The clerk doing a Covent Garden check-out pulls the extractor hood filter before they have taken their coat off. A year of cooking in a galley kitchen the width of a corridor leaves grease that a wipe does not touch, and it is the most reliable deduction in WC2E. So this is what an end-of-tenancy clean in St Paul’s, Covent Garden has to be: built for the person writing the report, run off a checklist rather than a memory, priced at £30 per hour per cleaner, and carrying a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.
Last updated July 2026. We cover WC2E around the Piazza and the WC2 streets either side of it, from Bedford Street across to Bow Street and up towards Seven Dials. St Paul’s, Covent Garden sits in the City of Westminster, and this page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Westminster.
The mile between two St Paul’s, and why a booking form gets it wrong
Type St Paul’s into a search box and most of London means the cathedral. This page is the other one. St Paul’s, Covent Garden is the church on the west side of the Piazza, the Inigo Jones portico with the heavy Tuscan columns facing the market building, the one the acting trade adopted and still calls its own. The postcode is WC2E. The council is the City of Westminster, and the ward is St James’s. St Paul’s Cathedral sits about a mile east in the City of London: different postcode, different authority, different everything. If you are handing back a flat under the dome, this is not your page.
Worth pinning the council down early, because it decides more than people expect. Westminster here, not Camden and not the City. The northern end of Covent Garden does cross into Camden as you go up past Seven Dials, which catches people out on streets that look identical either side of the line, and the side you are on changes which licensing scheme your landlord sits under. Not sure? Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode. It takes about ten seconds to settle.
A Covent Garden one-bed cleans like something a size up
The residential stock around the Piazza is almost all upper floors. Flats above the shops and restaurants on Bedford Street, Henrietta Street and King Street. Period upper parts carved out of the old Covent Garden houses on Maiden Lane and Floral Street. A handful of mansion-style and purpose-built blocks over towards Bow Street and the Royal Opera House. Nearly all of it is rented, very little of it is new, and it turns over fast, which is precisely the profile where clerks find the most to write down.
There is barely a house here.
What that does to a clean is the thing people underestimate. These flats run up rather than along, so a one-bed above a King Street shopfront is frequently two or three floors joined by a stair steep enough to argue with, with a galley kitchen wedged under a slope, a bathroom carved out of what was once a box room, and window reveals looking straight onto a street that throws grit at them all day. Count the stairs, the angled ceilings, the extra skirting and the extra doors, and the surface area runs well past what the bedroom count on the tenancy agreement suggests. We time and price these against what the flat actually is, because the clerk inspects every floor of it and does not care what the contract called it.
A flat that reads small on the tenancy agreement carries the cleaning load of something a size up.
Access is the other half of it. There is rarely a lift, the street door is often shared with the commercial unit below, and the Piazza itself is pedestrianised, so a van does not simply pull up outside the way it would in a suburb. None of that is a problem when we know in advance. It is a problem at eight in the morning when we do not.
Grease from below, scale from the tap
Deductions on this stock cluster in a short and boringly predictable list. Kitchen grease is first, for the reason the top of this page opens with: small kitchens, cooked in hard, in the middle of a district that does nothing but feed people. The hood filter, the splashback behind the hob, the oven door glass with its brown film between the panes. That is where the clerk starts and it is where a rushed clean has already stopped.
Then the bathroom. Thames Water classes the supply across this part of London as hard, and hard water writes itself onto chrome taps, shower screens and tile joints faster than tenants expect. It sets. Once it has, a cloth and a spray achieve almost nothing, and the clerk knows the test: thumbnail down the tap, then the screen looked at edge-on against the window. Getting limescale off properly is slow work with the right descaler and enough dwell time, and in the older upper parts the fittings are sometimes original chrome or brass, which rules out the aggressive products a newer flat would shrug off. Grout is the same story, scrubbed rather than wiped, and photographed first where it is past saving so nobody bills you for wear that was already in the check-in pictures.
Floors are the third one, and the one people cause themselves. Old boards are everywhere in the Maiden Lane and Henrietta Street upper parts, and the fastest way to fail a check-out on them is a wet mop and a supermarket floor cleaner, which leaves a film that the clerk sees the moment the light comes through the window at the wrong angle. Right product for the finish, never flooded, buffed back where it will come back.
