is often a concierge desk or a porter rather than a key, and confirming that in advance takes the sting out of the morning.
We also run removals if you want the move and the clean on one booking, which genuinely helps when several van trips down a permit-controlled mews would otherwise turn into a problem.
The same round covers Notting Hill, Mayfair and Maida Vale when a tenancy straddles a boundary.
Questions we get asked
How much is end of tenancy cleaning on Gloucester Road?
We charge £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. The parquet-and-porch inventory scrutiny and the scale of a Cornwall Gardens or Stanhope Gardens lateral take extra hours, and we staff for them. Add-ons stay at the normal rate: carpet from £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, £94 for two bedrooms and a living room, and oven at £31 single, £62 double or a 90cm range.
Do you cover the Cornwall Gardens and Stanhope Gardens stucco houses?
Yes. The Broadwood-estate stucco terraces that Thomas Cundy III laid out on Cornwall Gardens, built between 1863 and 1877, plus the Italianate fronts on Stanhope Gardens and Hereford Square, are the bulk of our SW7 4 and SW7 5 work. The conversion pattern shifts house to house, upper-and-mansard here, lower-and-garden there, the occasional whole freehold. We price by bedroom count whatever the layout.
Is SW7 water hard enough to leave lime on period fittings?
Yes. Thames Water runs the South Kensington supply at roughly 300ppm calcium carbonate, near the top of the London range because the source drains off the Chilterns chalk. The original Victorian basins and the Edwardian bath-shower mixers on the mansion-block flats show the haze first. We descale them with a mild product that suits period chrome and brass, not a strong acid that etches the plate.
Will the inventory clerk really check the entrance hall parquet?
Yes. On a Stanhope Gardens or Cornwall Gardens hand-back the parquet edge band against the skirting and the Ionic-porch tile grout are two of the most-flagged lines on the whole report. Knight Frank, Strutt and Parker and Hamptons each keep a note against those finishes on the inventory PDF, and the clerk walks the hall before anything else.
Do you clean the mansion-block flats fronting Gloucester Road itself?
Yes. The 1880s and 1890s mansion blocks strung along Gloucester Road between the tube and the Old Brompton Road are on the same round. It is a different job from the split-terrace flats, with twelve-foot reception ceilings, a deep cornice perimeter and a painted secondary stair, at the same price per bedroom.
What about the newer infill behind Cornwall Gardens?
We cover it. The 1990s and 2000s luxury blocks tucked behind Cornwall Gardens and along the Old Brompton Road fringe come with integrated kitchens, wall-panel heating controls and a lot more carpet than the period stock. The work list is different, the per-bedroom price is the same.
How quickly can you book a Gloucester Road clean?
Usually next day or the day after. SW7 sits inside our regular Kensington round and we hold capacity on it most weeks. A check-out morning is fine as long as you ring the day before, ideally before 8am so we can slot the team ahead of the clerk.
Can you clean on the morning of check-out?
Yes. We run early starts on Gloucester Road most weekdays, arriving at 8am or 9am and working straight through to finish before the clerk’s usual early-afternoon slot. On a two-bed Italianate split flat that is a team of three or four for roughly four hours.
Do you re-wax or restore the original parquet?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who says they will as part of a move-out clean. We do the dust pass and the edge band along the skirting and the cracked-board lines, which is what the clerk marks. A parquet floor that genuinely needs sanding and re-finishing is a specialist flooring job, not end-of-tenancy work.
Do you clean the Ionic-porch tile grout?
Yes. Most of the Stanhope Gardens and Hereford Square conversions kept the original encaustic tile under the porch canopy, and a year of street grit sits in the grout by check-out. We work it with a soft dry pad and a non-acid grout pen. The clerk notices it, so we do it every time.
Can you do the carpets on the same visit?
Yes if you book it in. Carpet shampoo is a separate add-on, £29 a bedroom and £36 a living room, or £94 for two bedrooms and a living room. We run the carpet pass after the dust pass so the lifted grime ends up on the wet extractor head rather than back down on the hard floors we have just finished.
Is there really a re-clean guarantee?
Yes. Every Gloucester Road booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if your clerk flags a cleaning point within 48 hours of us finishing, we come back and put it right at no charge, provided you tell us in that window and nobody has moved in. It applies whether your agent is Knight Frank, Strutt and Parker, Hamptons, Marsh and Parsons, Foxtons or one of the serviced-let firms at the Cromwell Road end.
Does RBKC need a special licence on a Gloucester Road let?
Only if it is a house in multiple occupation. The Royal Borough runs mandatory HMO licensing plus a borough-wide additional HMO scheme, in force from 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2028, catching most homes let to three or more people from two or more households. There is no selective scheme covering ordinary single-household lets, and most Gloucester Road hand-backs are exactly that, so no licence is in play.
What is the 57-point checklist?
It is the 57-point agent-approved checklist we run on every clean: kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, reception rooms, entrance hall, secondary stair, then the throughout list of switches, doors and radiators. Each line is a specific item. The team lead signs it off on a tablet with a timestamped photo of each point, and you get the whole set by email. That dated report is the evidence that has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits.