The clerk who checks a flat above Lewisham High Street starts at the oven and the shower screen, because that is where a town-centre let goes wrong. Between the clock tower and the Shopping Centre the stock turns over fast: studios over the market stalls, one-beds above the takeaways, two-bed conversions on the streets running off the High Street. We are Monster Cleaning, a south-London firm that has done end of tenancy work since 2014, and we clean Lewisham Town to the letting agent’s benchmark, not to a generic idea of tidy. Part jobs run at £30 per hour per cleaner, every booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee, and the deposit is the whole point. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price in about three minutes.
Last updated June 2026. We cover SE13 and the Lewisham-side edges of SE4, SE6, SE8 and SE12, from the market and the station out to the streets behind University Hospital Lewisham. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Lewisham.
The report that decides your deposit before you have packed
Start with the mechanism, because it runs the whole thing. On the day you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote a report describing every surface, usually with photographs, usually with the word “clean” next to the kitchen and the bathroom. That was true, because the flat had just been done professionally. At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares the two, line by line. Anything worse than the check-in entry, beyond honest wear, comes off your deposit. You are being marked against a professional clean, which is exactly why a mop and a spare Sunday rarely gets a town-centre let over the line.
The money is real. On the Lewisham DIY check-outs we get called in to rescue, the deductions land in a pattern: eighty to a hundred and twenty on the oven, another eighty to a hundred and fifty on grout and scale, sixty to a hundred for the gaps behind the cooker and the fridge, and a carpet charge on top if the floors were let go. Set that against a deposit of two thousand pounds or more and the arithmetic makes itself. Most people only run the sum after they have failed the check-out and lost the first round, which is a shame, because the first round is the cheap one to win.
Why does the clerk push so hard here? Because the agent is answerable for the deposit they are holding, and a town-centre flat that re-lets within the week has to be handed to the next tenant in check-in condition. The inspection is genuinely adversarial. The clerk is paid to find the fault, not to wave you through. That is not unfair, it just means you turn up with evidence rather than optimism.
You are being marked against a professional clean, which is exactly why a mop and a spare Sunday rarely gets a town-centre let over the line.
What 1 May 2026 changed, and what it did not
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone, every existing assured shorthold tenancy has converted to a periodic one, and a tenant can now give two months’ notice at any point in the year instead of 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 check-in benchmark still applies, fair wear and tear is still excluded from deductions, and the deposit sum is exactly what it was the week before. What changed is timing. Lewisham Town was already high-churn, full of one-year lets around the station and short professional tenancies over the shops. Let people leave on a rolling two months rather than a fixed date and the hand-backs get more frequent and far less predictable. The practical takeaway is dull but it pays for itself: book the clean earlier than you used to, because the slot you want will be gone if you wait for the last week.
The licence behind the clerk’s clipboard
Lewisham runs its private rented sector under a set of licences, and the town centre is inside the strictest of them. The council’s selective licensing scheme started on 1 July 2024 and runs for five years, and Lewisham Central ward, which is the market, the High Street and the station, sits in Designation 1. Most privately rented homes let to a single household or to two sharers need a licence there, at a fee of £640 paid in two parts. On top of that, an additional HMO scheme has covered the whole borough since 5 April 2022 and runs to April 2027, and the usual mandatory HMO rules apply to the larger shared houses. The council’s own guidance sets it all out; the Lewisham site blocks automated readers, so we state the position in plain prose rather than linking it.
The effect at hand-back is simple. A licensed landlord is working to a written standard the council can audit, so the check-in photographs are more careful and the check-out report is more thorough. That pushes the cleaning bar up. It also cuts the other way in your favour: the more the condition is documented, the harder it is for a vague deduction to stick, provided you have your own record to set against it.
- 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 general notion of clean.
- End of tenancy clean
- Built to pass that inventory and get the deposit back, done with the flat empty, priced as a fixed job with the 48-hour guarantee on it.
- Deep clean
- A reset for a home you are keeping and living in, with no inventory to satisfy, charged at £30 an hour per cleaner.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing weekly or fortnightly upkeep, a different service from either of the above, from £22 an hour.
