The Silvertown clean, in one paragraph
Most of our Silvertown work sits within smell of the Tate & Lyle Thames Refinery, the plant that still boils Lyle’s Golden Syrup off North Woolwich Road and gives this stretch of E16 its faint sugar-and-river note on a warm day. End of tenancy cleaning in Silvertown is a fixed-price, whole-property deep clean keyed to the check-out inventory: we work to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, we charge by the size of the flat rather than by the hour, and a Silvertown two-bed is £243. If the inventory clerk flags anything we missed, we come back inside 48 hours for free. That is the whole offer. The rest of this page is the detail a Royal Wharf tenant or a Britannia Village landlord actually needs.
We have cleaned the lot around here. New-build dockside flats on the Royal Wharf edge, where the appliances are two years old and the only real job is the oven and the shower screen. Older terraces tucked behind North Woolwich Road. The odd ex-industrial conversion near Pontoon Dock, where a warehouse shell has been carved into loft flats and the windows are the size of a garage door. They all get checked out against an inventory, and the inventory is what your deposit hangs on.
Why this strip of E16 cleans the way it does
Silvertown is not named after a town. It took its name from Samuel Winkworth Silver, who opened a rubber and waterproof-clothing works on the riverbank here in 1852, and the factory hands needed somewhere to live, so the housing grew up around the industry rather than the other way round. That order of things still shapes the place. For a century and a half this was a working waterfront of sugar, rubber, soap and grain, hard up against the Royal Victoria Dock, and the homes were squeezed into the gaps.
Two events left the deepest mark. The first was the explosion. On 19 January 1917 the Brunner Mond works on North Woolwich Road, pressed into purifying TNT for the war, blew up: roughly 50 tonnes went off at once, killed 73 people, injured around 400, and flattened something like 900 homes across the district. It was the largest explosion London has ever had. A great deal of the old terraced stock was either destroyed that night or condemned afterwards, which is part of why so little pre-war housing survives on this strip and why the area was rebuilt in waves rather than all at once.
The second mark is sweeter. In 1878 Henry Tate put up a sugar refinery on the Silvertown riverside, Abram Lyle started his own works a short way upriver soon after, and in 1921 the two rivals merged into Tate & Lyle. Lyle’s Golden Syrup has been made on this stretch ever since, tin and lion and all, which makes it one of the oldest food brands still produced on its original site anywhere in Britain. The refinery is a working factory, not a museum, and it sets the backdrop to half our rounds down here.
Silvertown is not named after a town. It took its name from Samuel Winkworth Silver, who opened a rubber works on the riverbank here in 1852.
For a cleaner this history is not trivia. It explains the patchwork. You get a few surviving older terraces behind the main road, a handful of genuine industrial conversions where a mill or warehouse shell has been turned into flats, and then a great deal of new-build thrown up since the 1990s as the docks were regenerated. Three eras, three kinds of move-out, and a check-out clerk who treats each one differently. Knowing which you are dealing with is half the job.
Why the dockside flats fail a check-out
Silvertown sits on a thin strip of reclaimed land between the Royal Victoria Dock and the river, and the housing here is younger than almost anywhere else in Newham. Britannia Village went up in the 1990s on the south side of the dock, in what people started calling West Silvertown. Royal Wharf followed two decades later as a small town in its own right. The Silvertown Quays regeneration around the old Millennium Mills and the Grade II-listed Silo D is still filling in, a fifty-acre scheme bringing thousands of new homes to the water’s edge. So the typical move-out here is not a tired Victorian terrace; it is a five-year-old flat where the surfaces are modern and the problems are specific.
The river is the first of those problems. Flats this close to open water hold damp, and a sealed-up rental left over winter grows black mould along the window reveals and behind any wardrobe pushed against an outside wall. Clerks know to look for it, and they photograph it. We treat the mould, wipe down the reveals, and tell tenants to leave the trickle vents open for the last fortnight, because a flat that has been shut up tight since the tenant started packing always shows worse.
The second problem is the oven, every time. A built-in single oven in a Royal Wharf kitchen that has done two years of roast dinners will fail an inventory on the door glass alone, and tenants rarely get the baked-on carbon off the inner pane with a supermarket spray. It is the single most common cleaning deduction we see on this strip, and it is entirely avoidable.
Then there is the glass. A lot of these blocks face the water, the balconies catch salt blown off the dock, and the windows show every smear in the low afternoon light coming off the Thames. The ex-warehouse conversions near Pontoon Dock are worse for it, because the glazing is huge, the frames are deep, and the sills collect grime you cannot see until the sun hits them at the wrong angle.
A built-in single oven in a Royal Wharf kitchen that has done two years of roast dinners will fail an inventory on the door glass alone.
