It starts at the top of the hill
We clean end-of-tenancy properties up on Shooter’s Hill (SE18 3NH) to the inventory clerk’s check-in standard, priced by the size of the home, with a free re-clean inside 48 hours if the agent flags the work. That is the short answer. The longer one starts with the climb, because at 132 metres this is the highest ground in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and the hill shaped both the houses up here and the way a move-out clean tends to go wrong.
The old Dover Road runs straight over the summit, following the line of the Roman Watling Street, and for centuries this was the first real hill out of London on the way to Kent. That history is why the place feels the way it does. A gibbet once stood near the top for the highwaymen who worked the lonely stretch of road, and the deep woods that made it dangerous for a mail-coach are the same woods that now sit behind half the gardens up here. Oxleas Wood is ancient woodland and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the gothic water tower built in 1910 still marks the crest for miles around.
For a cleaning firm none of that is trivia. The hill straddles the boundary between Greenwich and Bexley, the homes were mostly built between the wars rather than in the Victorian rush, and there is no railway station on the hill itself. Each of those facts changes a move-out clean, and a clerk who knows the area checks for the things the hill brings in. We have cleaned up here for years and we clean to the agent’s sheet, not to a guess about what looks tidy.
If your tenancy is ending and the deposit is on the line, the cleaning clause is usually where the money goes. Get that right first time and the rest of the deposit tends to follow.
The houses the Wimpey estate built
Shooter’s Hill is not Victorian terrace country, and that catches people out. George Wimpey laid out the Shooters Hill estate in the 1930s, and the interwar semi is the house we clean most up here: bay-fronted, pebbledashed in places, with a side return, a decent garden and a bathroom that has usually been refitted at least once since the war. The higher parts of the hill were saved from being built over at all, because the London County Council bought up Castle Wood in 1922, Jackwood in 1923 and Oxleas Wood in 1934 to hold them as public open space, so the housing wraps around the woodland rather than covering the summit.
Around and below the interwar streets sit two other kinds of home. There is a good amount of 1950s and 1960s housing filling the slopes, council-built terraces and low blocks of flats, a lot of it sold off under right-to-buy and now privately let. And scattered along the older roads near the top are some genuinely grand villas, the detached houses that went up for merchants and professionals who wanted the air and the view, most of them now either large family lets or carved into two or three flats.
So when a tenant rings and says it is a three-bed on Shooter’s Hill, the first thing we ask is which sort. A 1930s semi off Eaglesfield Road cleans nothing like a converted flat in an Edwardian villa, and neither cleans like an ex-council maisonette down toward the Welling end. The clerk holds each of them to its own check-in photographs, and the photographs are where the argument is settled.
A 1930s semi off Eaglesfield Road cleans nothing like a converted flat in an Edwardian villa, and neither cleans like an ex-council maisonette down toward the Welling end.
The interwar semi has its own quirks. The bay windows collect dust along the leaded top lights and in the corners of the reveals. There are picture rails and moulded skirting in the front rooms, the side return tends to grow a film of green on the kitchen window from the damp shade, and the original Crittall-style metal windows that survive in some houses have runs and hinges that trap dirt a quick wipe rides straight over. The gardens are bigger than a terrace would have, which matters less for the clean and more for parking, of which more later.
The grand villas are a slower job for a different reason. High ceilings mean tall sash windows and deep cornicing, the staircases are wide with turned balusters, and where one has been split into flats the shared hallway is not yours to clean but the inside of your flat is judged just as hard. We treat each archetype on its own terms rather than sending the same checklist round blind.
Cleaning a hilltop semi, room by room
Because the interwar semi is the bulk of what we do up here, it is worth setting out what one actually involves. Our team arrives with a printed 57-point agent-approved checklist and works the house room by room, top to bottom, ticking as they go. The list exists because the clerk checks against a list of their own, and matching theirs is how you pass. Nothing on it is unusual. It is the full set, done properly, including the bits a normal clean skips.
The kitchen is where most of the time goes. The oven comes apart, the racks and the inner door glass are degreased separately, the hob and the splashback are brought back, and the extractor filter is cleaned rather than left greasy. Cupboards and drawers are wiped inside and out, fronts and handles included, and the gap behind the kickboard gets cleared. Fridges and freezers are done inside and defrosted if you have switched them off. In a 1930s house the fitted kitchen has often been squeezed into the old scullery layout, so the grease creeps onto the wall above the units and down the side of the tall cupboard, and we clean wider than the splashback alone because that is exactly where a clerk runs a finger.
