Moving out in South Hackney, E9
Stand on the south side of Victoria Park, where the gates open onto Victoria Park Road, and most of the flats behind you are early-Victorian terraces that have been let and re-let for the better part of a century. This is South Hackney, the E9 7LD corner of the borough between London’s oldest public park, Well Street and the Mare Street edge. When a tenancy here ends, the deposit turns on one inventory inspection, and that inspection turns on the clean.
Here is the short version. We clean rented flats across South Hackney to a fixed, agent-recognised 57-point checklist, priced by the size of the property from £156, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee if the clerk flags anything. That is the answer to the question most people arrive with.
The rest of this page is the detail a non-local firm would not know to give you: the housing stock street by street, what the clerk actually checks, what it costs, the council’s new 2026 licensing rules for the Victoria ward, the moving-day quirks around Well Street, and how to book the whole thing around your check-out.
The flats we clean here
South Hackney is not one kind of flat, and the clean changes with the building. Three types turn up again and again on our rounds, and each one writes its own line on an inventory.
The first is the early-Victorian terrace. The streets inside the Victoria Park conservation area, designated back in 1977, and the long runs along Cassland Road were built for the Victorian middle classes, and most have since been split into flats. High ceilings, deep skirting boards, original sash windows and the odd cast-iron fireplace all hold dust and all get checked. The short roads off Victoria Park Road tell the same story: Brookfield, Danesdale, Annis, Christie and Harrowgate, handsome terraces that now hold a mix of professional and family lets. These are some of the prettiest rented flats in the borough, and the clerks who inspect them inspect closely, because a tenant who can afford a Cassland Road maisonette can afford to lose a good chunk of deposit to a sloppy finish.
The second type is ex-council. The Frampton Park and Kingshold estates put a lot of solid post-war and later flats into the rental market, and they let well to sharers and to families priced out of the terraces. The finishes are plainer than the period stock, but the inventory standard is identical, and a tired kitchen on an estate flat gets written up just as hard as one in a conservation area. We clean a fair few of these every month.
The third is the conversion and the newer infill near Well Street and the Mare Street fringe, where a builder has carved two or three flats out of an old shop or terraced house. These can be the awkward ones: half-landing kitchens, a shower room squeezed under the stairs, original floorboards that need a careful hand rather than a wet mop. A conversion does not clean like a new-build, and we plan for that.
Why does any of this matter for a clean? Because the clerk inspecting a period maisonette expects the cornicing and the window reveals done, while the one signing off a Kingshold flat goes straight to the kitchen and the bathroom. We brief the team on the stock before they arrive, so the right time goes to the right rooms.
What the inventory clerk checks
An inventory clerk does not glance round. They work from the check-in report you signed and mark the flat against it room by room, and that is exactly how our 57-point list is built. We follow it in the same order a clerk does, so nothing gets missed before they arrive.
The kitchen takes the longest, because it is where deposits are lost. Oven, hob, grill and extractor; the inside, top and sides of every cupboard; behind and beside the appliances where grease collects; the sink, the taps and any limescale around them. The bathroom is next: tiles, grout, the shower screen, soap scum and the hard-water scale that builds on chrome across this part of London. We carry proper descalers for it rather than hoping a general spray will shift it.
Then the rooms themselves. Skirting boards, doors and frames, light switches and sockets, the tops of picture rails, the inside of the windows, the sills and the reveals. We hoover carpets and any upholstery left as part of a furnished let, then mop the hard floors. Cobwebs come down from the high corners those tall terrace rooms are full of, and the dust off the period mouldings that a quick clean always leaves behind.
Oven, hob, grill and extractor; the inside, top and sides of every cupboard; behind and beside the appliances where grease collects.
We hit a 97% first-time pass rate on these cleans, which is not an accident. It comes from working the same checklist the agents use and not signing a room off until it is genuinely done. The flat needs electricity, running hot water and to be empty of belongings on the day. After that, the rest is ours, and the checklist is the same whether the flat is a studio off Well Street or a four-bed terrace by the park.