None of this is exotic. It is just particular to dockside new-build, and it is why a clean tuned to the inventory beats a tidy-up. We have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions, and a large share of those deductions started as exactly these three things: damp on the reveals, a dirty oven, smeared glass. Sort the three and most check-outs go through without a quibble.
Three property types, three different jobs
The fixed price is the same for a given size, but the work behind it changes with the building. Here is how we actually approach the three kinds of Silvertown home.
The new-build dockside flat is the most common. Royal Wharf, the West Silvertown blocks, the newer towers near the dock. The carcass is modern and sealed, so the structure rarely needs much, but the appliances and the glass carry the whole deduction risk. The oven, the hob extractor, the shower screen, the inside of the floor-to-ceiling windows and the balcony door: that is where the time goes. We also wipe the inside of the kitchen units, because in a two-year-old flat the clerk expects them spotless and notices instantly if they are not.
The older terrace behind North Woolwich Road is a different animal. These survived the rebuilds, so there are painted skirtings with decades of layers, sash or casement windows with deep glazing bars, and bathrooms where the grout has gone and the limescale has set hard on the taps. The job here is more about scrubbing and patience than appliances. We give the grout, the sealant and the tap heads real attention, because on an older fitting that is where a clerk knocks marks off.
The industrial conversion near Pontoon Dock is the wildcard. A warehouse or mill shell carved into loft flats means exposed brick, ductwork on show, mezzanines, and that vast glazing again. Dust settles on every ledge and beam, and an open-plan layout means there is nowhere for mess to hide from an inventory. We work top down, beams and high ledges first, then the floor, because doing it the other way round just drops dust onto a floor you have already cleaned.
One thing holds across all three. The clean is judged against the check-in inventory for that specific flat, not against some general idea of clean, so we work to the document, not to a feeling. That is the whole reason the fixed-price job carries the guarantee.
What the fixed price actually buys
The 57-point list is the agent-approved version of the check-out sheet, so we are cleaning to the same document the clerk grades you against. That alignment is the point. It is also why our first-time pass rate sits at 97%; the clean and the inspection are reading off the same page rather than two different ones.
Kitchen first, because the kitchen carries the most deduction risk. The oven comes apart. We take out the racks, lift the inner door glass where the model allows it, and clear the carbon off the element housing and the floor of the cavity. Hob, splashback, extractor filter, the lot. Inside and outside every cupboard and drawer, because clerks open them and run a finger along the runners. Behind the washing machine and under the fridge if they pull out without damaging the flooring. We descale the kettle and the tap heads, and we wipe out the rubber seal of the fridge where it goes black.
Bathrooms next. Tiles and grout scrubbed, the shower screen taken back to clear glass, the extractor vent dusted out, the sealant cleaned rather than just wiped over. We treat the limescale on the chrome and the glass, which on the harder-water blocks around here is often the difference between a pass and a deduction. Toilet, basin, bath, the underside of the seat, the back of the pan where nobody looks until a clerk does.
Then the rest of the flat. Dusting from the top down: picture rails, door frames, the tops of wardrobes and kitchen units. Skirtings, doors, switches and sockets, mirrors, internal glass, and the inside of every window and the runners. Cobwebs off the ceilings and the corners of the balcony reveal. A proper hoover through all carpets and any upholstery left in place, and a mop through the hard floors last so we are not walking back over them.
We bring our own kit and detergents on the day. The flat needs power, running hot water, and to be empty of your belongings before we start, because we cannot clean a cupboard that is still full or a carpet under a bed. That is genuinely all we ask of you. If you want a sense of what the oven side involves on its own, the deep oven cleaning page sets it out, and the same goes for the carpet cleaning if a bedroom carpet has had a hard tenancy and the hoover alone will not save it.
What it costs in E16
We price on the size of the property, not the clock. The logic is simple. When the job is not capped at a number of hours, the cleaner stays until the flat is right, and you are not watching the time tick while someone scrubs a grill pan. There is no incentive to rush and no surprise on the bill. Here is the Silvertown rate card.
- Studio, £156. Common around West Silvertown and Britannia Village.
- One-bed flat, £207.
- Two-bed, £243. The bulk of the Royal Wharf stock sits here.
- Three-bed, £339.
- Four-bed, £425, which down here usually means a townhouse rather than a flat.
Add-ons are separate and only if the flat genuinely needs them. Carpet cleaning by hot-water extraction runs £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed. Oven cleaning booked on its own is £77 single, £110 double, £114 for a range cooker. If you would rather book an open-ended job by the hour instead of the fixed price, that is £30 per cleaner.
Most Silvertown tenants take the fixed price, because it is the version with the 48-hour guarantee attached and the version letting agents recognise. The by-the-hour option suits a part-clean, say a flat that is nearly there and just needs the kitchen and bathrooms taken to inventory standard. We will tell you honestly which one fits your flat when you call, rather than push you to the dearer choice.
