On an ex-council maisonette off Galleywall Road, the inventory clerk opens the oven door before they take their coat off. A grill pan photographed clean and empty on the check-in report is the easiest deduction they will make all day, and on the Rennie Estate it is the one a rushed clean misses every time.
So end of tenancy cleaning in South Bermondsey has to be built around the person writing that report: checklist-led, deposit-focused, priced by bedroom count, and carried by a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a fixed price in about three minutes.
Last updated June 2026. We cover the whole SE16 3 zone around South Bermondsey station and the SE15 1 edge towards the Old Kent Road. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Southwark.
What the clerk marks, and why your deposit hangs on it
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
The report written on your first day is the standard you are judged against on your last. Match it, get it documented, and the deposit conversation is short.
Your deposit is the landlord’s to claim against at the end, and in England it has to sit in one of the three government-backed schemes. This is how the money actually moves:
- When you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote a check-in report describing every surface, nearly always with photos.
- At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares, line by line.
- Anything materially worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, is chargeable.
You are not being marked against a tidy flat. You are being marked against the photographs.
Cleaning is the single biggest category of deposit dispute in the schemes’ own published figures, ahead of damage and ahead of redecoration, and it is the one a tenant can fully control.
The clerk does not judge whether the place is clean in any everyday sense. A maisonette handed back clean enough for the kids’ tea but plainly below the day-one standard gets written up, and an adjudicator reading the two reports months later sides with the documented account almost every time.
South Bermondsey adds a local squeeze on top. Demand around the station is hard, and the agents working SE16 and the Old Kent Road corridor, names like Oliver Jaques, Garrett Whitelock, Winkworth and Foxtons among them, usually have a replacement tenant lined up for an Ilderton Road flat before the keys are back.
A two-bed near the station has been advertised around £2,000 a month, so the deposits in play are not small. When an agent has a queue a borderline clean is not waved through. It is deducted, because someone else is already asking when they can move in.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026, and it has changed how tenancies in England end:
- Section 21
- No-fault evictions are gone.
- Existing tenancies
- Assured shorthold tenancies have converted to periodic ones, so a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point.
- The cleaning bar
- It did not move an inch. What changed is timing.
Hand the flat back at or above the check-in standard and the deduction has nothing to grip; the new law just means more move-outs land at awkward, unpredictable points in the month.
The licence most South Bermondsey landlords now need
South Bermondsey is now inside Southwark’s selective licensing scheme. This is the part landlords here get wrong, and it is worth getting right, because it raises the cleaning bar between tenancies.
- In force
- The borough’s second designation came into force on 1 November 2023 and runs for five years, to 31 October 2028.
- Wards
- The ward list that came with it includes South Bermondsey alongside Old Kent Road, Rotherhithe, Surrey Docks and London Bridge and West Bermondsey.
- Fee
- The application fee at the time of writing is £945.
Selective licensing is the wide one: it does not just catch shared houses, it catches ordinary single-family privately rented homes too. If you let a flat on Verney Road or a maisonette off Galleywall Road, you very likely need a licence for it.
That sits on top of Southwark’s borough-wide additional HMO scheme, which has run since 1 March 2022 and is currently set to end on 28 February 2027, with a fee of £1,365.10.
That one covers smaller houses in multiple occupation, the kind let room by room to three or more people from two or more households, of which there are plenty in the converted houses and larger flats around the Old Kent Road end. So:
- a room-by-room let here needs the HMO licence
- a standard family let needs the selective one
- Selective licence
- Covers most ordinary privately rented homes in the ward, single family or couple, not just shared houses. South Bermondsey fell into this on 1 November 2023.
- Additional HMO licence
- Covers smaller HMOs let to three or more people in two or more households. Borough-wide across Southwark since March 2022.
- Why a tenant should care
- A licensed property is inspected, and a clean that fails between tenancies stops being only a deposit dispute. It becomes a compliance problem for the landlord, which is why the standard on these lets is not negotiable.
Southwark publishes the detail on its own site, so check the council’s licensing section directly for the live ward maps and any fee changes.
A tenant worried about a disputed deduction can get free, independent guidance from Shelter’s tenancy deposit advice, and the scheme holding your money will adjudicate for free if it comes to that.
Why the bathroom scales over faster than you scrub it
Hard water means the bathroom is the second thing the clerk attacks after the oven. We descale it properly rather than smearing it, because smeared scale dries straight back on.
SE16 is on Thames Water, and the water here is hard. Thames Water puts hardness across south London at roughly 296 parts per million as calcium carbonate, which sits firmly in the very hard band. On the ground that means scale, and scale loses deposits here second only to the oven.
