Who owns your Kennington flat, and why it matters at check-out
The Duchy of Cornwall has held land in Kennington since 1337, and a good slice of the area is still its freehold. That single fact shapes more of an end of tenancy clean here than you would expect. A lot of the flats we clean in SE11 sit inside ex-Duchy terraces and Georgian houses split into two or three lets, where the building is leasehold, the freehold sits with an old estate, and the managing agent runs a tight ship at check-out. The deposit on a flat like that gets judged against a check-in report that someone took seriously, because the agent answers to a freeholder who has been letting property here for the better part of seven centuries.
Most of our local work is in those period conversions rather than tower blocks. Kennington never got the wholesale rebuild that Vauxhall did a mile north, so the housing stock is older, the rooms are taller, and the quirks are the ones that come with Georgian and Regency brick: deep skirtings, picture rails, original floors under the carpet, and plumbing that throws limescale because this is a hard-water part of London. A clean that passes in a new flat is not automatically a clean that passes here.
The Duchy laid out a good deal of this housing itself. Courtenay Square and Denny Crescent, the trim brick terraces off Kennington Lane, went up under the estate in the early twentieth century and are listed now, and around them sit the older Georgian and Regency streets that were divided into flats decades ago. What that ownership means in practice is leasehold. A lot of the flats we clean are leasehold, sometimes share-of-freehold, sometimes still ex-Duchy stock, and a leasehold flat with a managing agent in the chain tends to get a more formal check-out than a small landlord’s let does. The agent has to answer to a freeholder, the freeholder keeps records, and the inventory clerk knows it.
That is the short version. The rest of this page is the detail: the selective licence your landlord has needed since last September, what a deposit-back clean actually covers in a period flat, where the money tends to leak, what we charge, and how a booking runs around the Oval and the Tube.
The selective licence your landlord has needed since September
If you rent in Kennington, the licensing position changed recently and it is worth getting right. Lambeth runs two separate schemes, and as of last autumn both of them reach this part of the borough.
Take the newer one first, because it is the one that surprises people. From 1 September 2025 the Kennington ward came into Lambeth’s selective licensing scheme, in the second phase of a roll-out that now covers most of the borough. Selective licensing is the one that catches ordinary lets, a flat rented to a single household or to two unrelated sharers, not just house-shares. So a standard one-bed let in Kennington or in the neighbouring Oval ward now needs a licence to be let legally, where eighteen months ago it did not. The council put nineteen wards into that second phase, and the only two wards left out of the whole scheme are Vauxhall and Waterloo and South Bank. Kennington is firmly inside it.
The other scheme is older and broader. Lambeth’s additional HMO licensing scheme has covered the entire borough since December 2021. It catches the smaller house-shares, where three or more people from more than one household share a kitchen or a bathroom. A Georgian house off Kennington Road split into a flat for three sharing friends usually falls under it, and the landlord needs that licence on top of anything else. Mandatory licensing for larger HMOs of five or more people applies across the country and sits above both.
Why does any of this matter when you are just trying to get a deposit back? Because a landlord who is unlicensed cannot serve a valid section 21 notice and can be ordered to repay rent, so the paperwork being in order protects you as much as it does them. None of it changes the cleaning. It does change the questions a tenant in a Kennington house-share is entitled to ask when the tenancy ends. The wider rules around deposits and notice shifted again under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, but the core duty, that your deposit must be protected and that there is a free service to settle disputes, has not moved.
What a deposit-back clean covers in a period flat
A deposit is protected by law in one of three government-backed schemes within thirty days of the landlord taking it. The rules on deposit protection are the same in a Kennington flat as anywhere else in England. What differs is the baseline you are measured against, and in an older flat with a careful agent that baseline can be exacting.
Cleaning is the single most common deduction at the end of a tenancy, ahead of damage and redecoration, and it is also the one you can most easily argue down if the work is done properly. Citizens Advice puts the test plainly: a landlord can charge for cleaning only where the flat is left less clean than it was at check-in, and fair wear and tear is not chargeable. The catch in a Kennington conversion is that the check-in report often runs to detail the tenant never reads until it is used against them.
The clean we do is whole-property and it is keyed to that report rather than to a vague idea of tidy. We bring our own kit and materials, and the team stays until the checklist is done rather than clocking off at the hour. The work runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, which exists because the agents themselves told us where their inventory clerks fail people. In a period flat the recurring offenders are specific: the inside of the oven, limescale on bathroom fittings, dust on top of picture rails and door frames, the grime in the corners of original sash windows, and the marks on skirtings that a quick hoover never touches.
