End of tenancy cleaning in South Acton, with no hidden fees

How do you hand back a Phase 6 apartment on Acton Gardens without losing £180 of the deposit to a black tap with limescale shadow on the bathroom basin? You book the clean before the inventory walk, not after. Monster Cleaning has worked the South Acton patch since the early Acton Gardens phases handed over in 2014, from the new-build apartment blocks fanning out from Bollo Lane to the surviving Edwardian terraces on Avenue Road and Bollington Road. Two-bed apartment from £243, agent-approved. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected].

Last updated April 2026. We cover W3 8 in full plus most of W3 9 out to South Acton Overground and the Acton Town tube end of Bollo Lane. For the wider borough, see our Ealing end of tenancy hub.

Why South Acton deposits get deducted

The London end of tenancy market in 2026 is a buyer’s market for landlords. With private rent across Ealing climbing 5.9% year on year to March 2026 (ONS Private Rent and House Prices bulletin), an Acton Gardens two-bed apartment lets at around £2,150 a month. Five weeks’ rent is the deposit cap under section 8 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019 (legislation.gov.uk). That’s roughly £2,475 sitting protected with the scheme. A standard inventory clerk’s deduction list on a hand-back walk runs from £40 for a missed splash mark to £400 for a bathroom that has to be re-cleaned commercially. We’ve seen both, on this estate, in the same week.

Most of the deductions on this side of W3 fall into a narrow band. The Acton Gardens new-build apartments use matt-finish kitchens with handle-less drawers, soft-close hinges, and a recessed plinth fan vent that traps cooking debris. That plinth grille is the single most-missed item on the entire inventory walk. The estate’s wall-mounted MVHR units (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, fitted across all post-2014 phases) carry a filter cover behind a magnetic plate. Lint loads up there over twelve months and the inventory clerks from Felicity J Lord and Foxtons know exactly where to look. Touch grease on the side of the extractor canopy, watermarks on the brushed-steel kettle splashback, and stuck dust on the matt skirting are the next three. Combine those and you’ve lost £150 before anyone has opened the bathroom door.

Renters’ Rights Act 2025

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 abolished section 21 no-fault evictions on 1 October 2025 and shifted every assured shorthold tenancy to a periodic tenancy with two months’ tenant notice. That has not changed the deposit rules. Your landlord still has thirty days to register your deposit under one of the three statutory schemes (TDS, mydeposits, or the DPS). What has changed is the practical balance of power at the end. Inventory disputes that used to settle quickly under threat of a section 21 are now mediated through the deposit scheme’s dispute resolution service, which means cleaning evidence matters more, not less. A dated photograph of a freshly degreased extractor canopy, taken at hand-back, is what stops a £140 deduction from sticking.

Ealing Council selective licensing

Ealing’s selective licensing scheme covers private rented properties in designated wards across the borough. South Acton ward is one of the original designations. Landlords letting properties in W3 8 and parts of W3 9 must hold a licence and meet specified property and management standards (ealing.gov.uk). For the cleaning hand-back this matters in two indirect ways. Licensed properties tend to come with stricter inventory schedules because the landlord’s compliance file expects them. And the inventory clerks know the council’s environmental health officers can be called in if mould or grime become a habitability issue, so any dispute about damp or surface contamination escalates faster than it used to.

The Acton Gardens phasing quirk

Acton Gardens is a 52-acre regeneration of the former South Acton Estate, a partnership between Countryside, L&Q and Acton Gardens Limited backed by Ealing Council. By the end of 2024 the partnership had handed over 2,098 of an eventual 3,463 mixed-tenure homes; phases 9.3, 9.5 and 9.6 are completing through 2025 and 2026, with 110 affordable homes due to be transferred to Ealing Council in autumn 2026. What this means on the ground is that within a quarter-mile radius you have apartments from 2014, 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2026, all built to similar design codes but with subtly different fittings. A 2014 Phase 1 kitchen on All Saints Road has a different worktop edge profile to a 2024 Phase 8.1 kitchen off Bollo Lane. The cleaning method is the same; the inventory clerk’s tolerance for tiny wear marks is not. On a Phase 1 unit they expect honest wear; on a Phase 8 they expect showroom condition. Price the clean accordingly.