- Kettles fur in months.
- A shower screen in one of the newer Ilderton Road blocks clouds over.
- The chrome mixer in a Rennie maisonette dulls and crusts at its base.
- The toilet grows a hard waterline ring that a sponge slides straight over.
Clerks in this corner of Southwark know exactly where to look:
- they run a thumbnail down the tap
- they tilt the shower screen against the light
- they pull the shower head in close
Scale set into chrome is not a wipe-and-go job, so we take it off with a proper descaler and a blade on the glass. A wipe puts it back within the week.
The limescale on a long-empty flat can even return between the clean and the check-out if the place sits unused for days. That is one of the few honest reasons a clean comes back to us, and exactly what the re-clean guarantee is for.
South Bermondsey block by block: the clean changes by address
This is a small patch with very mixed stock, and the cleaning problems differ by block more than people expect. There are three kinds of home here, and we send different kit to each.
- The station
- South Bermondsey station sits on Ilderton Road, a Southern train into London Bridge in a few minutes with Queens Road Peckham the next stop down.
- Match days
- The Den, Millwall’s ground, is a short walk from the platform, so on a home Saturday the streets around Bramcote Grove fill and empty in a couple of hours.
The post-war estates
The Rennie Estate off Galleywall Road sets the tone. Add the older Southwark blocks along Rotherhithe New Road and you have the bulk of the local stock:
- maisonettes and taller blocks
- carpeted bedrooms
- older fitted kitchens with tight gaps behind the appliances
- painted woodwork that scuffs
These win on the dull, slow work. The clerk:
- pulls the fridge and the washing machine out further than tenants expect and checks the gap behind
- opens every built-in cupboard
- runs a torch along the skirting
A clean that skips the bits nobody photographs daily is a clean that fails here.
The new-build flats
Along Ilderton Road and towards the Old Kent Road regeneration corridor near Verney Road, the newer apartment blocks are the opposite job: hard floors, big glass, a sleek fitted kitchen with an integrated hob and extractor. Same checklist, different products. The work shifts to:
- scale on the screens
- smears on the glass
- the film of grease behind a hob that looks clean until it catches the light
The Victorian terraces
Threaded between the estates are the older terraced streets running towards The Den and Bridgehouse Meadows, some still single houses, many split into flats. These bring:
- sash windows that need slow work
- original skirting and door frames that mark easily
- the odd tiled hallway
We are careful with the period detail because a scratched original frame is a bigger deduction than a missed oven.
A landlord we work for sums up the patch well.
Two flats, same street, same agent. One is a new-build screen-and-glass job, the other is forty years of grease behind a Rennie cooker. They are not the same clean.
We work the whole SE16 3 zone and the SE15 1 edge:
- Ilderton Road
- the Rennie Estate
- Rotherhithe New Road
- Verney Road
- Bramcote Grove
- Credon Road
- Hornshay Street
- Penarth Street
- St James’s Road
- the streets between the station and The Den
If your address is in SE16 3 or the SE15 1 fringe and is not on that list, we still cover it. The list is a sample, not a boundary.
The 57 things we work through, room by room
Every South Bermondsey booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of local check-outs and tuned to what these clerks actually flag. One flat rate, the whole property, no hourly meter ticking while we work.
The kitchen, where most deposits go
The oven, added to the clean from £31, is cleaned, not wiped:
- the interior scrubbed by hand
- racks and grill pan soaked and degreased
- the brown film between the door panels cleared where the door comes apart
- the fan, element and seals all done
Then the rest of the kitchen:
- Hob and any gas burners lift off and get cleaned underneath.
- The extractor hood is degreased inside and out and the filter soaked or swapped.
- Every cupboard and drawer, emptied and wiped inside and out.
- Fridge and freezer defrosted, cleaned through, seals included, then switched off and propped open if the flat is sitting empty.
- Washing machine drawer, door rubber and filter, and the gap behind it reached where it pulls out.
- Sink, taps and drainer descaled, because the water never gives that a miss.
The bathroom, the other place it goes wrong
- Hard scale comes off the shower screen, taps, mixer and tiles with a descaler and a blade, not a cloth.
- The toilet is cleaned and descaled, waterline ring and behind the pan included, where SE16 water builds a hard rim.
- Bath, basin and shower tray scrubbed, grout cleaned back as far as honest effort takes it, and any mould in the sealant lifted.
- Extractor vent dusted, mirror and cabinet cleaned, chrome polished out.