The bathroom is about the water. South-east London runs hard, the chalk in it leaves a film on glass, chrome and grout that builds within weeks, and a shower screen that was clear when you moved in looks cloudy by the time you leave even with regular wiping. Clerks up here know it and look for it first. Our team carries the descaler that actually shifts the build-up rather than a spray-and-hope, so the scale on the taps, the showerhead and the grout comes off properly. The toilet is cleaned around the base and behind, the extractor vent is dusted, and the sealant lines are scrubbed.
Then there is the detail the period of these houses brings in. Deep skirting boards, picture rails and moulded door surrounds hold a felt of dust that a swift wipe misses. The bay windows need the reveals and the top lights done as well as the main pane. Cast-iron radiators, where they survive, have fins and backs a clerk will check. The metal Crittall windows, where a landlord has kept them, need the runs and the hinges cleaning rather than a swipe across the glass; where they have been swapped for modern casements, the frames and the trickle vents still get done inside as standard. We reach the outsides on the ground and first floor with water-fed poles where the inventory asks for clean external glass.
The pass rate is the figure that matters. We clear the check-out first time on 97% of jobs, and on the rare property that gets flagged, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee means we come back free if you call within three days of the report. That promise is part of why agents keep us on their books. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents and have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions, and most of that was saved by getting the property right the first time rather than arguing about it after the keys went back.
The clean is not charged by the hour. You pay by the size of the home, the team stays until the checklist is finished, and nobody clock-watches.
Shooter’s Hill is a selective licensing ward
Here is the local fact most landlords and sharers up here do not know, and it changes the balance of a deposit dispute. Shooter’s Hill is one of only a handful of places in the Royal Borough of Greenwich where an ordinary let needs a selective licence. A couple of miles west in somewhere like Blackheath, the same flat would not.
The council runs three layers of private-rented licensing, and the strictest of them reaches up the hill. Greenwich’s selective licensing scheme started on 1 October 2022 and runs for five years, to 30 September 2027, and it applies in parts of five named wards: Woolwich Riverside, Woolwich Common, Shooters Hill, Plumstead Common and Plumstead Glyndon. The word “parts” matters here, because the Shooters Hill ward is large and the district itself straddles the Greenwich and Bexley boundary, so whether a given street is caught depends on which side of the line and which part of the ward it sits in. Most ordinary single-household lets and small two-sharer flats inside the designated area need a selective licence from the council.
Above that sit two HMO schemes that run borough-wide and so cover the whole hill. The additional HMO scheme started on 1 January 2024 and catches smaller shared homes where three or four people from more than two households live together and share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet. Mandatory HMO licensing sits on top of that, for any home let to five or more people forming two or more households who share those facilities. A licence is not optional. The council can fine a landlord up to £30,000 for renting out an unlicensed home, and a tenant can apply for a rent repayment order to claw back rent they have paid.
- Selective licence
- Required for ordinary single-household and small-sharer lets in the designated parts of five Greenwich wards, Shooters Hill among them. The scheme runs from 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2027.
- Additional HMO licence
- A borough-wide Greenwich scheme, live since 1 January 2024, for smaller shared homes of three or four people from more than two households sharing a kitchen, bathroom or toilet.
- Mandatory HMO licence
- Required anywhere in the borough for a home let to five or more people in two or more households who share facilities.
- Check-in inventory
- The clerk’s photographed record of the home’s condition and cleanliness at the start of the tenancy. Your end-of-tenancy clean is judged against it, not against a fresh idea of clean.
Why does a cleaning firm raise any of this? Because the cleanliness clause in your inventory does not care which licence applies, but the balance of power in a dispute often does. A landlord who let an unlicensed home in the designated part of the Shooters Hill ward is on weaker ground if they try to dock you for cleaning, and a tenant who knows that argues from a stronger position. We are not your licensing adviser, and you should check the council’s own address lookup for your exact street, but it is the sort of local detail worth knowing before you hand back the keys.
For sharers there is a practical knock-on. A licensed HMO is often let room by room, which can mean a check-out per room rather than one clean handover, with the kitchen and bathroom judged as shared space. We have done plenty of those in the bigger villas near the top. It pays to agree who cleans what before anyone moves their boxes, because the last sharer left in the house tends to inherit whatever nobody else claimed.
What it costs to clean a move-out here
Prices are fixed by the size of the home, quoted up front, and they are the full price rather than a teaser that climbs once the team is in your hallway. For end-of-tenancy cleaning 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. The interwar semis up here are mostly three-bed houses, so £339 is the band a fair few of our local jobs land in, while the converted villa flats and the ex-council maisonettes tend to fall in the one and two-bed range at £207 and £243.
If you would rather buy time than a whole-property clean, say because you have done most of it yourself and only want the oven and the bathroom taken off your hands, by-the-hour cleaning is £30 per cleaner. That suits a smaller flat where you just want the worst jobs gone. It does not carry the end-of-tenancy guarantee, though, because we have not worked the full checklist.