Here is roughly what the standard clean includes, and it is the same list whether the flat is a studio over a shop on Kennington Road or a two-bed in a Cleaver Square terrace:
- Kitchen: oven degreased inside and out, hob and extractor cleaned, cupboards wiped inside and on top, sink descaled, the fridge and freezer cleaned out.
- Bathrooms scrubbed and descaled throughout, tile grout cleaned, glass and chrome polished, the toilet sanitised inside and behind.
- Skirting boards, door frames, light switches and sockets, internal glass and mirrors wiped down.
- Carpets hoovered, hard floors mopped, and every room left dust-free top to bottom.
Our first-time pass rate sits at 97%, and on the rare occasion a clerk flags something, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee means we are back in and putting it right inside three days at no charge to you. That return is the part that actually protects a deposit, because it commits us to a result the clerk will sign off rather than to a fixed number of hours on site.
A clean that passes in a new flat is not automatically a clean that passes here.
The rooms that cost Kennington tenants their deposit
Two rooms account for most cleaning deductions in this part of SE11, and neither of them is a surprise once you have read a few check-out reports.
Kitchens take the longest and lose the most money. In the older Kennington flats the kitchen has often been fitted into what was once a back room, the extraction is weak, and a year of cooking bakes grease onto the oven, the hob and the wall behind it. We degrease the oven inside and out, lift the door glass where the model allows, clean the extractor and its filter, wipe down the units inside and on top, and clear out the fridge-freezer. The oven door glass in particular is a line on almost every clerk’s report, so it gets proper attention rather than a wipe.
Bathrooms are the other one, and the reason is the water. This is a hard-water area, so limescale builds on glass screens, taps and shower heads faster than tenants expect, and a second bathroom that barely got used still grows a scale ring that the clerk will spot even if you do not. We descale the lot, scrub the tile grout, polish the glass and chrome, and sanitise behind and around the toilet. In the period flats the fittings are sometimes old enough that the scale has had years to set, which is slow work but the kind we plan for.
Then there is the part that is specific to Georgian and Regency rooms. The ceilings are high, so dust sits on top of picture rails, door frames and the tops of tall wardrobes where nobody looks during a tenancy and everybody looks during a check-out. The windows are frequently the original timber sash, and the joints and runners in that kind of window trap grime that a flat pane never would. We clean the glass inside as standard and work the frames, because a streaked pane is a note on the report. Add the deep skirtings and the marks behind where furniture stood, and you have a flat that needs more than a surface tidy to pass.
There is also the matter of what counts as your flat in a conversion. When a Georgian house has been split into three, the communal hall, the shared stairs and the front door are usually not your responsibility at check-out, only the demise of your own flat is. Tenants sometimes scrub a shared landing that was never going to be charged to them, and miss the inside of their own kitchen cupboards that will be. We clean what the inventory covers, which is your flat, and we leave the communal parts to the managing agent unless your tenancy says otherwise. It saves you paying us to clean someone else’s hallway.
One honest word about carpets. A lot of these conversions still have carpet in the bedrooms over the original boards, and a flattened, greyed bedroom carpet will not come back with a hoover. If the check-in photos show it cleaner than it is now, the clerk will note it, and a hot-water extraction clean is the only thing that lifts it. We will tell you on the call whether yours needs it rather than loading the quote.
What we charge, and why it is not by the hour
Pricing goes by the size of the flat, not by the hour, so you know the figure before we start and it does not climb because a job ran long. For an end of tenancy clean the rates are: a studio is £156, a one-bed is £207, a two-bed is £243, a three-bed is £339, and a four-bed is £425. Each covers the full checklist, all the kit and materials, and the guarantee.
Most Kennington lets are studios, one-beds and two-beds carved out of the old terraces, so the £156, £207 and £243 rates are the ones we quote most often here. The three and four-bed figures come up less, usually on a whole Georgian house let to a family or shared by several tenants. If you would rather pay for time, say for a part-clean or a top-up rather than a full move-out, that is £30 per cleaner per hour. The fixed price is the one that protects a deposit, though, because it commits us to a finished result the clerk will pass rather than to a set number of hours, and it is the version the agents recommend to their tenants.
Add-ons are priced separately, and in a Kennington flat one or two of them often make the difference between a clean pass and a quibble. Oven cleaning runs to £77 for a single oven, £110 for a double and £114 for a range cooker. Carpet cleaning is £36 a bedroom and £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed flat. We will say on the call which your flat actually needs.
