End of tenancy cleaning in London Bridge, same week if you need it

Walk an SE1 flat with an inventory clerk and the first thing they do is push open the front door and look at its corridor-facing side, the panel every weekly cleaner ignores because it belongs to the building, not the flat. That, and the hazed induction hob under the pendant lights, is where a London Bridge deposit slips. So this is what end of tenancy cleaning around London Bridge has to be: built for the person writing the check-out report, priced as a fixed job or at £30 per hour per cleaner for a part-clean, and carried with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against that report. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price in three minutes.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the whole London Bridge area: SE1 around the station, More London and the riverside, the Tooley Street and Hay’s Galleria run, Bermondsey Street up to Snowsfields, the Shad Thames wharf fringe and the streets behind Guy’s Hospital. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Southwark.

How the check-in report quietly decides an SE1 deposit

Start with the mechanism, because almost nobody does. On the day you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote a report describing every surface, usually with photos, usually with the word “new” or “as new” against the kitchen and the bathroom. Those words were true, because the flat had just been professionally cleaned. At the end a different clerk walks it again and marks you against that report, line by line. Anything materially worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, is chargeable. You are being judged against a professional clean, which is why a mop and a spare Sunday rarely clears the bar around here.

The pots are large in SE1, and that is what sharpens the inspection. A one-bed off the Bermondsey edge advertises from roughly £2,400 a month, a standard riverside two-bed sits nearer £3,400, and the higher floors at More London and near the Shard run well past £5,000, so the deposit held in a scheme is real money somebody has to account for. Private rents across Southwark have climbed hard through 2025. A big deposit means an adversarial walk, and a clerk paid to find faults rather than wave you through.

Two things sit behind this in law and pull opposite ways. Your landlord cannot make a professional clean a contractual condition, so nobody can force you to book us. Damp and mould, though, are the landlord’s problem to fix, not a tenant cleaning failure, and where we find set-in scale masking a real damp patch behind a wardrobe we photograph it so the charge lands where it belongs. The deposit cap is five weeks’ rent, held in a government-backed scheme, and if it comes to a dispute your evidence is what wins it. Shelter’s guidance on tenancy deposits walks through the steps.

What 319 ppm water does to a London Bridge kitchen and bathroom

SE1 sits on the same chalk-fed Thames Water supply as the rest of central London, and it is properly hard: the zone runs around 319 mg per litre of calcium carbonate, classed as very hard (Thames Water hard water guidance). On a typical riverside new-build that lands on the brushed-nickel rainshower head, the glass shower screen that comes as standard, the induction hob ceramic, the integrated coffee-machine spout and the kettle in the landlord’s kitchen kit. The film comes back within a fortnight. The clerks know it, and they look for it first.

Three things cost cleaners the most time here, in order. First, the glass: floor-to-ceiling balcony sliders, Juliette-balcony panes, glass shower screens, and on the Thames-facing flats an estuary salt haze on the outside that any standard cleaner will streak unless you squeegee top to bottom in one pass. Second, the induction ceramic. SE1 kitchens run flush-fitted induction almost universally, and the failure is carbonised oil from weeknight pan-frying; a kitchen spray will not shift it, so we use a ceramic-safe paste with a long dwell, then a soft pad on the cold hob. Third, the comfort-cooling grilles and the integrated extractor housings that vent through ceiling voids. Most cleaners never take the panel off. We do: baffle filter out, hot soak, casing wiped inside, panel back on its original alignment.

A kitchen spray will not shift set scale, so the clerk almost always finds it.

Behind those three sit the smaller catches: the mixer bases and kettle element the hard water scales, the brushed-nickel basin trap, and the tap chrome that has to be descaled and then polished as two separate steps. On the older brass and chrome fittings in the wharf conversions we keep off the brute-force descalers a newer flat would shrug off, because a scored original fitting is a bigger deduction than a missed one.

What 1 May 2026 changed, and where Southwark licensing sits

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 rolling periodic one, so a tenant can now give two months’ notice at any point. Here is the part people get wrong: the cleaning side of a move-out did not change. The check-in benchmark still stands, and the deposit maths is what it was the week before. What changed is timing, and in a high-churn patch full of corporate lets and one-year tenancies that means move-outs land more often and far less predictably. The dull, paying takeaway is to book the clean earlier than you used to, because the slot you want will be gone if you leave it to the last week.

The licensing picture is worth getting right. London Bridge is not outside Southwark’s schemes. The London Bridge and West Bermondsey ward is named in the council’s selective licensing designation that began on 1 November 2023 and runs for five years, so most privately rented flats and two-person sharer lets in SE1 need a selective licence. On top of that, Southwark runs a borough-wide additional HMO scheme for smaller shared houses, in force from 1 March 2022 until 28 February 2027. Neither is a cleaning matter. But the licence reference tends to sit in the same handover pile as the check-out, so tenants ask, and it is better answered straight than guessed at. Southwark’s own licensing pages block automated access, so confirm your address on the council site directly.