Carpets are priced on their own and cleaned by hot-water extraction: £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed done together. The bigger hilltop houses tend to be carpeted upstairs and through the bedrooms, so the per-room rate usually works out kinder than a flat fee. Oven cleaning, booked separately, is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a range. Our oven cleaning and carpet cleaning pages set out what each one covers.
We do not run discount theatre. We would sooner quote one honest number than dangle a cheap headline and then add for the oven, the scale and the carpets when the team arrives. You get the figure before anything is booked.
No station on the hill, so the buses do the work
There is no railway station on Shooter’s Hill, and that is the single biggest difference between cleaning up here and cleaning down in Woolwich or Plumstead. The nearest stations all sit at the foot of the slopes: Falconwood is about a mile off on the Bexley side, Welling is a similar distance, and Woolwich Arsenal with its Elizabeth line platforms is a little over a mile down toward the river. None of them is a walk you would do with a week’s shopping, let alone a van of cleaning kit, so the hill leans on its buses.
The 89 and the 486 are the routes that matter. The 89 runs between Lewisham and Bexleyheath and the 486 between North Greenwich and Bexleyheath, both climbing over the top past the Memorial Hospital, and between them they are how a lot of people up here get about without a car. For us they matter because parking varies sharply with the gradient and the type of street. The interwar semis mostly have their own drives or front gardens, which makes access easy. The ex-council blocks lower down have shared bays that fill up, and the streets near the top by the woods are narrow and can be tight for a van. Tell us where the nearest space or driveway is when you book and we sort access in advance, because a crew circling for a parking spot is time off your clean.
If your home backs onto the woods you have one of the best outlooks in London, and a bit more cleaning to do on the window side. Oxleas Wood is ancient woodland and a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest, the meadow above it opens onto a view that runs for miles, and the Oxleas Wood Cafe up by the meadow is a proper local landmark rather than a tourist stop. Severndroog Castle, the triangular gothic tower built in 1784 in Castle Wood, stands just behind the houses on the Greenwich side. Eaglesfield Park sits on the north side of Shooter’s Hill Road with its own little pond. None of this changes how we clean a kitchen, but a ground-floor window facing all that green picks up more pollen, sap and damp than a sealed street would, and a clerk will spot it on the sills and the frames.
We work seven days a week, weekends included, at no extra charge. End-of-tenancy timing is tight by its nature, with the check-out, the incoming tenants and the keys all landing in the same day or two, so we keep Saturday and Sunday slots open for exactly that. If your tenancy sits down the hill in Woolwich or over toward Eltham, we cover both, and the parts of the hill that shade into Plumstead too. The wider hub for the borough is our end of tenancy cleaning across Greenwich page.
End of tenancy against a deep clean
People use the terms as if they mean the same thing, and they do not. A regular clean keeps a lived-in home ticking over. A deep clean goes harder at a home you are staying in, pulling out the build-up a weekly clean leaves behind. An end-of-tenancy clean is its own job, scoped against the check-in inventory so the home goes back at the standard it came in at, which is why it follows the 57-point list and carries the re-clean guarantee.
The real difference is who is judging it. A deep clean has to please you. An end-of-tenancy clean has to please a clerk holding photographs, so the inside of the oven, the descaling, the cupboard interiors and the gaps behind the appliances are all standard rather than extras. If you are staying put and just want the place freshened, our deep cleaning service is the better fit and a little cheaper. If you are moving out and the deposit is on the line, you want the end-of-tenancy clean every time.
One more distinction is worth making in a period house. A clerk can fail a clean over a single missed line, so an end-of-tenancy clean is really about completeness, where a deep clean is about depth. The bigger houses up here have a lot of lines to miss, which is the whole argument for the full checklist.
Sofas are the grey area in between. A fair few of the villa flats and the larger semis are let furnished, and a fabric sofa that came clean on the inventory has to go back clean, which a vacuum alone will not always manage after a couple of years of daily use. Our upholstery cleaning uses the same hot-water extraction as the carpets and lifts the marks a vacuum leaves behind. If your tenancy includes the landlord’s furniture, mention it when you book so we bring the right machine.
Booking a clean up on Shooter’s Hill
Booking is quick. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected], tell us the property size, the postcode and your move-out date, and we give you a fixed price and a slot. If you are not sure whether the box room makes it a three-bed, or whether your place counts as a studio or a one-bed, just describe it and we will work it out with you. You can also reach us through the contact page.