We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, a fair number of them the agencies handling Royal Wharf and the wider Silvertown developments, which is partly why our paperwork passes cleanly. The clerk has seen our checklist before, knows the firm, and is not starting from suspicion. That familiarity is worth more on check-out day than any sales pitch.
The licensing position a Silvertown landlord should know
This one catches Silvertown landlords out, because the area straddles a boundary. Newham runs a borough-wide selective licensing designation that came into force on 1 June 2023 and runs to 31 May 2028, covering 22 of the council’s 24 wards. The two left out are Royal Victoria and Stratford Olympic Park. Silvertown sits on the old Royal Docks ward, which the 2022 boundary review split into Royal Albert and Royal Victoria, so the strip is divided down the middle.
The practical answer therefore depends on your postcode. A let in the Royal Albert ward needs a selective licence; a let inside the excluded Royal Victoria ward does not, though it may still need a licence as a house in multiple occupation under Newham’s separate additional and mandatory HMO schemes. The council’s own notice describes the designation as borough-wide with “Royal Victoria and Stratford Park excluded”, running 01.06.2023 to 31.05.2028, and a selective licence lasts up to five years. If you are not certain which ward your block falls in, check the Newham property licensing pages before you advertise the flat, because letting an unlicensed property where a licence is required can mean a civil penalty.
Why does any of this matter to a cleaner? Because a licensed let tends to be inspected more closely, the check-out standard is firmer, and an inventory clerk acting for a licensed landlord writes a fuller report with more photographs. The clean has to match that level of scrutiny. We treat every Silvertown job as though the report will be detailed, because on the licensed side of the line it usually is.
Deposits, the rules, and the clean
Your deposit is protected, by law, in one of three government-backed schemes within 30 days of your landlord taking it. That is set out plainly on the gov.uk tenancy deposit protection guidance, and it applies to virtually every assured shorthold tenancy in Silvertown. At the end of the tenancy the landlord can only keep money for a real reason, and cleaning is the most common one they reach for.
Here is the part tenants miss. A landlord cannot dock you for fair wear and tear, only for the flat being left dirtier or more damaged than it was at check-in. Shelter spells out what counts as a fair deduction and what does not on its deposit deductions guidance, and the comparison the scheme makes is strictly between the check-in inventory and the check-out report. No inventory, and a landlord has very little to stand on. A thorough inventory, and the report becomes the whole argument.
If you disagree with a deduction, every scheme runs a free adjudication service, explained on the Citizens Advice deposit pages, and the adjudicator decides on the evidence each side files. You usually have a window of about three months after moving out to bring a claim. The adjudicator is not interested in who is annoyed; they want the inventory, the check-out, the photographs, and any receipts. A professional cleaning receipt that matches the check-out date carries real weight in that process.
The rules are tightening on top of all this. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 ends fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies and changes how and when a landlord can bring a let to an end, which in practice means more move-outs will land on a date the tenant did not choose. A clean done to the inventory is your defence when that happens, because it freezes the flat’s condition in your favour on the day you hand the keys back. A dated receipt from a recognised firm, set beside a check-out report that mirrors the check-in, is what wins an adjudication.
We keep the receipt and the dated checklist on file for exactly this reason. If your clerk or agent challenges the work, that paperwork plus the 48-hour re-clean is usually enough to settle the matter before it ever reaches the scheme’s adjudicator. Most of the time the agent simply books us back, we put right whatever was flagged, and the deduction never gets raised.
Booking around the tunnel and the DLR
Silvertown got a lot easier to reach in April 2025, when the Silvertown Tunnel opened under the Thames and linked this side of the Royal Docks to the Greenwich Peninsula. For us it means a crew coming from the south can cross without sitting in the old Blackwall queue, so a same-week slot is realistic even at short notice. The DLR helps too. Pontoon Dock and West Silvertown stations put a cleaner on site without a car, which matters a great deal when a move-out is booked the day before and the diary is tight.
You book by phone or email. Call 0333 555 2076 or write to [email protected] with the postcode, the number of bedrooms, and your move-out date, and we give you the fixed price on the spot, no site visit required. We work seven days a week, so a Saturday or Sunday check-out is no trouble at all. Tell us if the inventory demands the outside of the windows done as well, because on the dockside blocks the clerk sometimes does, and we will bring the water-fed pole to reach the upper floors safely.
One honest note about the area. Parking around Royal Wharf and the newer Silvertown blocks is tight and largely permit-controlled, and a few of the towers have no realistic kerb space at all, so if the job needs a van bay, flag it when you book and we will sort the logistics rather than turn up and circle for twenty minutes. Thames Barrier Park, the green strip at the western end, is one of the few spots with proper access, and the residents around there know it.
