The market on the old Fernhead Road piazza
End of tenancy cleaning
from £156
For a studio, fixed by property size, agreed before we start.
Get your price0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
Maida Hill Market trades on Fridays and Saturdays from a small paved square where Fernhead Road meets the Harrow Road, by the Prince of Wales junction.
Early in 2026 the council finished a makeover, budgeted at around £2.7m, that turned that cluttered, traffic-bullied corner into something people want to stand in:
- reclaimed granite and Yorkstone underfoot;
- new planting and seats;
- a public toilet pavilion.
It is the public heart of an area most Londoners drive straight past on the A404 without ever clocking the name.
Maida Hill is the working end of W9, west of the grand stucco, and what brings most people to this page is not the market. It is the final inspection on a Maida Hill let, and the standard a Westminster agent wants met before your deposit comes back.
- What the clean is
- The heavy, whole-flat clean you book when a let finishes, so the property matches the inventory from your first day and the landlord has no grounds to keep money back. Weekly cleaning and this are different jobs, judged by different people.
- What it has to do
- Easy to describe, harder to pull off: return the flat as the check-in report found it, less normal wear, so the clerk leaves with a blank page of notes and the agent has nothing to charge for.
- The shared-house catch
- In a converted terrace where you share the stairs, knowing where your flat starts and stops is part of that.
Maida Hill makes that its own kind of job, and the reason is the housing. This is not the Maida Vale of wide mansion blocks and porters. It is the projected suburb that grew north of the Harrow Road from the 1860s:
- the long brick terraces of Chippenham Road and Shirland Road carved into flats;
- the post-war estates;
- the tenant-owned blocks;
- a band of social housing far denser than the postcode average.
We have cleaned across this patch for over a decade. A move-out here turns on knowing which kind of building you are standing in.
A move-out here turns on knowing which kind of building you are standing in.
Cleaning a Harrow Road conversion flat
Most of our Maida Hill work is inside Victorian terraces that were split into flats decades ago. The streets behind the Harrow Road went up between roughly 1865 and 1885, and most of those houses are now two, three or four flats apiece:
- Chippenham Road
- Walterton Road
- Elgin Avenue
- Fernhead Road
- Shirland Road
They clean nothing like a new-build. The ceilings are high, the original features are half worn out, and a converted house has shared bits that pick up grime in ways a self-contained flat never does.
The kitchen
The kitchen takes the most hours, as it does everywhere. We:
- clean the oven inside and out, pull the racks, and do the door glass where the door design allows;
- degrease the extractor and its filter;
- descale the tap and the sink;
- wipe every cupboard inside and out.
A lot of these conversions have had a cheap kitchen squeezed into a back addition, with units that do not quite line up and a worktop join that traps grease, so the scrubbing is fiddlier than it looks.
Where a landlord has fitted something smarter, there will be a stone top that marks if you hit it with the wrong spray. We do those by hand.
The bathroom
Bathrooms need patient work. Screen, chrome and tiles are descaled, soap film comes off, grout gets scrubbed, and the toilet is cleaned round the back and underneath as well as in the bowl.
Thames Water calls all of its supply hard, which in practice means scale on a shower head within weeks.
By the 1960s many homes on the Walterton estate still lacked basic amenities, so bathrooms here were often added later, fitted into the back extension or a spare bedroom with a small fan and sometimes no window. Mould in the silicone is the result, and clerks look for it.
The rest of the flat
- We hoover the carpets and any upholstery left behind.
- We clean the inside of every window.
- We wipe skirting, doors and frames.
- The high corners and any picture rail get the cobwebs taken off, which in a tall Victorian room means proper reach, not a quick wave of a duster.
- Radiators, the tops of the kitchen units, the bits nobody looks at until a clerk does.
The checklist we work to runs to 57 points and it is agent-approved, which is the whole point of it. It is built from what Westminster inventory clerks actually mark against, so nothing on their sheet goes untouched.
Estate blocks and newer flats
Not every Maida Hill home is a period conversion, mind. There are also:
- post-war council blocks across the Elgin and Mozart estates;
- the tenant-owned flats that Walterton and Elgin Community Homes took into resident ownership back in 1992;
- newer building along the Harrow Road nearby, such as the 112 affordable homes at 300 Harrow Road, finished in 2023.
