The clerk who inventories the flats above the Camden Passage antique shops always opens the kitchen extractor first, because fried-food residue from years of cooking in a galley kitchen with one small window is the deduction nobody photographs in time. That is the standard an end of tenancy clean around Islington Green has to beat: the agent-side check-out report, walked line by line, not a tidy Sunday with a mop. We are a deposit-focused cleaning firm working all of N1, priced at £30 per hour per cleaner with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the clerk’s report. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price in about three minutes.
Last updated June 2026. We cover the Islington Green triangle and the wider N1: the Upper Street and Camden Passage frontage, Essex Road, Liverpool Road, Duncan Terrace and Colebrooke Row down toward the canal. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Islington.
What you are actually marked against
Begin with the document, because the document is the whole argument. When you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote a check-in inventory: every surface described, photographed, dated, with “new” or “as new” against the kitchen and bathroom on the day a professional clean had just been done. At check-out, the same agent compares your flat against that report, line by line, and anything materially worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, can be charged against your deposit. You are not being judged against clean. You are being judged against the photographs of a professional clean, which is why a free weekend with a mop so rarely clears the bar.
The money is concrete. On the DIY check-outs we get called in to rescue, the deductions cluster: roughly £85 to £120 on the oven, £80 to £150 on grout and hard-water marks, £150 to £350 on carpets. Set that against a flat carrying a deposit of £1,800 or more and the arithmetic settles itself. Most tenants run that sum only after they have failed the first check-out, which is a pity, because the first round is the cheap one to win.
Why is the clerk so thorough here? The deposit is large, the agent is on the hook for protecting it, and an inspection where real money sits in a scheme is genuinely adversarial. You turn up with evidence, not optimism. Two laws pull opposite ways. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 stops a landlord making a professional clean a contractual condition, so nobody can compel you to book us. Damp and mould, though, are a landlord obligation under the Homes Act 2018, not a tenant cleaning failure, so where we find genuine damp we photograph it and the charge lands where it belongs.
The stock around the Green, and why it matters at hand-back
Islington Green itself is the small triangle of grass at the south end of Upper Street, where it meets Essex Road, with the Hugh Myddelton statue on it. The housing fans out from there and it is not one thing. This is one of London’s great Georgian townscapes, so the spine of it is handsome Georgian and early-Victorian terraces along Upper Street, Charlton Place, Duncan Terrace and Colebrooke Row, much of it now carved into flats. A good slice sits above the shops, restaurants and antique units that run down Camden Passage and along Upper Street toward Angel. Behind that sits a band of 1980s and 1990s infill, a few mansion blocks, and some newer build nearer the City Road basin.
The flats above the shops are where deductions bite hardest, for reasons specific to the building type. Cooking smells settle into the extractor runs. The shared stairs to the upper flats get neglected because no single tenant owns them. The window heads at the front carry decades of Upper Street traffic film, because this road has been a main route into the City for two centuries. Clerks working for the Upper Street agents know precisely where the last tenant stopped short.
You are not being judged against clean. You are being judged against the photographs of a professional clean.
The period conversions are the other careful job. A flat in a Georgian terrace on Charlton Place will have picture rails, cornice, deep skirting, panelled doors and tall windows, and the inventory names those features one by one. Picture-rail dust is the single most reliable deduction we see, because every one of these flats has the rails and most tenants never think to wipe them. Aggressive products go nowhere near original paint or plaster. We do the detail by hand, because a scuffed original architrave is a far bigger deduction than a missed oven.
Licensing, and what 1 May 2026 shifted
Islington runs one of the more active landlord-licensing regimes in inner London, and it is worth knowing where your flat sits. Borough-wide additional licensing for houses in multiple occupation started on 1 February 2026 and runs for five years, so an HMO outside mandatory licensing now needs a licence anywhere in the borough. Islington Green sits in St Peter’s and Canalside ward, which is not in the council’s selective-licensing scheme. The practical point for the Green: most section-257 conversions above the Upper Street and Camden Passage shops are caught by the additional HMO scheme, and a licensed property carries stricter inventory documentation, so the check-out clean gets filed against the licence record. The council’s property licensing pages hold the current ward map.