The 57 things we check, from the High Street up
Every Lewisham booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist built over a decade of local check-outs and tuned to what the SE13 clerks actually flag. The full sheet comes with the job, or we walk you through it before we start. The shape of it changes a little with the property, because the town centre is not one kind of flat.
The kitchen, where most of the deposit is won or lost
The oven is stripped, not wiped. Racks go in a soaking tank, the door glass is split apart so the brown film between the panels comes out, and the interior, fan, element and seals all get done. That film is the single most flagged item across every kind of Lewisham let. The flats over the market end of the High Street tend to have integrated ovens with a glass inner door, and that inner door is the one the clerk opens first. In the older lets above the shops, the ones that have not been refitted since the eighties, it is the freestanding cooker and the wall behind it, which means pulling the unit out. Either way the hob rings come off, the extractor is degreased inside and out and its filter soaked or swapped, every cupboard is done inside and out, and the fridge, freezer and washing machine are pulled forward so the gaps behind and under them get cleaned and then put back. The washing machine drawer comes out and the door seal gets scrubbed, because that rubber gasket is the second thing the clerk checks after the oven.
Bathrooms, the other place it goes wrong
Scale comes off the taps, the shower head, the screen and the tiles first, then the rest in plain order. The toilet is done inside, under the rim, around the base and behind the pedestal where nobody looks but the clerk does. The shower screen gets both sides, the tracks and the sealant bead. The bath, its taps, the underside of the taps and the overflow. Mirrors, the cabinet inside and out, and behind it where it comes off the wall. The extractor grille is pulled and washed. In the small over-the-shop bathrooms the shower screen rim is the near-certain failure point, so it gets a proper going over rather than a quick pass.
Bedrooms, living rooms and the rest of it
Inside every wardrobe and built-in cupboard, including the top shelf, where a long town-centre tenancy stacks years of dust the clerk always checks with a torch. Skirting, door frames, doors, handles. Light fittings, shades, switches and sockets. Window sills, reveals and the inside of the frames. Radiators front, back and on top. Walls spot-wiped for marks, with an honest line drawn, because nail holes and scuffs are a decorator’s bill and not something to scrub at. Hard floors washed with the right product for the material, carpets vacuumed through, and cobwebs out of the ceiling corners. Then a final walk-through, photographed room by room, before and after. That photo set is the evidence you keep.
Two of those often want their own pass. Carpets in a long let usually need hot-water extraction carpet cleaning rather than a vacuum, which we bring on the same van. A tired freestanding cooker sometimes wants a full oven decarbonising as a standalone job if that is all the agent has pulled you up on, and fabric sofas left for the next tenant can need upholstery cleaning beyond a hoover.
What SE13 water does to a bathroom over a tenancy
The water here does not help.
Lewisham sits in Thames Water’s hard-water zone, and that one detail loses more deposits here than anything except the oven. Thames Water reports the SE13 supply at around 288 mg/l of calcium carbonate, roughly 20 Clark degrees, near the top of the national scale. Over a tenancy that builds on taps, shower heads, screens and the tile line faster than tenants expect, and a cloth does nothing to it. The clerk knows exactly where to look. They run a thumbnail down the tap, they turn the shower screen edge-on to the light, they pull the shower head in close.
Grout is the near neighbour of the same problem. In the bathrooms above the High Street shops the grout line between a pass and a deduction is thinner than any argument about carpets. We scrub it rather than wipe it, and where it is genuinely past saving in a long let, we photograph the state before we start so the clerk cannot bill you for wear that was already there at check-in. That dated photo has settled more disputes than any argument has. We descale kettles and shower heads as standard, because the clerk fills the kettle to test it and a furred element reads as neglect whether the rest of the flat is spotless or not.
What it costs, and the sum nobody runs in time
We price Lewisham at our standard south-London rates, not the inner-prime band that loads Mayfair, Belgravia or Chelsea. A studio over the High Street is £156. A one-bed is £207 and a two-bed £243. A three-bed comes in at £339 and a four-bed at £425. Part jobs and unusual layouts run at £30 per hour per cleaner, with kit, products and travel inside the area included. Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape; a heavy tenancy, a pet household or a place nobody has deep-cleaned in years costs more, and we say so on the phone rather than after, so there is no surprise line on the invoice.