The estates are a big part of why this end of W9 has so much more social and shared housing than the streets to the east, and they put a lot of mixed-tenure flats on the rental market.
A flat in a 1970s block cleans differently again. Lower ceilings, big metal-framed windows, communal stairs, and kitchens and bathrooms from an era of hard-wearing surfaces that scrub up well but show every chip. We clean the lot to the same inventory standard, because the clerk applies the same one whatever the building.
The main-road air
One wrinkle worth knowing here is the air. The Harrow Road carries heavy traffic, and nitrogen dioxide along it runs above the levels the World Health Organisation calls safe.
In plain cleaning terms, a film of road grime settles on sills, frames and the inside of windows faster than it does on a quiet street.
A flat fronting the Harrow Road or sitting under the Westway will grey up quicker than one tucked back towards the canal, and a clerk facing a main-road window in daylight catches every smear. We allow for that.
Before we arrive
- Leave the electricity and hot water on.
- Take all your belongings out.
- Switch the fridge-freezer off early enough for it to defrost fully; a freezer still full of ice cannot be cleaned and ends up on the report.
Windows are cleaned on the inside only. The outside panes are a separate job.
Where a Maida Hill deposit actually slips
A deposit is rarely lost to one bad room. It goes on a list of small misses, one line each on the clerk’s report, and the list gets long surprisingly quickly. On a Maida Hill let these are the usual entries.
- Kitchens
- These cost the most. A back-addition kitchen is small, so grease from the hob has little room to spread and ends up thick on the cooker hood, the wall behind and the top of the fridge, and the oven glass is usually the worst of it.
- Scale
- The second big item, round the tap and on the drainer, because the water here is hard.
- Floors
- You will often find laminate laid over the old pine boards in these conversions, and it goes cloudy if the mop is too wet or the product too strong. The clerk will crouch and look along the skirting line, which is exactly where a rushed mop stops short.
- Main-road grime
- The local special. On a flat over the Harrow Road or near the Westway, the window glass, the sills and the frames carry traffic film that a normal wipe smears rather than lifts, and it is right there in the light when the clerk looks. We clean it off properly because we know it is the first thing the eye lands on.
- Communal-edge mess
- The conversion special. In a house split into flats, the bit by your own front door, the stretch of hall, the inside of the shared porch, often falls into a grey area, and a clerk for your flat will still note dust and scuffs on anything inside your demise. We clean to the line of what you are responsible for, no more, no less.
We get up to all of it.
The most avoidable deduction of all comes from hiring by the hour. The hours run out with the flat half done, and the agent then bills you for a professional firm to complete it. Our fixed price is designed to stop that happening.
We are listed with 300+ letting agents across London, and over the years £1.2m of deposit money has come back to tenants we cleaned for, money that would otherwise have been lost to cleaning deductions.
We work to the check-out standard every week, including on the streets between the Harrow Road and Shirland Road.
The licence your Maida Hill landlord now needs
This is the part that changed recently, and a lot of tenants and a fair few landlords have not caught up.
Renting in Maida Hill means renting under Westminster City Council, and the Harrow Road ward, which covers most of Maida Hill, sits inside the council’s new selective licensing scheme. That is genuinely new, and it bears on a deposit dispute.
- Selective licensing
- Since 24 November 2025, Westminster has required a licence for most private lets to a single household, a lone tenant or a pair of sharers. The scheme runs across fifteen of the city’s eighteen wards in two designations.
- Harrow Road ward
- The ward the Maida Hill neighbourhood plan area was drawn from, and one of the eight wards in the first designation. Queen’s Park, Westbourne and Maida Vale wards are in that same group, and three wards in the south of the city are outside the scheme. The Westminster City Council selective licensing pages let you check an address.
- HMO licensing
- The national rules are in GOV.UK’s guidance on HMOs: a house shared by five or more people who make up two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence, whatever the ward.
Sharing has a long history in this part of W9. Most houses on the old St Peter’s Park estate had about nine rooms, and by the 1890s plenty of them were let to two or three families at once.
Our checklist stays the same whatever the licence position. The difference shows up if a deposit goes to dispute. A landlord who should hold a licence and does not is on the back foot, and an agent looking after a licensed flat usually inspects more carefully at check-out.