“Monster came on a Tuesday morning and finished my Acton Gardens two-bed in seven hours. We’d been in the Phase 5 block for nearly three years. The bathroom was the issue – a black-tap basin with limescale shadow that I couldn’t shift. The team brought a proper scale remover, sat it under cling film for twenty minutes, and the basin came back like new. Inventory clerk from Felicity J Lord ticked it through on the Wednesday morning. Got the £2,475 deposit back inside ten days.” – Priya, ex-tenant, Phase 5 apartment, three-year tenancy, hand-back April 2026.

Coverage – streets and zones

We work the whole of South Acton without a postcode bias. The new-build core is the obvious volume. Beyond that we run regular hand-backs on the surviving terraces and the older blocks that pre-date the regeneration:

• Acton Gardens Phases 1 to 9: All Saints Road, Beaumont Road, Bollington Road, Bollo Lane (north stretch), Mulberry Way, Heathfield Place, Crown Street, Park Road North, Garth Way, Plough Way
• The surviving terraces and small estates on Avenue Road, Avenue Crescent, Stirling Road and Salisbury Street
• Bollo Lane south of the South Acton Overground line as far as Acton Town tube station and the new Bollo Lane mixed-use scheme
• The Strafford Road / Palmerston Road grid east of South Acton station, including the rebuilt Sainsbury’s Local block
• Park Road North up to Acton Park
• Edwardian semis and small infill blocks on Birkbeck Avenue and Birkbeck Grove

What’s included on a South Acton end of tenancy clean

One full inventory-grade hand-back. Same clean for an Acton Gardens Phase 8 apartment as for an Edwardian semi on Avenue Road. The list below is the spine; we add or subtract by property type on the booking call.

• Kitchen carcass: Top, sides and underside of every wall and base unit, behind and beside the cooker, drawer runners pulled and wiped, handle-less drawer pulls degreased.
• Kitchen plinth and toe-kick: Plinth fan vent removed and washed, plinth lifted where possible, debris under units extracted.
• Cooker hood / extractor canopy: Baffle filters degreased in a hot soak, canopy underside wiped to bare stainless, charcoal filter inspected and replaced if it’s the recirculating type.
• Hob and splashback: Induction or gas, glass and metal, oil film removed, scale shadows cleared.
• Oven: Single, double or range. Trays out, racks degreased, glass door inner pane and seal cleaned, dial bezels wiped.
• Microwave, kettle, toaster: Inside and out, base and crumb tray, scale-cleared kettle.
• Fridge / freezer: Defrosted on request, drawers and salad crispers, door seals.
• Sink, tap and drainer: Hard-water spotting cleared, scale ring under spout, plug and chain checked, basket strainer pulled.
• Splashbacks and tile grout: Acton Gardens kitchens have a single full-height splashback – it gets steam-cleaned, never just wiped.
• Bathroom basin and tap: Black taps and matt taps treated with proper scale remover, shadow ring cleared.
• Shower screen: Glass cleared of hard-water spotting, frame degreased, channel debris removed.
• Shower head: Soaked in lime descaler overnight where access allows, jets cleared.
• Bath: Scale ring removed, overflow grille cleared, sealant edges checked for mould.
• Toilet: Bowl, under the rim, behind the cistern, base seal, hinge brackets.
• MVHR filter cover: Magnetic plate removed, filter cover cleaned, lint extracted (Acton Gardens phases only).
• Bathroom extractor: Grille pulled, fan blades wiped, housing dusted.
• Bathroom mirror, light fitting, accessories: Smear-free, downlight bezels wiped.
• Bedroom and living-room walls: Scuffs assessed and treated, picture-rail dust cleared on the older terrace stock.
• LVT and timber floors: Hoovered, mopped, edges and skirting wiped, wardrobe-base recess vacuumed.
• Carpets and rugs: Hoovered to the edge; shampoo on request as a paid add-on.
• Doors, frames, handles: Tops, sides, hinge edges, finger-grease cleared.
• Windows inside: Glass, sills, runners, locks. Outside reach where ground-floor or balcony access allows.
• Internal storage cupboards: Airing cupboard, utility cupboard, hallway storage, cylinder cupboard where present.
• Sockets, switches, thermostats, smoke alarms: Faceplate dust cleared, careful around the connected-home thermostats fitted across Acton Gardens.
• Skirting and architrave throughout: Top edge dust cleared, scuff marks treated.
• Communal entrance lobby: Mat shaken, threshold wiped on the inside face. We don’t touch the shared landing – that’s the management company’s contractor.
• Final inventory walk-through: One free re-clean within 48 hours if the inventory clerk flags a missed item.