We will ask three things: how many bedrooms and bathrooms, whether the home will be empty or still part-furnished when we clean, and how parking works on your street. Those three answers let us send the right size team with the right kit and avoid the day-of surprises that make jobs overrun. If you want carpets or the oven done at the same time, say so then and we fold it into the one visit and the one price.
After the clean, keep your receipt and the before-and-after photos we can provide, because if the clerk does raise something, that paperwork plus the 48-hour guarantee is how we put it right at no cost to you. Most tenants never need it. It is there for the one home in twenty where a clerk finds a line to quibble.
We have cleaned the hill for years, the interwar semis, the converted villas and the ex-council flats alike. We know which streets are a nightmare to park on, which agents send the strictest clerks, and how hard the water bites in the bathrooms up here. That is the difference between a clean that looks done and one that actually passes.
Shooter’s Hill end of tenancy questions
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Shooter’s Hill?
It is priced by property size: £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed, £243 for a two-bed, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed. The price is fixed and quoted before you book, with no day-of add-ons.
Do you clean the 1930s semis on the old Wimpey estate?
Yes, they are most of what we do up here. The interwar semis have their own traps, such as bay windows that need the reveals and top lights done, deep skirting and picture rails that hold dust, surviving metal Crittall windows that need the runs cleaned, and hard-water scale in the bathroom, and we clean to the inventory clerk’s check-in standard so the house goes back as it started.
Does Shooter’s Hill need a selective property licence?
Often yes. Greenwich runs selective licensing in parts of five wards, and Shooters Hill is one of them, so many ordinary lets in the designated area need a selective licence. The scheme runs from 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2027, and a landlord can be fined up to £30,000 for letting an unlicensed home. Because only parts of the ward are covered and the area also crosses into Bexley, check your exact street on the council’s address lookup.
Does the Greenwich HMO scheme cover Shooter’s Hill?
Yes. The borough’s additional HMO licensing scheme is borough-wide and has run since 1 January 2024, covering smaller shared homes of three or four people from more than two households. Larger shares of five or more need a mandatory HMO licence anywhere in the borough.
What does your end of tenancy clean include?
The full 57-point agent checklist: oven taken apart and degreased, full bathroom descale, cupboards inside and out, skirting, picture rails, sockets, internal windows, radiators and the gaps behind appliances. Carpets and upholstery are hoovered, and we clean the inside of the windows as standard.
Is the cleaning charged by the hour?
No. End of tenancy is a fixed price by property size, and the team stays until the checklist is finished. We also offer by-the-hour cleaning at £30 per cleaner if you only want certain jobs done, but that does not carry the re-clean guarantee.
What is the 48-hour guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or agent flags the clean within 48 hours of the check-out, we come back and put it right free of charge. It covers the agreed checklist on the property we cleaned.
Will this clean get my full deposit back?
The cleaning part of it, yes, which is where most deductions come from. We pass the check-out first time on 97% of jobs and have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning charges. We cannot cover damage or unpaid rent, only the cleaning standard.
Do you clean carpets and ovens as well?
Yes, either as part of the visit or on their own. Carpets are £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room or £115 for a whole two-bed by hot-water extraction; ovens are £77 single, £110 double and £114 for a range.
There is no station on the hill, so can you still get to me easily?
Yes. We come by road, so the lack of a station makes no difference to us. The nearest stations are Falconwood, Welling and Woolwich Arsenal at the foot of the slopes, but we drive to the door and just ask where the nearest space or driveway is when you book.
Can you reach the streets up by Oxleas Wood and the water tower?
Yes. We cover the whole hill, from the semis on the Wimpey estate up to the narrow roads by the woods and Severndroog Castle. Those top streets are tighter for a van, so we just ask about parking when you book.
Can you come at the weekend?
Yes, we work seven days a week including weekends at no extra cost. End-of-tenancy timing is tight, so we keep Saturday and Sunday slots open for move-out days.
Do I need to be there during the clean?
No, as long as we can get access. Many tenants leave a key or arrange access through the agent, and we lock up after. An empty home actually cleans better because we can reach the floors and skirting the clerk checks.
How long does an end of tenancy clean take?
A one or two-bed flat is usually a few hours; a three or four-bed house takes most of a day. Because we price by property rather than time, the team stays until the checklist is signed off rather than stopping on a clock.
How does deposit protection work if there is a dispute?
Your deposit is held in a government-approved scheme, and if you and the landlord disagree the money stays protected until it is resolved through the scheme’s adjudication. Keeping our receipt and photos helps if a cleaning charge is ever raised.
For the legal background, the government’s tenancy deposit protection guidance sets out the 30-day rule and the three approved schemes, Shelter’s advice on cleaning deductions explains that you only have to return a home as clean as it was at check-in, and the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 sets the framework for tenancies now that fixed terms are being phased out.