The 2021 Census figures quoted in the Maida Hill neighbourhood plan put 44% of households in the area in social rented homes. Private lets here sit side by side with housing association and WECH homes, so it pays to know which rules cover yours before you book.
The check-out walk on a W9 let
The clerk’s visit follows a pattern. They hold the report written when you moved in, go through the flat room by room, and photograph whatever has changed beyond normal wear.
None of it is random, and if you clean to what they check you keep the money. On a Maida Hill conversion the order usually looks like this.
- The kitchen first. The oven door comes open for a look at the glass, the grill pan comes out, and the clerk checks under and behind the hob. Fridge and freezer are opened, a shelf is touched, the base of the tap is checked for scale. A galley kitchen in a back addition is small enough to inspect in a couple of minutes, which means a missed shelf or a greasy splashback gets found every time.
- After that, the bathroom: screen, grout, silicone, chrome, the toilet’s base and hinges, the fan. Most write-ups are for scale or pink mould, and in an internal bathroom with no window the mould returns quickly after a clean.
- Bedrooms and the living room come last. The clerk checks carpet edges, skirting, glass and window reveals, the tops of radiators and the ceiling corners, which in a tall Victorian house can be well out of arm’s reach.
Some checks are particular to this end of W9. A flat facing the Harrow Road picks up a film of traffic grime on the glass and grit on the sills. Window frames across Maida Hill are typically painted white, which shows every grey smear, so the clerk sees at once whether the frames and sills were done.
In one of WECH’s newer low-rise blocks, such as Campaign Court or Rodborough Court, there are no tall Victorian ceilings to reach, so the clerk’s eye goes to grout and kitchen units instead. These are the spots that decide a pass. We clean them all.
Which building you are in changes the emphasis.
- Harrow Road terraces
- A flat in the three-storeys-over-basement terraces begun in 1865 along the north side of the Harrow Road gets checked high up and along the old skirting.
- Walterton and Elgin estates
- Run by WECH since 1992, with refurbished Victorian houses standing next to Campaign Court and Rodborough Court, the low-rise blocks that replaced the two Elgin tower blocks in 1994.
- Conversions
- Shirland Mews, turned into flats in 2002 to 2004, and the old Welford dairy on Shirland Road, now a shop with flats, are closer to modern flats.
We brief the team before they set out.
The extra jobs worth adding
For a flat in reasonable shape, the standard clean is enough. Some Maida Hill flats need extra work, and a few tasks are outside the core clean entirely. Book them together with the main clean if you can; it nearly always works out cheaper than a return visit.
- Carpets
- Most extra requests are for carpets. A carpet with stains or grey traffic lanes, rather than surface dust, gets a hot-water extraction clean, which draws out dirt and odours a vacuum cannot reach. Carpets on their own, without a move-out clean, are covered on our carpet cleaning page.
- Sofa, armchair or mattress
- If the landlord left one, our upholstery cleaning uses the same method on fabric.
- The oven
- An add-on to our end of tenancy price, from £31. For an oven that is thick with carbon, the oven cleaning team soaks the racks and trays, and cleans the cavity right back.
- Outside glass
- This needs its own booking, since our move-out clean only covers the inside of windows. Front windows on the Harrow Road tend to grey over faster than ones on quieter streets, and exterior window cleaning brings them up clear: purified water through water-fed poles, so nothing streaks.
Why add them to the same booking? A clerk who notices one tired carpet often looks harder at the rest of the flat, and a flat that is right throughout usually clears in one go.
If the oven is bad or the sofa has taken a beating, including them now costs less than the agent would deduct for them, and much less than finding a second firm once you no longer have keys.
Moving everything out as well? The same company can do both: our removals service empties the flat, then the cleaners go in, which matters in a house where everything goes down a tall flight of front steps to the pavement.
- For the clean alone, see the main end of tenancy cleaning page.
- A one-off deep clean is better for a flat you are staying in.
- Our domestic cleaning covers regular visits.
What a Maida Hill clean costs
We set the price by the size of the flat and fix it before the day. Paid by the hour, a cleaner has every reason to slow down and every reason to leave when the time is up. With a fixed figure neither applies, and the team works on until the last room is done.