For an exact figure, ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the flat size and the street, and we will quote it there and then. Bookings run out of our head office at 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS, and you can also send the details through our contact page.
Booking around the Oval, the Tube and the parking
It helps to know the ground if you are letting us into your flat, so here is the Kennington our teams actually move through on a working day. Two Northern line stations bracket the area, and they shape how we get to a job. Kennington station sits where the Charing Cross and Bank branches meet, and it is also where the Battersea branch peels off, so it is busier than it looks. Oval station, a few hundred yards south on the Morden branch, takes its name from the cricket ground next door.
That cricket ground is the thing to plan around. The Oval is the home of Surrey County Cricket Club and one of the oldest international grounds in the world, and on a match day, especially a Test or a one-day international, the streets around Kennington Oval fill up and the parking goes from hard to hopeless. We check the fixture list when we book a job near the ground, because a van that cannot get within a street of the flat turns a tidy morning into a long carry. If your move-out lands on a match day, tell us the address and we will plan the timing around it.
The rest of the area is walkable and low-rise. Kennington Park, the old common where the Chartists held their great rally in 1848, anchors the eastern side; Cleaver Square, laid out in 1789 and the oldest garden square in this part of London, sits in the middle with its gravelled centre where people still play boules outside the Prince of Wales pub. The Imperial War Museum is a short walk north on the edge of the area, and Kennington Road runs the spine of it, carrying the buses down toward the Elephant and up toward Westminster Bridge. Most of the flats we clean are a few minutes from either Tube or from that road, which is how we reach them. None of this is tourist trivia. It tells you the round here is compact, that most flats are reachable from the Tube without a car, and that on-street parking is genuinely tight because these Georgian streets were never built for it.
Parking is the real grumble. Kennington sits inside a controlled parking zone for most of the day, the streets are narrow, and on a match day near the Oval there is simply nowhere to put a van. We work around it the way you have to: we plan the route, we know which streets have a loading bay and which mean a carry from further off, and none of it adds to your price. It just means the more you tell us up front, the street, the floor, whether there is a match on, the smoother the day runs.
If you are moving locally, neighbouring areas run on the same pattern. We cover the riverside flats on our Vauxhall end of tenancy page, the streets around the cricket ground on the Oval page, the terraces and estates east of here on the Walworth page, and the wider borough on the Lambeth end of tenancy hub.
How the clean fits the check-out inventory
The whole job is keyed to one document, the check-out inventory, so it is worth understanding how the two fit together. When you moved in, a clerk or the agent recorded the condition and cleanliness of every room, usually with photos. When you move out, a clerk walks the flat again and marks it against that first report. Anything that is dirtier than it was at check-in can be charged to your deposit, and the clean exists to make sure nothing is.
We time the team to start once the flat is empty, because we clean an empty flat rather than around boxes. In a Kennington conversion that usually means we work the day your removals finish or the morning of the check-out itself. We do ask for a few things to be sorted before we arrive, and they matter:
- The electricity on, so we can run the machines. Some flats here are on a prepayment meter, so check there is credit.
- Hot running water, and the fridge-freezer switched off and defrosted ahead of time, since a frozen unit cannot be cleaned the same day.
- Your belongings cleared out, so the team can reach the skirtings, the wardrobes and the corners the clerk will check.
We work seven days a week, weekends and bank holidays included, which suits a move where the tenancy end date rarely lands on a convenient weekday. Book early in the month if you can, because the end of the month is when most tenancies turn over and our diary fills first for the last week. A flat booked a fortnight out is one we can slot at the right time of day; a flat booked for tomorrow on the 30th is harder.
If you are weighing up whether to clean it yourself, the maths is simple. Monster Cleaning has done end of tenancy work across Lambeth since 2014, we are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and over the years that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. A single missed cleaning deduction usually costs more than the clean would have.
Add-on cleans worth the money here
The flat clean covers the standard checklist. A few jobs sit outside it because they need different machines, and in a Kennington flat one or two of them earn their keep.
Carpets are the common one. The conversions here often keep carpet in the bedrooms, and if the check-in report shows it cleaner than it is now, a hoover will not close the gap; a hot-water extraction clean lifts the dirt that hoovering leaves behind. You can read what that involves on our carpet cleaning page, and the rates are the ones above.
Ovens are the other. Even a modest oven that has done a year of cooking needs more than a wipe, and the door glass is a line on every clerk’s report, so we can fold an oven clean into the same visit. The third one that comes up in the period flats is the windows. We clean the inside as standard, but if your tenancy agreement asks for clean window exteriors and the flat is above the ground floor, that can need specialist access, so flag it early and we will tell you what is possible at your address.
