Following the clerk through a Kennington flat
Most people renting in Kennington live in a slice of a tall Georgian or Victorian terrace, and the check-out clerk walks that kind of flat in a set order, from the front door to the back bedroom. Our end of tenancy clean follows the same route, at a fixed price by size: £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed and £243 for a two-bed, the three flat sizes we clean most in SE11.
Last updated October 2026.
Here is that route, room by room, with what a clerk in a Kennington period flat tends to write down and what our cleaner does about it.
- Front door and hall
- The clerk starts at your own front door, which in a converted house is often on a landing halfway up a shared stair. The door, its frame, the letterbox and the light switch get checked first. We clean everything inside your door; the shared stair is the freeholder’s job, and the clerk should not mark you down for it.
- Kitchen
- Kitchens in these houses were fitted into rooms that were never designed for them, so they are small, with cupboards up to the ceiling and a cooker squeezed beside a sash window. Grease climbs. The cleaner does the tops of the high cupboards, the extractor and its filter, the hob, the splashback and the inside of every cupboard and drawer, then pulls out the fridge and washing machine where they move.
- Bathroom
- Often a converted box room or part of a landing, with no window and a ceiling fan. The fan cover clogs with fluff and the tiles take on scale (more on the water below). Screen, taps, shower head, bath, basin, toilet and grout are all descaled and cleaned.
- Living room
- High ceilings, deep skirting, picture rails, sometimes a blocked-up fireplace with a marble or cast-iron surround. Dust sits on every ledge above head height, and the clerk looks up. We do the rails, the mantelpiece, the inside of the sash frames and the glass from the inside.
- Bedrooms
- Inside built-in wardrobes and alcove cupboards, along the skirting, behind the radiators, and the window sills. Marks on walls are recorded as damage, so we spot-clean scuffs only where the paint allows it.
- Basement and garden flats
- A lower-ground flat usually has a front area below the railings and a door or window onto it. Leaves and grime collect there; we sweep it if it is part of your let.
Prices by size, with oven and carpet extras
| Home | Fixed price |
|---|---|
| Studio | £156 |
| One-bed flat | £207 |
| Two-bed flat | £243 |
| Three-bed flat or house | £339 |
| Four-bed house | £425 |
| Larger than four bedrooms | quoted from the room count |
| Part job, or one room in a share | £30 per cleaner per hour |
The oven is an extra on top of those prices. Added to the clean, it is £31 for a single or a single wide oven, and £62 for a double or a 90cm range cooker. Our oven cleaning page covers ovens done on their own.
A lot of Kennington conversions have carpet on the bedroom floors and the stairs inside the flat, even where the living room is bare boards. With the end of tenancy clean, carpet cleaning costs £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, £47 a through lounge, £35 for each flight of stairs, £20 for a hallway and £8 for a landing.
Carpets booked by themselves are on our carpet cleaning page. If you are staying put and want a regular cleaner, see domestic cleaning, from £69 a visit.
The calculator at the top of the page gives you the total for your postcode, including parking where we have to pay for it. That parking cost is added at what we pay.
Cleaver Square and the Duchy streets
Cleaver Square was laid out in 1789 as Prince’s Square and is the first garden square in south London; it took its present name in 1937. Its houses went up in stages, from the terraces at the Kennington Park Road end in 1788 to later runs built between 1815 and 1853, and most of them are Grade II listed.
Some are still whole houses and some are divided into flats. A listed house cannot have its sash windows or shutters swapped for something easier, so they are cleaned as they are, by hand and carefully. Tenants leaving a flat on the square should tell us the floor and whether there is a front area or a garden door.
The wider pattern is the same: Georgian and Victorian terraces in yellow London stock brick, three storeys or more, along Kennington Road, Kennington Park Road and the squares between them. The Duchy of Cornwall has held land here since 1337, and in the 19th and early 20th centuries it built much of the area, Courtenay Square and Denny Crescent among it.
The Duchy’s own page now lists about 40 homes and more than 15 commercial properties in its Kennington holding, so most of the neo-Georgian houses it built have long since passed to other owners. If your flat is in one of them, your landlord or agent is usually a housing association or a private owner. The clean is the same either way.