Where grout or sealant is genuinely past saving, we photograph it before we start so a clerk cannot bill you for wear that was already there at check-in.
Bedrooms, living areas and the rest
- Built-in wardrobes and drawers emptied and wiped inside.
- Carpets vacuumed along the edges and under where furniture stood, hard floors mopped.
- Skirting, sills, door tops and frames dusted down.
- In the living areas, every surface, shelf and radiator, behind them too, switches and sockets wiped, cobwebs out of the ceiling corners.
- Internal windows cleaned both sides where access is safe, sash windows worked slowly, frames and sills wiped.
- Every door and light fitting dusted, scuffs spot-cleaned off the paintwork.
- Then all floors vacuumed and mopped last, working back towards the door so nothing is walked over.
- Your own front door and frame, and any private hallway within the flat, finished off.
That is the hand-back clean, the one measured against the check-in report and the one that gets a deposit back. It is not a deep clean, which is the reset you book when you are staying, and it is not a regular weekly clean.
Why a clean occasionally comes back
When a flat does return to us under the guarantee, the cause is nearly always one of a short list, and it is worth knowing what they are:
- The oven, again, where a patch under the clerk’s torch was missed cold.
- Scale grown back on a long-empty bathroom.
- The gap behind an appliance in a tight Rennie kitchen that the clerk pulled out further than we did.
- A mould shadow left in old sealant that cleaned up but still reads grey, which is sometimes a landlord’s re-sealing job rather than a cleaning one.
We come back and put right whatever is genuinely ours.
What it costs, and the sum nobody does until it is too late
Flat rates by property size, kit and products included.
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio flat (Ilderton Road new-build) | 3-4 hours, 1 cleaner | £156 |
| 1-bed flat | 4-5 hours, 1-2 cleaners | £207 |
| 2-bed flat or maisonette (Rennie Estate) | 5-7 hours, 2 cleaners | £243 |
| 3-bed maisonette or terrace | 6-8 hours, 2 cleaners | £339 |
| 4-bed house or large terrace | 8-10 hours, 2-3 cleaners | £425 |
| Carpet shampoo add-on | Same visit | £29 per bedroom, £36 living room |
| Oven deep-clean, standalone | 1.5-2 hours | £77 single, £110 double |
- Part of the flat only
- £30 per cleaner per hour.
- Carpet shampoo, whole two-bed
- £94 for the lot done together.
- 90cm range oven
- £143 as a standalone.
Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape. These cost more, and we say so on the phone rather than after:
- a long tenancy with heavy wear
- a pet household
- somewhere that has not had a deep clean in years
No surprise lines on the invoice.
Now run the sum the deposit forces on you. On a post-war Rennie maisonette with bedroom carpets and a three-year-old oven, the usual ticket is the two-bed rate at £243 plus a double oven and two bedroom carpets. It is still a fraction of the deposit it protects.
A clerk’s deduction for a greasy oven and a scaled bathroom on the same flat will quietly run past what the whole clean cost. Most tenants only do that sum after they have tried, failed the check-out, and lost the first round.
Our 57-point agent-approved checklist is built around the exact run a South Bermondsey clerk uses.
- We have helped recover over £1.2m in deposits for tenants.
- We are on the approved or trusted lists of 300+ letting agents across London, a good number of them working Southwark and the Old Kent Road corridor.
Every booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the clerk or agent flags anything cleaning-related within 48 hours, we come back and put it right at no charge, provided nobody has moved in.
Booking it around a month-end check-out
Book early for a month-end window. Booking is quick, and there is a timing trap worth dodging: almost every check-out lands on the last two or three days of the month, the slots go, and the new periodic-tenancy notice rules have made the rush less predictable, not more. The steps are simple.
- Ring 0333 555 2076. Give us the postcode, the bedroom count and your check-out date, plus any known problem areas. Price in about three minutes.
- We give you a fixed price on the spot. No survey visit, no estimate that drifts upward later.
- You book a slot, ideally the day before or the morning of your check-out, so the flat is handed over while it is still spotless. Allow more notice for the last few days of the month.
- The flat should be empty when we arrive. Furniture out, personal things gone, rubbish cleared, so we can reach every surface the clerk will.
- We clean to the full 57-point checklist, room by room, floors last, and leave it ready for the clerk.
You do not need to be there. Most South Bermondsey tenants leave us keys or set up a key safe and meet the clerk separately.
- You leave on
- Power and water at the flat, which is all we need.
- We bring
- The machines, descalers, oven products and cloths ourselves.