One thing tenants get wrong is the order of work. People scrub the visible surfaces first, the worktop and the bath, then run out of steam before they reach the bits that actually lose deposits, the oven interior and the cupboard tops. A clerk works the other way, straight to the hidden grease, which is why we do too. We start with the kitchen and bathroom while the team is fresh, and leave the easy wipe-downs for last.
What an end of tenancy clean costs
We do not charge by the hour. Hourly pricing rewards a slow team, and on a move-out clean you want the opposite, a crew that gets the flat finished and signed off.
For an empty South Hackney flat the end of tenancy prices are £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. Those are full prices, fixed before we start, not a figure that creeps up on the day. If you would rather book a team by the hour for a part-job or a top-up, that is £30 per cleaner.
Carpets and ovens are the usual add-ons, and both carry their own line on the inventory. Carpet cleaning is £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed flat done in one go. Oven cleaning is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a range cooker. Most movers here take at least the oven, because it is the job nobody wants to do on their last day in a flat.
We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, several of them working the Victoria Park and Well Street patches, and over the years our cleans have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. That is the figure we are proudest of, because it is money that stayed with the people who earned it rather than being lost to a contractor the agent picked.
Licensing and your deposit in Hackney
If you rent in South Hackney, the rules changed this spring, and they are worth knowing before you hand the keys back. Hackney brought in a big push on landlord licensing in 2026.
The selective licensing scheme started on 1 May 2026 and runs for five years. It covers seventeen wards, and South Hackney sits inside the Victoria ward, which is one of them, so almost every ordinary private let in the area now needs a licence to be legal. Applications opened on 1 March 2026 and the fee for a single home is around £925. There is also a separate borough-wide additional scheme for smaller houses in multiple occupation, the shared flats where three or four people from different households split the kitchen and bathroom. The detail, and the application form, are on the Hackney Council licensing page, which is the council’s own source and the one to trust over anything a forum tells you.
Why mention licensing on a cleaning page? Because a licensed landlord is usually a landlord whose deposit handling is in order, and that is the other half of getting your money back. Your deposit has to sit in a government-backed scheme, and the landlord must give you the prescribed information, the scheme details and the terms, within 30 days of taking it. The rules and timescales are set out on GOV.UK. If your deposit was never protected, a cleaning deduction is the least of the landlord’s worries, and you may be owed far more than the clean would ever have cost.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 has tightened things further by ending fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies, so more South Hackney lets now run as rolling periodic ones. That changes when notice lands and when your clean needs to happen, but it does not change the standard the clerk holds you to. A clean flat is still a clean flat, whatever the tenancy is called on paper.
Getting the clean done around your move
South Hackney has its own moving-day quirks, and they shape how we plan a job. The parking is the first one, and the one tenants underestimate most.
Controlled parking runs across most of E9 through the day, and a removals van on a narrow terraced street near Lauriston Road or Cassland Road can be a tight squeeze once the residents’ cars are in, so we tend to start early before the kerbs fill up. If you do not drive, you do not need to. Hackney Central on the Overground and Cambridge Heath on the line into Liverpool Street both sit on the edge of the area, and the 277, 26 and 425 buses thread through it past Well Street, so we can get a team and their kit in without a car on most jobs.
Well Street itself is worth a word. The market that runs along it, down at E9 6QT between Morning Lane and the common, means the streets around there get busy by mid-morning on market days, which is another reason we like an early slot for the flats off Well Street and around the common.
Timing the clean is simple in principle. The flat has to be empty, so the removals van goes first and the clean follows, ideally the same day so the place is fresh for the inventory appointment rather than sitting overnight gathering dust through an open window. We work seven days a week, because most South Hackney tenancies end on a Friday or over a weekend, and a clean that has to wait until Monday is no use to anyone trying to get a deposit back on time.
One more local note. Bin day matters more than people expect on a move-out, because a flat full of black bags from the final clear-out reads badly on a check-out report and gets in the way of the clean. Hackney collects on a set day for each street, so time the last of the rubbish to it, or use the household reuse and recycling centre rather than leaving bags piled in a hallway the clerk has to step over.
Tell us the check-out time and the inventory slot. We plan backwards from those.