A studio in a Chippenham Road conversion costs less than a three-bed maisonette off the Harrow Road, and you know the amount before you book. Included in that price:
- the full 57-point clean;
- the labour;
- the equipment and products we bring;
- the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.
Should the clerk or agent raise anything within 48 hours, a team returns to put it right free, so a disputed line is cleaned again instead of coming out of your deposit. Weekend bookings carry no surcharge. A Saturday clean costs exactly what a Thursday one does.
A fixed figure also heads off a familiar argument. Hourly cleaning invites a debate about whether the work could have gone faster, and it tends to happen on moving day, when everyone is tired. We agree the price first and keep to it, which leaves one question for the day: is the flat clean enough for the inventory?
One thing that does push the hours up here, and it is worth being honest about, is the water and the road grime together.
- Hard water
- London sits on hard, chalky water, so limescale builds on every tap, screen and tile.
- Traffic film
- A Maida Hill flat on a busy stretch picks up traffic film on top.
A flat that looked fine a month ago can show scale on the bathroom glass and grime on the front windows by the time the keys are due back. We allow for both in the quote rather than springing them on you, because descaling and degreasing properly takes time and a clerk always checks for it.
We can price straight because we know the housing. Years of cleaning in W9 have shown us how long a flat in a converted Victorian terrace takes against one in a post-war block, so the quote covers the real work with no padding.
Moving is expensive enough without a bill that climbs through the afternoon. See our cleaning prices page for figures by size, or call us.
A Saturday clean costs exactly what a Thursday one does.
Booking around the Harrow Road and the towpath
Booking a clean around a Maida Hill move has its own quirks, and access is the biggest.
- The Harrow Road
- A busy bus corridor, so pulling up outside to load is rarely simple.
- The side streets behind it
- Controlled parking through the day, with permits that are tight to come by.
- The canal
- The bits down by the Grand Union Canal, the Paddington Arm, have the towpath on one side and no proper kerb to unload from at all.
- Market days
- Friday and Saturday are the days to watch, when Maida Hill Market is on and the square by Fernhead Road fills with stalls and people.
We plan around it. Tell us where the flat is and we will work out loading and timing rather than circling the Prince of Wales junction hoping for a space.
Transport is the easy part.
- Westbourne Park station, on the Hammersmith and City and Circle lines, is a short walk south.
- Maida Vale station on the Bakerloo line sits to the east.
- The 18, 28, 31 and 36 buses run along the Harrow Road.
- The 187 cuts through the back streets via Shirland Road and Fernhead Road.
Plenty of our W9 jobs here are reachable without a van at all, which helps on a street where parking is a fight.
A couple of local corners are worth knowing if you are booking around them.
- The market square draws a crowd on a Saturday.
- The council’s regeneration work along the Harrow Road means stretches of pavement and shopfront come and go behind hoardings, so a loading spot that worked last month may be fenced off this one.
- The canal towpath that runs down to Little Venice and out towards Kensal is busy with walkers and cyclists in good weather.
None of it stops a clean; all of it is worth a heads-up so we bring the kit in the easy way. Steep front steps, a narrow shared hall, buses and no easy parking outside on the Harrow Road: tell us when you book, so none of it surprises the team on the morning.
Sequence matters. The clean goes in after the last of your furniture leaves and before the clerk comes, with half a day’s gap if possible. Boxes in the way mean corners get missed, and a clerk walking in mid-clean does nobody any favours.
If the flat is close to the market square by Fernhead Road, an early start makes loading easier. We work every day of the week, so the Sunday before a Monday check-out is an ordinary booking for us.
We cover Maida Hill and the streets around it. The same team that cleans a conversion flat off Shirland Road also covers move-outs:
- across Maida Vale proper and down to the canal at Little Venice;
- around Warwick Avenue and over to Westbourne Park;
- towards the north and west, through our Queen’s Park and Kensal Town coverage;
- down through Paddington and over towards Bayswater.
Same checklist, same guarantee, wherever in the area the flat sits.
Book by phone on 0333 555 2076, or through the contact form, giving the postcode, bedrooms and check-out date. We send back a price and a time. Clear the flat, thaw the freezer, and leave the rest to us.
End of tenancy, deep clean, regular clean
Regular, deep and end of tenancy cleans are three separate services, and booking the wrong one is a waste of money.