Common reasons we get re-called

Three patterns recur on this estate, and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers all three at no charge:

• The MVHR filter cover. Tenants who self-clean almost never know about it. Inventory clerks check it on every Acton Gardens hand-back. We get called back roughly once a fortnight to clear someone else’s missed filter.
• The bathroom black tap with limescale shadow. Self-cleaners use a kitchen spray, the shadow doesn’t lift, the photograph still shows it under the inventory clerk’s macro lens. A proper scale remover under a cling-film wrap clears it; a quick wipe doesn’t.
• The plinth fan vent. Two of every five hand-backs we re-clean had the kitchen wiped immaculately and the plinth grille left as the agent first installed it – dust, hair, and a year of small spills. The grille is removable. Most tenants don’t know.

What it costs

Pricing is the standard South Acton tier. We don’t load the price for new-build complexity because the new-build is the standard work here, not the exception. Studio flat £156. One-bed apartment £207. Two-bed apartment £243. Three-bed £339. Four-bed £425. Hourly rate when the job doesn’t fit a standard band: £30 per cleaner. Carpet shampoo as a paid add-on: £36 per bedroom, £43 for the living room, £115 for whole-flat carpet on a two-bed. Oven add-ons: £77 single, £110 double, £114 for a 90cm range. We quote the price on the call from a standing 57-point agent-approved checklist – no upsells, no surprises after we arrive. £1.2m deposits recovered for clients across our patch since 2014, 97% first-time pass rate on the agent walk.

What your agent will actually check

The Felicity J Lord, Foxtons, Greg Wyatt and Bairstow Eves clerks share roughly the same inventory template across South Acton. Different photo style, same items checked. Twenty-two minutes is a short walk; forty-five is normal; over an hour means they’ve found something. In rough order of failure rate on this estate:

1. MVHR filter cover and grille (Acton Gardens phases).
2. Plinth fan vent under the kitchen units.
3. Cooker-hood baffle filter and canopy underside.
4. Bathroom basin tap base, especially black or matt finish.
5. Shower screen glass and frame channel.
6. Toilet hinge brackets and base seal.
7. Oven door inner glass and seal.
8. Wardrobe-base recess (the half-inch gap under the wardrobe carcass).
9. Window runners and locks.
10. Skirting top edges and architrave dust line.
11. Door tops and frame hinge edges.
12. LVT scuffs along the kitchen-living transition strip.
13. Sealant lines around bath and basin.
14. Smoke alarm dust ring.
15. Communal-side threshold mat and door inside face.

How booking works

1. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with the property address, the bedroom count, the inventory date, and whether the carpets need shampooing. We answer the phone in under fifteen rings on weekdays.
2. You get a fixed price within ten minutes, no inspection visit needed for standard Acton Gardens phases.
3. We book the team for the day before the inventory walk by default. Earlier on request.
4. Two-person team for a two-bed, three for a three-bed. Six to eight hours on site for a two-bed apartment.
5. You walk the property with the lead cleaner before they leave. Anything you flag, they fix on the spot. Anything the inventory clerk flags within 48 hours of hand-back, we come back free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

Related services and neighbouring areas

If your hand-back needs more than the standard end of tenancy clean, we run a separate specialist oven cleaning service for trashed range cookers, plus professional carpet cleaning for the deeper shampoo work and upholstery cleaning for sofa stains where the landlord’s furniture pack is in the inventory. We work all of W3 and the wider Ealing patch including Acton Central across the District line, East Acton on the Central line, and Ealing as the parent borough hub. We’re trusted by 300+ letting agents across West and Central London.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in South Acton W3?

Standard South Acton tier: studio £156, one-bed £207, two-bed £243, three-bed £339, four-bed £425. Acton Gardens new-build apartments price the same as comparable older flats – the work is roughly equivalent on time, just with different fittings. Add-ons: carpet shampoo £36 per bedroom, single oven £77, double oven £110, 90cm range £114.

Do you clean the MVHR filter cover on Acton Gardens apartments?

Yes, on every Acton Gardens hand-back from Phase 1 through to Phase 9. The magnetic plate pops off, the filter cover wipes clean, the lint comes out. It’s the single most-missed item on the inventory walk for tenants who self-clean. Cleaning the filter cover is part of the standard 57-point agent-approved checklist, not an add-on.

How long does an Acton Gardens two-bed apartment take?

Six to eight hours with a two-person team. The newest phases (8.1 onwards) clean faster because the surfaces are barely worn. Older Phase 1 and Phase 2 units take a touch longer because three or four tenancy cycles have softened up the silicone and aged the matt finishes. We block out a full day either way to leave room for the walk-through and any spot fixes.