The South Hackney we know
We have cleaned enough flats in this corner of Hackney to have a feel for it. South Hackney has a village quality the rest of E9 does not quite share, and it shows in the buildings.
Lauriston Road runs like a small high street up towards the park, with the spire of St John of Jerusalem church standing over it. The church was built between 1845 and 1848 to a design by Edward Charles Hakewill, and it is said to be the third-largest parish church in London, which tells you something about how grand this neighbourhood was when the surrounding terraces went up. It replaced an older chapel of ease on Well Street, and the dedication points back to a medieval link between Hackney and the Order of St John. Well Street, a few minutes south, kept its plainer, older village feel and was made a conservation area in its own right in 2021, the newest of the three that cover the area.
For a clean, the takeaway is the age of the housing. Original sash windows, lath-and-plaster cornicing, deep period skirting and floors that have seen a hundred years of tenants all need a careful hand, not a quick once-over. The flats around Victoria Park and Well Street Common are some of the most sought-after lets in the borough, and the clerks who inspect them know exactly what good condition looks like.
There is also Well Street Common, the smaller green just south of the park, and the band of older estates between there and Homerton High Street. The mix is the point: a single street can run from a listed terrace to a 1960s block, and we have cleaned both ends of it.
If you are moving within the area rather than out of it, we cover the rest of the borough too. There are end of tenancy teams working Hackney Central around the Narrow Way, the warehouse conversions over in Hackney Wick, and the streets right on the Victoria Park edge. The wider Hackney end of tenancy hub lists every area we cover.
Add-ons worth booking together
Some jobs sit outside the standard clean and are worth booking at the same time, because doing them in one visit keeps the inventory tidy and saves a second appointment when you have already handed back the keys.
The carpets are the obvious one. We use hot-water extraction, which lifts months of ground-in dirt out of the pile rather than skimming the surface, and a freshly lifted carpet is one of the first things a clerk notices when they walk a room. Our carpet cleaning covers bedrooms, living rooms and the stairs those tall terrace flats always seem to have.
The oven is the other big one. A move-out oven gets fully taken apart, the door glass split and the racks soaked, so the burnt-on grease actually comes off instead of being smeared around the inside. Our oven cleaning is the single most common add-on we sell with a South Hackney move-out, for the simple reason that nobody enjoys doing it themselves on their last day. We also handle upholstery cleaning on furnished lets, where sofas and mattresses are part of the inventory, and exterior glass where a flat has windows we can reach safely from the ground.
A word on the furnished lets, which are common around here. If the flat came with sofas, a mattress or dining chairs listed on the inventory, those soft furnishings are checked too, and a stained mattress or a marked sofa arm can cost you as surely as a dirty oven. We treat upholstery with the same hot-water extraction kit as the carpets, so it can all be done in the same pass while the team is on site.
It all goes on one booking. One team, one visit, one set of clean inventory lines for the clerk to tick off.
Words your agent and clerk use
Move-out paperwork comes with its own vocabulary, and it is easy to feel wrong-footed by it. Here is the plain-English version of the words your agent and clerk will use.
- Check-in inventory
- The report, usually with photos, that recorded the condition and cleanliness of the flat when you moved in. Your move-out clean is judged against this, not against some idea of perfection.
- Inventory clerk
- The independent inspector the agent sends to compare the flat against the check-in report and note anything that has changed beyond fair wear and tear.
- Deposit protection scheme
- The government-backed scheme your deposit must be held in, with a free dispute service if deductions look unfair. How it works is set out on GOV.UK.
- Fair wear and tear
- The normal ageing of a flat from everyday living, which a landlord cannot charge you for. Shelter explains how to get your deposit back when a deduction is not justified.
- Selective licensing
- The council scheme, live in South Hackney from 1 May 2026, that requires most private landlords in the Victoria ward to hold a licence to let a home.
- Periodic tenancy
- A tenancy that rolls on week by week or month by month rather than running a fixed term, now the norm under the 2025 reforms. It affects your notice, not the clean standard.
South Hackney end of tenancy questions
The questions we get asked most often by South Hackney tenants and landlords, with straight answers.
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in South Hackney?