- Regular cleaning keeps an occupied home in order.
- A deep clean is a one-off catch-up for a flat that has got behind, and people book it while staying put.
- The end of tenancy clean exists for the inventory and the deposit, and agents only accept this one at check-out.
The yardstick is what separates them. A deep clean leaves a flat feeling fresher. A move-out clean is held against a written inventory and has to survive a clerk’s inspection, a stricter and much more exact test, which is why our 48-hour re-clean guarantee comes with it and the deep clean goes without.
Below are the terms Maida Hill tenants ask about most.
- Check-in inventory
- The report and photographs made on move-in day, recording the state and cleanliness of every room. At the end, the clerk compares everything with it, which is why it outweighs anything else in a deposit dispute.
- Fair wear and tear
- Deterioration that comes from ordinary day-to-day living. It is not deductible, which Shelter’s guidance on disputing unfair deductions covers in detail, but real damage and cleaning shown to be owed on the inventory can be charged.
- Deposit protection
- Your deposit has to go into a government-approved protection scheme no later than 30 days after the landlord receives it, under the rules in the GOV.UK deposit protection guidance. Once the amount is agreed, it must come back within 10 days; if it is disputed, the scheme holds it and decides.
- Selective licence
- Required by Westminster since 24 November 2025 for most private lets to one household or two sharers; Harrow Road is one of the fifteen wards covered.
- End of tenancy clean
- A move-out clean done to the inventory standard. Ours is priced by property size at a flat rate and carries the re-clean guarantee, and it is what agents in W9 expect to see at check-out.
Tenancy law has moved on as well. From 1 May 2026, the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 removed Section 21, and tenants can leave on two months’ notice. What gets your deposit back is unchanged: a flat returned clean to the inventory.
Questions Maida Hill tenants ask
How much does end of tenancy cleaning in Maida Hill cost?
The figure comes from the size of the flat and is agreed in advance: a studio in a converted house on Walterton Road costs less than a three-bedroom maisonette near the Harrow Road. Each quote covers the full 57-point clean and our 48-hour re-clean guarantee, with no extra for weekends. For figures, see our cleaning prices page or give us a ring.
Will the clean get my deposit back?
That is what the clean is for. Our teams follow a 57-point agent-approved checklist, and anything the clerk or agent flags gets a free return visit within 48 hours. We are listed with 300+ letting agents across London, and tenants who used us have recovered £1.2m in deposits between them that cleaning deductions would otherwise have claimed.
What does the end of tenancy clean include?
Everything, room by room. The kitchen gets its oven cleaned inside and out, plus the hob, the cooker hood, a descaled sink and tap, and every cupboard wiped inside and out. In the bathroom, scale and soap film come off every surface. Carpets and any upholstery get vacuumed, each window is washed inside, and skirting, doors and radiators are wiped down, as are the high corners of the Victorian rooms here. Outside windows are a separate window cleaning job.
Do you clean flats in converted Victorian terraces in W9?
Yes, and most of our Maida Hill work is exactly that. High ceilings, worn original features, windowless bathrooms and small back-addition kitchens all need a different touch from a new-build, and we clean the lot to inventory standard rather than risking marks on the older fabric.
Does my Maida Hill flat need a licence from Westminster?
Most likely. The Harrow Road ward, which covers most of Maida Hill, has been inside Westminster’s selective licensing scheme since it began on 24 November 2025, so letting to a single household or two sharers normally needs a licence. Larger shared houses are dealt with under HMO licensing instead. For your own address, look it up on the Westminster City Council selective licensing pages.
Can you clean on Sunday if I hand back on Monday?
Yes. Our teams work all seven days across Maida Hill and W9, and Sunday costs the same as any weekday, so booking us for the Sunday ahead of a Monday check-out is nothing unusual. Have the flat empty and the freezer defrosted when we arrive.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
Should the inventory clerk or your agent challenge our work within 48 hours of us finishing, we send a team back to fix it free. The item in question is re-cleaned instead of coming out of your deposit, which is the whole point of the guarantee.
What do you need from me before the clean?
We need the power and hot water on, your things gone, and the fridge-freezer off in good time to thaw; ice left in the freezer stops us cleaning it and goes on the report. To book, send your postcode, the bedroom count and the date of your check-out through our contact page.