Timing matters more than people expect. A check-out is almost always booked for the morning after the tenancy ends, so the clean needs to happen the day before, ideally once the van and the last boxes have gone. Book us for the afternoon of your moving day and you hand over a flat that is still fresh the next morning. Leave it to the morning of the inspection and you are gambling on the diary.
We clean across the whole of the Royal Docks, so if your move is over the water or along the dock we cover the neighbouring patches too. There are dedicated pages for end of tenancy cleaning in Royal Docks and in North Woolwich, and the Newham end of tenancy hub lists the rest of the borough.
Words tenants and clerks actually use
The move-out vocabulary trips people up, so here is the short version of the terms that actually decide your deposit.
- Check-in inventory
- The dated report and photos describing the flat’s condition when you moved in. Your check-out is judged against it, so it is the single document that decides your deposit.
- Check-out report
- The clerk’s inspection on the day you leave. Where it differs from the check-in beyond fair wear and tear, the landlord can propose a deduction from your deposit.
- Selective licensing
- Newham’s requirement that most private lets hold a council licence, running to 31 May 2028 across 22 of the borough’s 24 wards. See the council’s licensing pages for which wards are in and which are out.
- Fair wear and tear
- The normal ageing that comes from everyday living, such as faded paint or a slightly worn carpet. A landlord cannot charge you for it, only for genuine damage or dirt.
- Adjudication
- The free, evidence-based decision a deposit scheme makes when tenant and landlord cannot agree on a deduction. Photos, the inventory and receipts decide it, not opinion.
- End of tenancy clean
- A one-off deep clean to inventory standard, priced by property size. Not the same as a regular weekly tidy, and deeper than a standalone upholstery refresh on its own.
Questions Silvertown tenants ask
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Silvertown?
It is priced by the size of the flat: £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 two-bed rate covers most of the Royal Wharf stock. The price is fixed in advance, not charged by the hour.
Do you guarantee I will pass the check-out inspection?
We clean to a 57-point agent-approved checklist and pass first time on 97% of jobs. If the clerk or agent flags the work, we re-clean free within 48 hours, so a deduction for cleaning is effectively taken off the table.
What is the 48-hour guarantee exactly?
If your inventory clerk or letting agent challenges our clean within 48 hours of us finishing, we come back and put it right at no charge. You keep the original fixed price and the dated receipt.
Does my flat near the Tate and Lyle refinery need anything special?
No, the refinery itself does not change the clean. What does matter on this strip is river damp on the window reveals and salt smears on the dockside glass, both of which our checklist already covers in full.
Do you bring your own cleaning equipment and products?
Yes, we bring all the kit and detergents with us. The flat just needs working electricity, running hot water, and to be cleared of your belongings before we arrive so we can reach every surface.
Is the oven included or is it extra?
A full oven clean is included in the end of tenancy service. If you only want the oven done as a standalone job, that is £77 for a single, £110 for a double, or £114 for a range cooker.
Are carpets cleaned as part of the service?
We hoover all carpets and any upholstery left in place as standard. A deeper hot-water extraction is an add-on at £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed if a carpet has had a hard tenancy.
Will you clean the outside of the windows on a dockside flat?
We clean the inside as standard. If your inventory requires the exterior cleaned, tell us when you book and we bring a water-fed pole to reach the upper floors of the dockside blocks safely.
Can you come at the weekend?
Yes, we work seven days a week, including Saturdays and Sundays. Weekend check-out slots are common around Silvertown because so many tenancies end on a Friday or a Monday.
How quickly can you get to Silvertown?
Often within the same week. Since the Silvertown Tunnel opened in April 2025, a crew from south of the river can cross without the old Blackwall queue, and the DLR at Pontoon Dock covers car-free jobs at short notice.
Do I need a selective licence to let my flat in Silvertown?
It depends on the ward. Newham’s borough-wide scheme covers 22 of 24 wards to 31 May 2028, with Royal Victoria and Stratford Olympic Park excluded, so a Royal Albert address needs a licence while a Royal Victoria one may not. Check the council pages for your exact postcode.
What happens if my landlord still tries to deduct for cleaning?
Your deposit sits in a protected scheme, and you can take a disputed deduction to the scheme’s free adjudication. Our dated checklist and receipt, set against the check-in inventory, are strong evidence in your favour.
Do you cover the rest of the Royal Docks?
Yes. We clean across Royal Docks, North Woolwich, and the wider Newham borough, with separate pages for each so you can see the local detail that applies to your address.
How do I book the clean?
Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your postcode, bedroom count, and move-out date. We confirm the fixed price straight away and book the visit, weekends included.