Words landlords and clerks use
A few terms come up at check-out that are worth having straight before the clerk does their walk-round.
- Check-in inventory
- The report and photos made when you moved in, recording the condition and cleanliness of every room. The check-out is judged against it, so that first report is the standard you have to match.
- Fair wear and tear
- The ordinary ageing a flat goes through with normal use. A landlord cannot deduct for it, only for damage or for genuine extra dirt, which is the line Citizens Advice sets out for deposits.
- Selective licence
- A licence a Lambeth landlord now needs to let an ordinary flat to a single household or two sharers in a designated ward. Kennington and Oval came into the scheme on 1 September 2025; Vauxhall and Waterloo and South Bank are the two wards left out.
- Additional HMO licence
- The licence a landlord needs to let a smaller house-share of three or more people from different households, under Lambeth’s borough-wide additional licensing, in force since December 2021.
- End of tenancy clean versus deep clean
- An end of tenancy clean is keyed to an inventory and a deposit. A deep clean is the same thoroughness without the check-out context, the sort of thing you book mid-tenancy or in a flat you own.
Questions Kennington tenants ask
How much is an end of tenancy clean in Kennington?
It goes by flat size. A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. The price is fixed before we start and covers the full checklist, materials and the guarantee.
Does my Kennington landlord need a selective licence?
Yes. The Kennington ward came into Lambeth’s selective licensing scheme on 1 September 2025, so an ordinary flat let to a single household or two sharers now needs one. Only Vauxhall and Waterloo and South Bank are left out of the scheme.
What about an HMO licence for a house-share?
Lambeth’s additional HMO licensing has covered the whole borough since December 2021, for shares of three or more people from different households. Larger shares of five or more also need a mandatory licence. The landlord is responsible for holding it.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or your agent flags any cleaning in their check-out report, tell us within the window and we return to put it right within 48 hours at no charge. It is why we keep a 97% first-time pass rate.
Is the price by the hour or fixed?
Fixed, by the size of the flat. We do offer an hourly option at £30 per cleaner if you only need a part-clean, but the fixed price is the one that protects a deposit because it commits us to finishing the job.
Do you clean the original timber windows?
We clean the glass inside as standard and work the frames and runners, which is where grime collects on an old window. Exterior glass above the ground floor can need specialist access, so tell us if your tenancy agreement asks for it.
Why are bathrooms such a common deduction here?
Kennington is a hard-water area, so scale builds on glass, taps and shower heads faster than people expect, and a little-used second bathroom still grows a chalky ring. We descale the lot and polish the fittings so the clerk has nothing to note.
How long does the clean take?
A studio or one-bed is usually a half-day, a larger flat longer, but the work is not timed. The team stays until the 57-point checklist is finished, which is the point of paying by property rather than by the hour.
Do I need to be there to let you in?
Not necessarily. Many tenants leave a key with us or the agent, but if your building has a shared front door or a porter, tell us how access works when you book and we will sort it.
Is oven cleaning included?
A standard wipe is part of the clean, but a full degrease of a heavily used oven is a separate add-on, from £77 for a single oven. The door glass is a line on most clerks’ reports, so it is usually worth it.
Do you clean carpets too?
Yes, as an add-on, since it needs different machines. It is £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed. It matters in the conversions here where the bedrooms still have carpet over the old boards.
Will a match at the Oval affect my booking?
It can affect parking and timing, not whether we come. On a Test or one-day match the streets around the cricket ground fill up, so tell us the address and the date and we will plan the team around the fixture.
Do you work weekends?
Yes, seven days a week including bank holidays. Most Kennington move-outs do not fall on a weekday, so weekend slots are normal for us.
What do you need ready before you arrive?
The flat empty of belongings, the electricity on (check any prepayment meter has credit), hot running water, and the fridge-freezer switched off and defrosted in advance. Without those we cannot finish the job in one visit.
Which parts of Kennington do you cover?
All of it across SE11, from the streets around Cleaver Square and Kennington Park to the flats near the Oval and along Kennington Road. We also cover neighbouring Vauxhall, Oval and Walworth.
Can you clean on the same day my tenancy ends?
Often, yes, if we have a slot and you can confirm the flat will be empty. End-of-month dates fill fast, so the earlier you call the better the chance of the exact day and time you need.
How do I get a quote and book?
Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the flat size, the street and your tenancy end date. We quote on the spot and book around your check-out, including the same week if the diary allows.