We price by the size of the flat, not by the hour. A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. The figure is fixed before we start, so the team stays until the whole flat is done rather than clock-watching towards an hourly total.
Do you cover the Victoria Park and Well Street side of E9?
Yes. Most of our South Hackney work sits around Victoria Park Road, Lauriston Road, Cassland Road and the streets off Well Street, plus the Frampton Park and Kingshold estates. If you are walking distance from Well Street Common or Cambridge Heath station, you are inside the patch we clean week in, week out.
Will my clean pass the inventory check?
That is the whole point of it. We clean to a 57-point list drawn up with letting agents, and our first-time pass rate is 97%. On the rare occasion a clerk flags something, the 48-hour re-clean covers it free, so a single missed spot does not cost you the deposit.
Can my landlord force me to pay for professional cleaning?
No. A blanket clause demanding professional cleaning is unenforceable, and tenant fees like that are banned. You only have to return the flat as clean as it was at check-in. Shelter sets out the position on cleaning deductions.
Is my rented home in South Hackney covered by selective licensing?
Almost certainly. South Hackney sits in the Victoria ward, which is one of the seventeen wards in Hackney’s selective licensing scheme that started on 1 May 2026. You can check the rules and apply on the council licensing page.
How long does a move-out clean take in a Victorian terrace flat?
A studio or one-bed conversion is usually three to five hours. A larger two or three-bed flat across two floors, the kind common in the Cassland Road terraces, can take most of a working day. We never rush the finish, because a half-done oven is exactly what the clerk writes up.
Do you bring your own cleaning products and equipment?
Yes, everything comes with the team: the hot-water extraction machine for carpets, the kit for the oven, the descaling treatments and all the cloths and detergents. You do not need to leave anything behind or buy supplies. We only ask that the flat has electricity and running hot water on the day.
Can you clean the carpets and oven at the same visit?
Yes, and most South Hackney movers add both. Carpet cleaning runs at £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed flat. A single oven is £77, a double £110 and a range £114. Booking them together means one visit and one clean inventory line.
What is the difference between an end of tenancy clean and a deep clean?
A deep clean is for a home you are staying in. An end of tenancy clean is measured against your check-in inventory and aimed at the deposit, so it follows the agent checklist room by room. If you just want a tired flat freshened up rather than signed off, our deep clean is the better fit.
How do I book, and how much notice do you need?
Call 0333 555 2076, email [email protected], or use the contact page. Tell us the postcode, the number of bedrooms and your check-out date. A day or two is usually enough, though the end of the month gets busy when several tenancies end at once.
Should I clean before or after the removals van has gone?
After. The flat has to be empty for the clean to count, because the clerk inspects bare rooms and we cannot reach skirting boards or the carpet under furniture. Book the removals first, then the clean for once the flat is clear. We can often do both in sequence on the same day.
Do you clean the inside of windows in conservation-area flats?
We clean all the interior glass, sills and reveals as part of the standard job. The original sash and casement windows in the Victoria Park and Well Street conservation areas get the same wipe-down inside. Outside-only pole cleaning of upper windows is a separate add-on if the let calls for it.
What happens if the agent disputes the clean after we have left?
Tell us straight away. As long as the flat was empty and we did the original clean, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers a return visit to fix whatever was flagged, free of charge. Over the years that promise has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would have gone on cleaning bills.
Do you work weekends and bank holidays in Hackney?
Yes, seven days a week, which matters when most tenancies end on a Friday or over a weekend. We will fit the clean around your check-out time and the agent key handover. Tell us when the inventory appointment is and we will be finished and out before the clerk arrives.
Are your prices for South Hackney the full price or a deposit?
The price we quote is the full cost of the clean, not a deposit or a starting figure. A two-bed flat at £243 is £243, with our kit and the 57-point checklist included. The only extras are optional add-ons like carpets or the oven, and we tell you those before you book.
Can you handle the whole move, cleaning and removals together?
Often, yes. Alongside the end of tenancy clean we run a removals service, so on a tight South Hackney move-out we can clear the flat and clean it in one coordinated day. That keeps the empty-flat window short and gets you to the inventory appointment with everything done.