What’s the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?

If the inventory clerk flags any item from the standard 57-point checklist within 48 hours of hand-back, we come back at no extra charge and put it right. We back this with a 97% first-time pass rate across our South Acton work, but the guarantee exists for the 3% where something gets missed. Same team, same day where possible.

Is the water in W3 hard?

Yes. Thames Water’s reported hardness for W3 is in the 280 to 300 mg/l calcium carbonate range (thameswater.co.uk). Hard end of London’s hard-water belt. Scale builds back on the chrome and brushed-steel taps within a fortnight. Black and matt taps show the shadow first. We use a proper scale remover under a cling-film wrap on every bathroom basin, not a quick wipe.

Do you cover the older terraces on Avenue Road?

Yes. The Edwardian and Victorian terraces around Avenue Road, Avenue Crescent, Stirling Road and Birkbeck Avenue all sit inside our standard South Acton zone. The work mix is different – more picture-rail dust, more hairline mould on bathroom sealant, no MVHR units – but the price tier is the same.

Will you guarantee my deposit back?

We can’t guarantee what the inventory clerk decides about non-cleaning items – paint scuffs, broken blind cords, missing lightbulbs, that sort of thing are out of our hands. We do guarantee that the cleaning side of the inventory will pass on the 57-point agent-approved checklist, with a free re-clean inside 48 hours if it doesn’t. We’ve recovered £1.2m in deposits for clients across our wider patch on that promise.

Which letting agents do you regularly work with around South Acton?

Felicity J Lord on The Vale, Foxtons Acton on the High Street, Greg Wyatt off Churchfield Road, and Bairstow Eves are the four we hand back to most often. We’re not on a paid panel for any of them – we don’t pay for referrals – but we know their inventory styles, their photographers, and their cut-off times. We’re trusted by 300+ letting agents across West and Central London on the same basis.

Do I need to be there for the clean?

No. We collect keys from the property or from the agent’s office on the day, and hand them back to whichever side of the chain you tell us to. Most Acton Gardens hand-backs go through the building’s concierge or the agent. Older terraces work on a key-collection-from-the-agent basis. We’re DBS-checked and Trustpilot-rated 3.1 over 128 reviews; we tell you that figure honestly so you know what we are.

Can you do the clean at short notice?

Often yes, especially mid-week. We try to keep one team in the W3 / W4 area at all times to absorb 24- and 48-hour bookings. Friday afternoons are the bottleneck because every check-out tries to land before the weekend. Earlier in the week you almost always get the slot you want.

Do you clean rented offices or commercial space in South Acton?

Our end of tenancy work is residential. We do run separate domestic and after-builders contracts in the area, but commercial inventory work goes through a different team. Phone the office on 0333 555 2076 and we’ll route the enquiry.

What happens if my deposit dispute goes to the scheme?

If a deduction goes to dispute resolution at TDS, mydeposits or the DPS, the scheme adjudicator wants evidence. We supply the dated photo set we take at hand-back, the line-by-line 57-point checklist with the team’s sign-off, and a written statement on what we did and how. That evidence carries weight because it’s contemporaneous. Tenants who self-clean almost never have it.

How do I know if my flat is licensed by Ealing Council?

Ealing’s selective licensing scheme covers South Acton ward as one of the original designations – most private rented flats in W3 8 and parts of W3 9 will need a licence. The council publishes the public register on ealing.gov.uk and you can search by address. If you’re a tenant, your tenancy paperwork should reference the licence number; if it doesn’t, ask the agent.

Is there a discount for booking the carpet shampoo with the end of tenancy clean?

The carpet add-on is the same flat price whether it’s booked alone or alongside the hand-back: £36 per bedroom, £43 for the living room, £115 for whole-flat carpet on a two-bed. We don’t run promotional discounts because pricing should be honest. The saving is in the time – we run both jobs in one visit and you get one set of dated photographs covering both for the inventory file.

Where can I learn about my deposit rights?

The three statutory schemes publish dispute guides directly: Tenancy Deposit Scheme, mydeposits, and the Deposit Protection Service. Shelter publishes a clear plain-English guide on what landlords can and cannot deduct, and gov.uk has the statutory summary.

Ready to book your South Acton end of tenancy clean

Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your address, bedroom count, and inventory date. We quote on the call. We turn up the day before the walk. We hand back to your agent on a 97% first-time pass rate, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee if anything slips through.