A listed house cannot have its sash windows or shutters swapped for something easier, so they are cleaned as they are, by hand and carefully.
The Cotton Gardens towers and other estates
Kennington is not all period brick. On Kennington Lane stand the three 22-storey towers of the Cotton Gardens estate, Ebenezer, Fairford and Hurley Houses, built by Wates for Lambeth Council and finished in 1968. A good share of Kennington’s housing is still council-owned, on estates near Kennington Lane and around Kennington Park, and some of those flats are let privately by leaseholders.
A tower flat is a different job from a Georgian one. Ceilings are lower, the rooms are square, and the windows are large single panes that show every streak.
Kitchens are usually the original shape with newer units. The time goes on the windows, the bathroom and the kitchen, and the price is still set by bedrooms. Lift access helps; if the lift is out on the day, tell us and we will plan around the stairs.
Selective licensing in Kennington since September 2025
Lambeth Council brought its selective licensing scheme in over two phases. Phase 1 began on 2 September 2024 in four Streatham and Norwood wards. Phase 2 followed on 1 September 2025 and took in Kennington ward, Oval, Myatt’s Field and most of the rest of the borough.
Since then, almost any privately rented home in Kennington needs a licence, including a flat let to one household. Only two Lambeth wards are left out: Waterloo and South Bank, and Vauxhall. Shared houses still come under Lambeth’s HMO licensing on top. Over the border in Southwark, around Walworth, Lambeth’s scheme does not apply.
The licence is your landlord’s responsibility. It brings conditions on the landlord about the property’s condition and management, and it does nothing to change what the clerk expects from you at check-out: the flat returned as clean as it was at check-in, with fair wear and tear allowed. Lambeth’s selective licensing page lists every ward in each phase.
Deposits here are big. The ONS put Lambeth’s average private rent at £2,525 a month in August 2026, with one-beds at £1,882 and flats overall at £2,186. On a typical one-bed, five weeks’ rent comes to more than £2,100.
Hard water, parking and booking
Thames Water supplies Lambeth, and the company describes all the water in its region as hard, because it passes through chalk and limestone. In a Kennington bathroom that turns up as a chalky film on the shower screen and a crust inside the shower head. Descaling is part of the fixed price.
Lambeth has 24 controlled parking zones, most of them in the north of the borough, and Kennington’s streets fall within them. Paid bays are what we use; if we pay to park, that charge goes on your quote at cost, and the quote shows it before you book.
Kennington station on the Northern line, open since 1890, has trains on both the Bank and Charing Cross branches, which suits tenants handing keys to an agent in town the same day.
Our cleaners are vetted (we interview each one in person), insured and trained on a 57-point checklist. We have been cleaning since 2014, more than 300 letting agents work with us, and tenants have won back £1.2m in deposits after our cleans. We are rated 4.7 on Google.
Should the clerk or agent flag something within 48 hours, a cleaner comes back and redoes it free. To book, call 0333 555 2076 (8am to 7pm, every day) or use the calculator, and tell us the floor, the date the keys go back and any extras. Our full list of nearby areas is on the Lambeth end of tenancy cleaning page.
Kennington end of tenancy questions
My flat is on Cleaver Square and the house is listed. Do you charge more for the old sash windows?
No. A one-bed flat is £207 and a two-bed £243 wherever it is. The sashes are cleaned inside, along with the runners and sills.
Has selective licensing in Kennington ward changed what I need to do before I move out?
No. The licence is for your landlord to hold. Your check-out is judged against the check-in inventory, as it always was.
I live in one of the Cotton Gardens towers. Do you clean the outside of the windows?
We clean glass from the inside only. Outside glass on a tower is a job for the building’s own window contractor.
Our basement flat has its own front area. Is that included?
Yes, if it is part of your let. We sweep it and clean the door and window onto it as part of the price.
I am moving out of a room in a shared house near the Oval. What can I book?
Book by the hour at £30 per cleaner for your room and a fair share of the kitchen and bathroom. The last tenant out can book the whole house at the fixed price.