The add-ons sit on top and go on the same visit. Carpet shampoo is £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, or £115 for the carpet across a whole two-bed. Oven work as an extra is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range. Every price we quote on the call is the price on the invoice at the end. No completion surcharge, no rounding up when the van is loaded.
Now run the sum the way the deposit forces you to. A one-bed at £207, set against a deposit north of two thousand, is not really a decision. Every Lewisham booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the agent flags a cleaning issue within 48 hours of us finishing, we come back and redo it free, as long as you tell us inside that window and nobody has moved in behind you. Our 97% first-time pass rate across the borough means the callback is rare, but the guarantee is the point, because a failed check-out where deposits start at two grand is not a small thing to shrug off. There is a reason the desks around the station know us. 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 job off the market in March
“We had a one-bed above a shop right on the High Street, near the market, for three years. Both of us worked shifts at the hospital and the kitchen extractor had never been touched. The oven glass had gone brown between the panels and the shower screen was solid with scale. Monster sent two cleaners for most of a morning, pulled the cooker out, did the extractor and descaled the whole bathroom. Acorn’s clerk signed it off with no cleaning deductions and the full deposit came back through the DPS the week after.”
Chloe and Sam, ex-tenants, Lewisham High Street SE13, March 2026
That job is a fair example of the town-centre pattern: a busy household, an extractor and an oven nobody had dealt with, a bathroom carrying three years of Thames Water scale, and an agent who checks. The clean cost a fraction of what was riding on it. What settled it was the dated photo set that went out with the invoice, which is the part most DIY hand-backs never have when the agent pushes back.
Booking it around the High Street works
Booking is quick. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected], tell us the postcode, the type of flat and the check-out date, and we quote on the call and send the 57-point sheet by email. We aim to come the day before the check-out with a buffer, and next-day is the normal cadence on the SE13 rota. The flat should be empty when we arrive, furniture out and rubbish cleared, and we invoice on completion, by bank transfer or card. If we need to move you out as well, we can put the move and the clean on one booking, which helps when the market end of the street is busy.
One honest note about the town centre itself. The council is partway through a £24m programme on the High Street and the market, restoring the Grade II-listed clock tower and rebuilding the market stalls, which runs into autumn 2026. It moves the loading bays and the parking around week to week near the Shopping Centre and the station. It rarely stops a clean, but it changes how we get the kit in, so tell us the access when you book, whether that is a bay, a meter, a permit or a meet at the door. Sorting that in advance takes the sting out of the day.
Moving within the area, or handing back one flat while you take on another nearby? We cover the streets next door too, so it is worth a look at Lewisham Central around the Gateway towers, Deptford High Street, and Telegraph Hill. The Ladywell, Hither Green, Catford and Blackheath edges of the borough are all on the same rota.
Questions we get asked
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Lewisham Town?
A studio starts at £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. Part jobs and odd layouts run at £30 per hour per cleaner. Lewisham is a standard-rate area, so we do not add the inner-prime loading that lands in Mayfair or Chelsea. Carpet shampoo is £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £115 for a whole two-bed. Oven add-ons are £77 single, £110 double, £114 for a 90cm range. The figure we quote on the phone is the figure on the invoice.
Do you cover the flats above the High Street shops?
Yes, and they are a big part of the SE13 rota. The flats over the market end of Lewisham High Street, above the phone shops and takeaways between the clock tower and the Shopping Centre, are the ones landlords let and re-let fastest. Some were refitted in the last ten years with integrated ovens and shower cubicles; some have not been touched since the 1980s. We clean both to the same 57-point standard, and the older ones usually need the oven add-on and a proper descale to pass.
Is the water in Lewisham hard enough to matter?
Yes. Thames Water puts the SE13 supply at about 288 mg/l of calcium carbonate, roughly 20 Clark degrees, which sits at the hard end of the national scale. Over a tenancy that leaves a visible film on shower screens, kettle elements, taps and the tile line above the bath. A wipe does nothing to it. We use a dedicated scale remover with real contact time on every glass and porcelain surface, and we descale kettles and shower heads as standard. It is the single most common reason a DIY hand-back fails the inspection here.
Which Lewisham letting agents do you work with?