The other change is the bigger headline. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone, and every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic tenancy, so a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point rather than waiting for a fixed term to end.
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 arithmetic is what it was the week before. What changed is timing. Islington Green was already a high-churn patch, full of one-year professional lets, and rolling notice makes the move-outs more frequent and less predictable. The month-end pile-up that already clogs N1 is not going to ease, so the dull, paying advice is to book earlier than you used to: same standard, tighter calendar, busier month-ends.
The 57 things, room by room
Every booking around the Green runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of N1 check-outs and tuned to what these clerks flag. The full list comes with the job; here is the shape of it.
The kitchen, where most of the deposit goes
The oven is stripped, not wiped. Racks soak in a tank, the door glass is split apart so the brown film between the panes comes out, and the interior, fan, element and seals are all done. In a Camden Passage galley kitchen that extractor hood is the first thing the clerk reaches for, so it is degreased inside and out and the filter soaked or swapped. Hob rings and burners come off, control knobs off and washed. Every cupboard, inside and out, including the awkward deep corners. Fridge and freezer cleaned through once defrosted, and the integrated units have their own quirks we know. Appliances pulled out so the gaps behind and under the fridge, dishwasher and washing machine get done, then put back. The washing machine drum, drawer and door seal. Dishwasher filter, seals and spray arms. Sink, taps and plughole descaled, because the hard water never misses that. Tiles and grout scrubbed, including the splashback grout behind the hob that DIY cleans skip. Floor mopped, edges by hand.
Bathrooms, the other place it goes wrong
Hard-water scale comes off the taps, shower head, screen and tiles first, with care on the older chrome in the period flats. Grout is scrubbed back as far as honest effort takes it, and photographed first where it is clearly past saving. Then the rest, in plain order.
- Toilet done properly: inside, under the rim, base, cistern, hinges, and behind the pedestal where only the clerk looks
- Shower screen both sides, tracks and the sealant bead; bath, taps, the underside of the taps, overflow and plughole
- Mirrors and cabinets, and behind them where they come away from the wall
- Extractor fan vent dusted and the sealant cleaned to a usable state, because re-sealing is a handyman job, not a cleaning one
- Floor into the corners, behind the loo and under the basin pedestal
Bedrooms, living rooms and the bits between
Inside every wardrobe, drawer and built-in cupboard. Picture rails, cornice, ceiling roses, skirting, door frames, doors, handles and finger plates, all of which a Georgian or early-Victorian flat has and the inventory lists. Window sills, reveals and frames on the inside, with the tall original windows needing slow, careful work. Radiators behind, under and on top; a cast-iron one takes longer than a modern panel. Walls spot-wiped for marks, with a realistic line drawn, because nail holes and scuffs are a decorator’s bill, not yours to scrub away. Hard floors washed with the right product, upholstery hoovered through.
Two of these often need a separate pass. Professional hot-water extraction on carpets is written into a lot of N1 tenancies as a hard requirement, which the carpet cleaning add-on covers on the same visit, and hard-used sofas in shared lets sometimes want full upholstery cleaning rather than a hoover. Then everything else: sockets, thermostats and entryphones, internal doors both sides, the communal stairs and bannisters an above-shop let almost always includes, and cobwebs out of the corners. Then a final walk-through, photographed before and after, every room. That photo set is the evidence you keep.
What hard water does to an N1 bathroom
Islington sits in London’s hard-water zone, fed off the Thames Valley chalk, and that one fact costs more deposits here than almost anything except the oven. Thames Water runs the N1 supply at roughly 300 mg per litre of calcium carbonate, the hard end of the scale, and you can check the figure for your own postcode on the Thames Water hardness page. Scale builds on taps, shower heads, screens and tile joints faster than tenants expect, and a wipe with a cloth does nothing to it. The clerk checks for it deliberately: a thumbnail down the tap, the screen read edge-on against the light, the shower head pulled in close. Scale set into chrome is slow work, and in the period flats the fittings are sometimes original, which rules out the brute-force descalers a newer flat would shrug off.