One more SE1 practicality. The area sits inside the central London ULEZ, so our van work here runs compliant kit as standard. Kerb-side is mostly residents’ permit on the Bermondsey-edge streets and pay-and-display on Tooley Street and Bermondsey Street; at the bigger blocks the team uses the loading bay or a front-desk drop-off slot.

Check-in inventory report

The document a 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 and not to a vague idea of “clean”.

End of tenancy clean

Built to pass that inventory and get a deposit back, against the letting-agent standard, flat empty, with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee on it, priced as a fixed job or at £30 an hour per cleaner.

Deep clean

A deep clean resets a home you are keeping. Lived-in, no formal standard to hit, also from £30 an hour.

Regular domestic clean

A domestic clean is ongoing upkeep on a home you live in, from £22 an hour on a weekly booking.

The 57 things we go through, room by room

Every London Bridge booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of local check-outs and tuned to what SE1 clerks actually flag. The full list comes with the job. The shape of it is below, written for what this stock has: integrated appliances, induction hobs, glass screens and balcony sliders, comfort-cooling grilles and brushed-nickel ironmongery, not period terraces.

The kitchen, where most of it is won or lost

The integrated oven is stripped, not wiped: racks soaked in a tank, the door glass split apart so the brown film between the panes comes out, interior, fan, element and seals all done. Standalone oven cleaning covers it on its own if that is the only thing your agent pulled you up on. Then the rest of the room. The induction ceramic gets the paste-and-dwell treatment and a soft pad on the cold surface. The integrated extractor has its panel pulled, the baffle filter degreased and the casing wiped inside. Every cupboard and drawer inside, outside, on top and underneath. The integrated fridge and freezer defrosted and washed through, seals scrubbed, the dishwasher filter pulled and salt reservoir checked. The washing-machine drawer and the door-seal gasket, which is where SE1 hard water greys the rubber. The sink, taps and waste descaled with a weak acid soak. Grout brushed, splashback polished, the coffee-machine spout and tank seal done where one is fitted. The integrated bin housing and its runner channel, which nobody ever pulls out. Glass balcony sliders inside and out where they reach. The floor mopped last, once the dust has settled, and left dry.

Bathrooms, the other place it goes wrong

Scale comes off first. Rainshower head, screen runner, mixer base, taps and the plug, all soaked and rinsed twice, then the brushed-nickel or chrome polished as its own step. The WC bowl, rim, hinge, base and the wall behind it. Mirror, cabinet, shaver socket, extractor grille. Grout scrubbed where the shower water hits it, and photographed first where it is genuinely past saving so the clerk cannot bill you for wear already there at check-in. The glass screen polished both sides, the runner descaled, the towel rail and the wall behind it done. Underfloor-heated tile or porcelain mopped, the edges finished by hand.

Bedrooms, living areas and the bits between

Wardrobe sliders get their tracks vacuumed and wiped, the internal shelves and rails done. Skirtings, and any retained picture rails in the loft conversions. Floor-to-ceiling balcony sliders: inside glass, runner channel, frame. Recessed downlighters and the ceiling-void edges where a dust ring forms. Switches, sockets, the thermostat, the intercom handset and the key-card reader, which is where finger oil builds in the blocks. Internal doors both sides with hinges, handles and the flat top nobody dusts. Carpet vacuumed in two directions and spot-treated, with a full carpet shampoo available as an add-on. Engineered-oak and stone floors mopped with a non-acidic solution, edges hand-wiped. Curtains shaken, blinds dusted slat by slat. Comfort-cooling grilles brushed out, the linear-slot type the newer blocks use. Behind the beds, sofas and freestanding furniture, and the corridor-side of the front door the clerk clocks walking in.

Station to riverside: the stock changes street by street

London Bridge is a small, dense patch hanging off one of the busiest interchanges in the country, and the housing shifts every few hundred metres. A build-to-rent studio behind the station and a warehouse loft on the Bermondsey riverside share a postcode and almost nothing else, so we work it in three broad bands.

Around the station and the Shard sits the newest, tallest stock. Renzo Piano’s tower brought residential floors above the station in 2012, More London delivered a corporate-and-residential riverside quarter through the late 2000s, and build-to-rent completions since have filled in around Lavington Street, Sumner Street and the blocks behind Snowsfields. These come with operator inventory sheets stricter than most private landlords bother with: floor-to-ceiling glass, engineered floors, integrated appliances, concierge sign-in and sometimes a communal area written into the check-out scope. Send us the operator’s spec and we clean to it. The riverside walk itself, from Hay’s Galleria past Battle Bridge Lane to the old City Hall stretch at More London, is the same picture: high churn, corporate lets, access through a front desk rather than a front door.