Most of the lettings desks around the station and the High Street know our checklist. Acorn at 153 High Street, Mann at 171 Lewisham High Street, Dexters on Algernon Road, plus Foxtons, KFH and the independents like Lint Group who run guaranteed-rent lets across SE13. We also do plenty of private-landlord hand-backs with no agent involved. Across the company we have worked with 300+ letting agents around south-east London, which is why the inventory clerks recognise the format when we hand a flat back.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the inventory clerk flags something our team should have caught, we come back inside 48 hours and put it right at no charge. The clock starts when we finish. We need a copy of the check-out report or an email from the agent listing the items, and we slot the re-clean into the SE13 rota. Most jobs never need it. Our 97% first-time pass rate means roughly one hand-back in 33 gets a callback, but the cover is there so a failed check-out never costs you the deposit.
What is your first-time pass rate?
97% first-time pass rate against agent-led inventory checks, tracked across the whole borough. The 3% that come back are almost always a single item, a window track, a splashback corner, an extractor filter that wanted a second soak, and they get sorted inside the 48-hour window. Over the trading life of the company we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions.
Does the town-centre licensing scheme change what I have to do as a tenant?
Not directly. The licence is the landlord’s obligation, not yours. But Lewisham Central ward, which covers the town centre, sits in Designation 1 of the selective licensing scheme that started on 1 July 2024, and licensed landlords keep tighter records on condition. Check-in photos are more thorough, written check-out reports are more common, and the cleaning bar the clerk works to is higher. In practice a documented professional clean is worth more here than in an unlicensed area, because there is a paper trail the deduction has to argue against.
How long does the clean take?
A studio over the High Street runs about three hours with two cleaners. A one-bed is closer to four. A two-bed conversion on the town-centre fringe is six to seven hours with two or three cleaners, depending on how it has been lived in. A whole three-flat house is a full day. We book on the basis that nothing rushes the inventory pass. We would rather arrive early and finish early than stack another job on top and cut a corner.
Do you shampoo the carpets in the same visit?
Yes. The hot-water extraction kit comes on the same van, so there is no second trip. It is £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, and £115 for the carpet across a whole two-bed. Drying is about three to four hours with the windows open. If you have an evening hand-back the same day, we do the carpets first thing and the rest of the clean over the morning so the floors are dry before the clerk walks in.
Do I need this if I rent from a private landlord with no agent?
Same process, same checklist. A lot of the flats above the High Street shops and around the market are let straight by the landlord with no agency in the middle, and we handle those exactly the way we handle an agency job. Phone or email with the postcode and the check-out date, we quote, we confirm, and the 57-point sheet still goes out by email. If your landlord does their own walkthrough rather than using an inventory clerk, we can usually tell on arrival whether the flat wants an oven add-on or a carpet shampoo to be safe.
Can you fit a same-day or next-day booking near Lewisham station?
Next-day is the normal cadence and we can often do it. Same-day depends on what the rota looks like that morning. SE13 has Saturday slots most weeks, but they go quickly in late summer when the hospital and university tenancies all turn over at once. If it is urgent, phone the office rather than emailing. We have covered plenty of moves from a midweek call to a Friday hand-back.
What happens if the agent still makes a cleaning deduction?
Raise it with the deposit scheme. Whether the money sits with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, the DPS or mydeposits, each one runs a free dispute service for tenants. Our dated invoice, the 57-point checklist on file and the before-and-after photos are solid evidence in an adjudication, and a tenant with that paper trail rarely loses on cleaning. If the argument goes further than the scheme, Shelter’s housing advice is worth a read.
How does the town-centre building work slow a move-out down?
The council is partway through a 24 million pound programme on the High Street and the market that runs into autumn 2026, so the pavements, loading bays and parking near the clock tower shift around week to week. It rarely stops a clean, but it changes where the van goes and how we get the kit in. Tell us the postcode and the access when you book, whether that is a bay, a permit or a meet at the door, and we plan the day around whatever the works have done to your bit of the street.
Are you insured, and who am I actually booking?
Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House number 9919639, trading since 2014. Public liability and employer’s liability cover, both to a UK underwriter, with certificates on request. You get an itemised invoice on company-headed paper, which is the same document that backs you up in a deposit dispute. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] and we will quote the job on the call.