Grout is the companion problem, the line between a pass and a deduction here more often than carpets are. We scrub it rather than wipe it, and where it is genuinely past saving, which happens in long lets, we photograph the state before we start so the clerk cannot bill you for wear that was already there at check-in. That dated photograph has settled more disputes than any argument. A clerk cannot charge for grout that was already grey in the check-in pictures, and they know it, which is why the well-documented jobs rarely draw a quarrel.
That dated photograph has settled more disputes than any argument.
Specialist surfaces sit outside the scrub-and-go work. Original boards in a Duncan Terrace flat, a tiled hallway in a Charlton Place conversion, engineered board in a newer canalside block: each takes its own product, which is what the floor cleaning add-on is for. Exterior glass on a first-floor flat above the Passage is a separate job too, folded into the same visit when the inventory asks for it.
What it costs, and the sum nobody runs in time
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio flat (Upper Street, Camden Passage) | 3–4 hours, 1 cleaner | From £156 |
| 1-bed flat or above-shop conversion | 4–5 hours, 2 cleaners | From £207 |
| 2-bed flat (Charlton Place, Duncan Terrace) | 5–7 hours, 2 cleaners | From £243 |
| 3-bed flat or maisonette | 6–8 hours, 2 cleaners | From £339 |
| 4-bed house or large conversion | 8–10 hours, 2–3 cleaners | From £425 |
| Carpet cleaning add-on | Same visit | From £36 a room |
| Oven-only spec | 1.5–2 hours | From £77 |
Islington Green runs at our standard London pricing: a studio £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425, all at £30 per hour per cleaner with kit, products and travel included. Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape. A long tenancy with heavy wear, a pet household or a smoker’s flat costs more, and we say so on the phone rather than after. No surprise lines on the invoice.
Run the maths the way the deposit makes you. A one-bed at £207 to protect a deposit of £1,800 or more is not really a decision. Every booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the agent flags any cleanliness issue inside 48 hours, we come back and redo it free, provided you tell us in that window and the flat is still as we left it. The guarantee is the real point, but the record is there too: a 97% first-time pass rate, 300+ letting agents who know us, and over the years £1.2m in deposits recovered for tenants that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. That is the whole job: money that stays with the tenant.
Three jobs get muddled, 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 a vague idea of “clean”.
- End-of-tenancy clean
- Built to pass that inventory and get a deposit back, with the flat empty and the 48-hour guarantee on it, at £30 an hour.
- Deep clean
- A deep clean resets a home you are keeping, with no formal standard to hit, also from £30 an hour.
- Regular domestic clean
- A regular domestic clean is ongoing maintenance, from £22 an hour.
A Charlton Place job from February
“We handed back a two-bed in a Georgian terrace on Charlton Place after three years sharing it, two of us, both working long hours and neither of us had touched the cooker properly the whole time. The agent had flagged the oven and the bathroom grout in advance. Monster sent two cleaners for about six hours, stripped the oven, descaled the lot and did the carpets on the same visit. I had braced for a fight and Currell signed it off the next morning. We split a deposit of just under £2,000 back, in full, a fortnight later. The photo file they left did the talking.”
Daniel, Charlton Place N1, February 2026
That job is a fair example of the pattern around the Green: a longer professional share, an oven nobody had dealt with, a grout note from the agent, and a clerk who checks. The clean cost a fraction of what was at stake, as it usually does. What turned it was the dated photo set that went out with the invoice, the part most DIY check-outs simply do not have when the agent pushes back.
Booking it around the market and the parking
Booking is four short steps, but the timing around here has its own rhythm.
- Ring 0333 555 2076. Price in about three minutes. Give us the postcode, property size, check-out date and any known problem areas. Out of hours, send us a message or email [email protected] and we call you back first thing.
- We book you in, ideally the day before check-out with a buffer. Allow 7 to 10 days for an end-of-month slot and 3 to 5 days mid-month.