East and south, towards Shad Thames and the Bermondsey wharf fringe, the stock turns to conversions. The old warehouses along Tooley Street and down towards the river were carved into lofts with retained beams, exposed brick, big steel-framed windows and polished-concrete or board floors, and the clerk names those features one by one. Nothing aggressive goes near original brick or a retained steel frame; the detail gets done by hand. This is also where a move-out most often coincides with a road closure on the riverside walk, so the team plans the van run around the 21, 47, 343 and 381 routes along Tooley Street, Borough High Street and Tower Bridge Road.

Then the Guy’s Hospital and Snowsfields side, quieter and more mixed: newer pockets around Weston Street and Crucifix Lane, railway-arch conversion flats, and the period-and-ex-council fringe running from Borough Market towards Bermondsey Street and the galleries. Guy’s is a large NHS employer, so a good share of these are hospital-staff lets and short professional tenancies that turn over fast. If your address sits a street outside all this, ring the office. We almost certainly cover it, same patch, same teams, since 2014.

We cover the neighbouring patches too, which matters when a tenancy straddles a boundary or your next flat is one over: Borough on the market and Borough High Street side, Bermondsey south of Tower Bridge Road, Shad Thames for the wharf conversions, and Southwark Cathedral on the Bankside edge.

What it costs, and the maths nobody runs until it is too late

Most people want the number in a sentence, so here it is. A studio is £156 and a one-bed £207; a two-bed flat or a Tooley Street warehouse loft is £243; a three-bed comes in at £339 and a four-bed at £425. Those are full, fixed prices for the agent-approved clean with the 57-point checklist and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee included, and there is no VAT add-on, no fuel surcharge and no upper-floor premium for a flat with lift access. A Shard-side or higher-floor More London unit with porcelain worktops and a tight concierge window sits in the same band; the surfaces and access take longer, not more money. If a full clean is overkill and you only need a top-up, the by-the-hour rate is £30 per cleaner.

Add-ons are priced the same way: a carpet shampoo is £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room or £115 for a whole two-bed’s carpets; a single oven deep clean is £77, a double £110 and a 90cm range £114. Landlord-supplied sofas in the corporate lets often want upholstery cleaning rather than a vacuum, and the engineered-oak and porcelain the modern blocks come fitted with sometimes needs proper floor cleaning rather than a mop. The table below is for anyone who prefers it laid out.

Run the maths the way the deposit makes you. A one-bed at £207 against a £4,500 pot held in a scheme is not really a decision. Every SE1 booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the agent or inventory clerk flags a cleaning issue inside 48 hours, we come back and redo it free, as long as you tell us in the window and the flat is as we left it with nobody moved in. Our pass rate across London Bridge jobs sits near 97%, but the guarantee is the real point, because a failed check-out where deposits start above £4,000 is not a small thing to shrug at.

There is a reason the agents here know us. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and across our London and county work that has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions: money that stayed with the tenant instead of the landlord.

A Shad Thames job from February

“Two years in a warehouse loft off Shad Thames, one of the old converted ones with the exposed brick and the big steel windows. JLL had the corporate let and their clerk is thorough. The induction hob was the thing I’d given up on, hazed grey from years of frying, and the salt film on the outside of the river-facing glass I couldn’t reach at all. Monster sent two for a full day. Hob came back clear in stripes, the glass squeegeed clean top to bottom, and they did the coffee-machine spout and the bin runners I’d never once pulled out. The clerk knocked off eighty quid for a worktop chip that was on the check-in report anyway. Rest signed clean. Deposit back inside a fortnight.”
Marcus D., Shad Thames SE1, February 2026

That is a fair example of the wharf-side pattern: a long corporate let, an induction hob nobody had dealt with, unreachable river-facing glass, and a clerk who checks. The clean cost a fraction of what was on the line, and what settled it was not the scrubbing alone but the dated photo set that went out with the invoice.

Booking it, and the front-desk problem

London Bridge bunches its move-outs at month-end like everywhere, and the SE1 twist is access. Half these flats sit behind a concierge, a loading bay and a key-card, so getting a team in is its own small logistics job. Sort it at booking and the day runs smooth.

1. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Give us the postcode, the bedroom count and the move-out date, and mention anything the check-in report marked “new” or “as new”.
2. We fix a price on the call. Carpet add-on, oven type and any access quirk get talked through then: the front-desk key-card hand-off, the loading-bay slot on Tooley Street, the resident-arranged service window on the riverside blocks.
3. Written confirmation by email, with the start time and the team lead’s name.
4. 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 genuinely helps where several van trips through one loading bay turn into a problem.
5. Photo proof at the end, every room, with an itemised invoice for the deposit file. Anything the clerk flags inside 48 hours, we come back and fix free.