Add-ons, the right job for the job, and nearby areas
End of tenancy is one job we do. These sit alongside it:
- If the agent only flagged the worst item, our oven deep-cleaning service handles the single most-photographed thing in a South Bermondsey check-out on its own.
- For the post-war maisonettes around Galleywall Road where bedroom carpets carry years of wear, carpet cleaning can be added to the clean or booked alone.
- A tired sofa a landlord keeps is covered by upholstery cleaning.
- Original glass on a sash-window terrace is a separate job too, folded in through window cleaning when the inventory asks for it.
Three different cleans get muddled, so it is worth booking the right one.
- End of tenancy clean
- Built to pass the inventory and get a deposit back, against the letting-agent benchmark, with the flat empty and the 48-hour guarantee on it.
- Deep clean
- The reset you book when you are staying and want the home put right, with no formal standard to hit.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing weekly or fortnightly maintenance, the same cleaner kept on the home, a different service entirely.
We also work the streets around South Bermondsey, which matters when your next flat is one over: the river side of SE16 in Rotherhithe Village, and Bermondsey proper up towards the river.
Questions we get asked
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in South Bermondsey?
It is a flat rate by size: £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed, £243 for a two-bed flat or maisonette, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed. A typical Rennie Estate two-bed with a double oven and bedroom carpets comes to the two-bed rate plus those add-ons, fixed before we start.
Do you guarantee the clean passes the check-out?
Yes. If the inventory clerk or agent flags anything cleaning-related within 48 hours of the clean, we come back and put it right at no charge. That is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.
Can you clean a flat on the Rennie Estate at short notice?
Usually yes. South Bermondsey is core territory for us and we hold slots back for last-minute check-outs. Call 0333 555 2076 with your date and postcode and we will tell you straight away what we can do, often for the next day.
Is the oven really that important to the clerk?
It is the single most photographed item in a South Bermondsey check-out. The check-in report almost always has the oven recorded clean and empty, so a greasy oven at the end is the easiest deduction a clerk can justify. We clean it by hand, inside and out, as standard.
Why does the bathroom scale come back so fast here?
Because SE16 is on Thames Water and south London water is very hard, around 296 parts per million. We descale with a proper descaler and a blade rather than a wipe, but if a flat sits empty for days a faint bloom can return, which is exactly what the re-clean guarantee covers.
Do you move the fridge and washing machine to clean behind them?
Yes, where they pull out safely. Clerks in this part of Southwark routinely check the gap behind appliances in the tighter Rennie Estate and Rotherhithe New Road kitchens, so we reach those before they do.
My landlord lets the flat out. Does South Bermondsey need a licence now?
Most likely yes. South Bermondsey came under Southwark’s selective licensing scheme on 1 November 2023, which runs to 31 October 2028 and covers ordinary privately rented homes, not just shared houses. Smaller room-by-room HMOs need the separate borough-wide additional licence instead. A licensed property is inspected, so a clean that fails between tenancies is a compliance issue for the landlord, not just a deposit dispute.
Do I need to be there while you clean?
No. Most South Bermondsey tenants hand us keys or set up a key safe and meet the agent separately. We can clean an empty flat and you can do your check-out afterwards. Plenty of clients book us for the morning and meet the clerk in the afternoon.
How long does an end of tenancy clean take?
A one-bed is usually three to four hours. A two-bed maisonette with an oven and carpets is more like five to seven, often with two cleaners. We can give you a tighter window once we know the property and the add-ons you want.
Do you bring your own equipment and products?
Yes, everything: machines, descalers, oven products, cloths, the lot. You do not need to leave anything behind or have working utilities beyond power and water at the flat.
Can you also clean the carpets and a sofa left in the flat?
Yes. Carpet shampoo is £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, or £94 for two bedrooms and a living room. Upholstery left behind, like a sofa the landlord keeps, is priced on the piece. Booking it with the end of tenancy clean is the most efficient way.
Which streets and estates around South Bermondsey do you cover?
All of SE16 3 and the SE15 1 edge: Ilderton Road, the Rennie Estate off Galleywall Road, Rotherhithe New Road, Verney Road, Bramcote Grove, Hornshay Street and the Old Kent Road regeneration plots. If your address is nearby and not listed, we still cover it.
How do I get a fixed quote?
Call 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com with your postcode, bedroom count and check-out date. We give a fixed price immediately, with no survey visit and no figure that changes after we have started.
Other Monster Cleaning services in South Bermondsey
Staying put rather than moving out? We also offer carpet cleaning in South Bermondsey, oven cleaning in South Bermondsey and domestic cleaning in South Bermondsey.