- Flat empty when we arrive. Furniture out, personal things gone, rubbish cleared. We also do removals if you want the move and the clean on one booking, which helps on N1’s permit-only streets.
- Photo proof at the end. Every room, before and after, with an itemised invoice on company-headed paper. That is your evidence pack if the check-out tries to deduct.
Two honest notes about this patch. For the flats above the Camden Passage shops we usually start early, around 8am, because access up the narrow side stairs is far easier before the antique market sets up on a Wednesday or Saturday. And parking is the worst part of a move-out day here: almost all of N1 is permit-controlled and the bays are tight, so tell us the arrangement when you book, and confirm how we get in. If you are not sure whether your flat counts as Islington Green, Angel or Barnsbury, ring with the postcode; we cover the lot, including Angel, Barnsbury, Canonbury and Upper Street.
Questions we get asked
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost around Islington Green?
For a standard empty flat: studio £156, one-bed £207, two-bed £243, three-bed £339, four-bed £425, all at £30 per hour per cleaner with kit, products and travel inside the borough included. Add-ons for carpet, oven and range are priced separately, and we give a firm number on the phone.
Do I really need a professional clean to get my deposit back?
You are allowed to do it yourself; the Tenant Fees Act 2019 stops a landlord making it a contractual condition. The catch is the benchmark: the check-in standard was set by a professional clean, and the Upper Street agents brief thorough inventory clerks. With deposits around the Green commonly above £1,800, the maths usually points one way.
Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change the cleaning at the end?
No. From 1 May 2026, Section 21 evictions are abolished and existing assured shorthold tenancies convert to periodic tenancies, so you can give two months’ notice at any point. The cleaning obligations at end of tenancy are unchanged. The real effect around Islington Green is more frequent and less predictable move-outs, so book as early as you can, especially for month-end.
Is the water around N1 really that hard?
Yes. Thames Water supplies Islington off the Thames Valley chalk at roughly 300 mg per litre of calcium carbonate, the hard end of the scale. We descale the taps, shower head, screen, tiles and the toilet pan, plus the kettle element where one is supplied, as part of every hand-back.
What about the picture rails and cornice in the older flats?
Picture rails, cornice, ceiling roses and door-frame tops are checked with a torch on every period flat we clean around the Green. They are the single most missed feature in conversions of this age, and the most common deduction trigger in the above-shop flats, so they get done every visit.
Which letting agents do you work with around here?
We are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London. Around Islington Green that means regular work with the Upper Street firms, among them Currell, Foxtons, Hamilton Fox, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward and Hudsons, plus a number of N1 independents. A specific inventory requirement is briefed to the cleaners before we start.
Does my flat need a property licence, and does that affect the clean?
Possibly. Islington has run borough-wide additional HMO licensing since 1 February 2026, so a shared house outside mandatory licensing now needs a licence anywhere in the borough, including the section-257 conversions above the Upper Street and Camden Passage shops. Islington Green’s ward is not in the council’s selective-licensing scheme. A licensed property carries stricter inventory paperwork, so the check-out clean is filed against the licence record, and our photo file fits that.
What happens if the inventory clerk flags something afterwards?
Tell us inside 48 hours and we re-attend free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee, provided the flat is still as we left it with nobody moved in. The agent’s inventory walk is the trigger; you do not need a formal complaint. We have stood by that guarantee on every job since 2014.
What if my landlord disputes the clean after a re-clean?
Escalate to your deposit scheme’s free adjudication, whether that is the TDS, the DPS or mydeposits. Our invoice, dated photo report and re-clean record are admissible evidence, and a tenant with a complete professional-clean paper trail very rarely loses. Shelter’s guidance walks through the steps.
Are you insured and properly registered?
Yes. Monster Cleaning Ltd is registered at Companies House under company number 9919639 and has traded since 2014. We carry public liability and employer’s liability cover, and every cleaner arrives in uniform with the checklist printed.
Other Monster Cleaning services in Islington Green
Staying put rather than moving out? We also offer carpet cleaning in Islington Green, oven cleaning in Islington Green and domestic cleaning in Islington Green.