One honest note on the blocks. The concierge, the loading bay and the parcel room all have their own rules, so tell us how we get in when you book, whether that is a key card left at the desk, a key safe or an agent drop-off, and what your key-card return and parcel-room collection deadlines are.

Questions we get asked

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in London Bridge?

A studio starts at £156, a one-bed at £207, a two-bed at £243, a three-bed at £339 and a four-bed at £425. Those are fixed prices for the full agent-approved clean, not hourly. A Shard-side flat with porcelain worktops and a tight concierge window is the same price band; the surfaces take longer, not more money. Carpet shampoo and a double oven are quoted on top.

Do you clean the flats above the station and around the Shard?

Yes. The residential floors near the Shard, the St Thomas Street stock and the towers at One Tower Bridge are a steady part of the SE1 book. We know the concierge sign-in, the lift hand-off and the resident-arranged service window. Tell us the floor and the slot your front desk can hold, and we fit the work to it.

How long does a London Bridge clean take?

A studio is a long morning. A one-bed SE1 flat runs five to seven hours with two cleaners. A two-bed warehouse loft off Shad Thames is seven to nine. A three-bed riverside place is usually a full day. We do not clock-watch; we work to the checklist and the flat is done when it passes.

Is London Bridge in Southwark’s selective licensing scheme?

Yes. The London Bridge and West Bermondsey ward sits inside Southwark’s selective licensing designation that started on 1 November 2023 and runs five years, so most privately let flats and small sharer lets in SE1 need a licence. There is a separate borough-wide additional HMO scheme running to 28 February 2027. Neither is a cleaning matter, but the licence reference often sits in the same move-out paperwork, so tenants ask.

Do you guarantee my deposit back?

We cannot guarantee the deposit, because the inventory covers paint, wear, the landlord’s furniture and fitted-appliance damage that we never touch. What we stand behind is the cleaning. If the clerk flags a cleaning issue inside 48 hours, we come back and put it right at no charge. Our first-time pass rate sits at 97% across SE1 jobs.

What does the hard water do to an SE1 bathroom?

SE1 runs on Thames Water at about 319 mg per litre of calcium carbonate, which is very hard. It films up the rainshower head, the glass screen runner, the mixer taps and the kettle inside a fortnight. A generic kitchen spray does nothing to set scale, so the clerk almost always finds it. We soak it off with a dilute acid, give it real dwell time, then polish the chrome or brushed nickel back.

Can you handle the integrated kitchen appliances?

Yes. We pull the panel on an integrated extractor and degrease the baffle filter, take the dishwasher filter out, and clean the seals on the integrated fridge and freezer. Where a flat has an integrated coffee machine we do the spout and the tank seal. Most weekly cleaners never go that deep, which is exactly why the check-out walk catches it.

Do you clean the corporate lets and build-to-rent blocks?

Yes, that is a big slice of what we do in SE1. We are used to the front-desk key-card hand-off, the loading-bay slot, the parcel-room final-collection slip and the gym key-card some operators ask tenants to return on the way out. Send us the block’s end-of-let cleaning standard when you book and we clean to it line by line.

What about the warehouse and wharf conversions towards Shad Thames?

Those are their own job. Retained timber beams, exposed brick, polished-concrete or engineered-oak floors and original steel-framed windows all get hand-treated rather than sprayed. We have worked the Bermondsey riverside conversions for years and we know where the check-out clerk puts the torch on them.

Do I need to be there?

No. Most London Bridge clients drop a key with the letting agent, leave a key card at the block’s front desk or arrange a key safe. We send a written check-out report by email when we leave, with photos for the deposit file if you want them.

What if my landlord uses a particular inventory firm?

Tell us the firm at booking. We have worked with most of the SE1 inventory clerks, including the ones Knight Frank, Hamptons, Foxtons and JLL use around More London and the riverside, and we know which of them lean strict on which categories. It changes how we brief the team, not the price.

What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?

If the letting agent or inventory clerk flags any cleaning issue within 48 hours of our visit, we send a team back at no extra charge to sort it, as long as nobody has moved in and the flat is as we left it. We have had to use it on roughly 3 in 100 jobs since 2014.

How quickly can you book me in?

Usually 48 to 72 hours’ notice on the SE1 patch, and 7 to 10 days if your move-out lands on the last few days of the month, which is when the diary jams. Same-day is sometimes possible if a team is finishing nearby around Tooley Street or Bermondsey Street; ring the office and ask.

Do you take card, or only bank transfer?

Card on the day, bank transfer in advance, or cash if that is easier. We send an itemised invoice on company-headed paper for the deposit file either way.