The 57 things we go through, floor by floor
Every booking runs against a 57-point agent-approved checklist, and on a vertical Covent Garden flat we work it floor by floor rather than room by room, because that is the order the clerk walks it in. The full list comes with the job. This is the shape of it.
- Oven: stripped rather than wiped. Racks soaked, door glass split so the film between the panels comes out, interior, fan, element and seals all done.
- Hob, splashback and extractor: burners and knobs off and washed, the hood degreased inside and out, the filter soaked, the splashback taken back to the grout.
- Appliances: fridge, freezer, washing machine and dishwasher cleaned inside and out, pulled forward so the gap behind and underneath is done, then put back. Drum, detergent drawer and door seal on the washing machine, because the seal is the first thing a clerk opens.
- Cupboards and worktops: every unit emptied and wiped inside and out, handles included, worktops and the sink descaled, taps polished.
- Bathroom: scale off taps, screen, shower head and tiles. Toilet done inside, under the rim, at the base and behind the pedestal. Grout scrubbed, sealant cleaned, extractor vent wiped.
- Floors: old boards with the correct product for the finish, hard floors washed, carpets vacuumed into the edges and under what can be moved.
- Stairs: treads, risers, bannisters and spindles, to the same standard as the rooms, since these flats are mostly stairs.
- Joinery and switches: skirting, architraves, doors both sides including the tops, handles, light switches, sockets and the entryphone.
- Windows: glass cleaned internally, sills and street-facing reveals wiped, glazing bars and sash frames done, blinds dusted slat by slat.
- Up high: cobwebs out of the corners, picture rails, ceiling roses and the high angled ceilings these top-floor flats all have.
- Walk-through: the team checks the flat back against the 57 points before leaving, and photographs every room before and after. That photo set is your evidence.
Four jobs get muddled on the phone almost every week, and booking the wrong one wastes your money.
- End-of-tenancy clean
- Built to pass an inventory and get a deposit back. Flat empty, agent’s benchmark, 57 points, with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee on it. This is the one this page is about.
- Deep clean
- Resets a home you are staying in. Lived-in, furniture in place, no clerk at the end of it and no formal standard to hit, charged by the hour at £30 per cleaner.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing upkeep on a rota, the same cleaner kept on the flat, from £22 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly. It is maintenance, and it will not pass a check-out on its own.
- Check-in inventory report
- Not a clean at all. It is the document a clerk wrote on your first day describing every surface, usually with photos. It is the standard your last day is marked against, which is why we clean to it rather than to a general idea of tidy.
Westminster licensing, and what 1 May 2026 actually changed
Two pieces of housing law sit behind a Covent Garden move-out, and neither of them makes you book a cleaner.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone, every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic tenancy, and a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point in the year instead of waiting out a fixed term. The cleaning side of a move-out did not move an inch. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 still stops a landlord writing a professional clean into the contract as a condition, and the check-in report is still the benchmark. What changed is timing, and timing bites in a patch where the lets were already short and a flat off the Piazza re-lets in days. Rolling notice means check-outs land less predictably. The dull advice pays for itself here: book earlier than you think you need to.
The cleaning side of a move-out did not move an inch.
Licensing is the other one, and it lands on landlords rather than tenants, though it quietly changes who you deal with at hand-back. Westminster’s selective licensing scheme started on 24 November 2025 and runs to 23 November 2030, but it covers fifteen named wards and St James’s is not among them, so an ordinary Covent Garden flat let to a single household needs no selective licence. Additional HMO licensing is the one that reaches this postcode: it applies across the whole borough, and the renewed designation was made on 21 April 2026, comes into force on 31 August 2026 and runs to 30 August 2031. If you are three sharers from different households in a King Street upper part, that flat is very likely licensable. In practice that means a managing agent who is being inspected on the property’s condition, and an inspected agent is a good deal less relaxed at check-out than a hands-off private landlord.
What it costs, and the sum nobody runs until the clerk has been
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio above a shopfront (Bedford Street, King Street) | 3–4 hours, 1 cleaner | From £156 |
| 1-bed upper part (Henrietta Street, Maiden Lane) | 4–5 hours, 2 cleaners | From £207 |
| 2-bed upper part or mansion flat (Floral Street, Bow Street) | 5–7 hours, 2 cleaners | From £243 |
| 3-bed spread over two or three floors | 6–8 hours, 2 cleaners | From £339 |
| 4-bed, which is rare in WC2E | 8–10 hours, 2–3 cleaners | From £425 |
| By the hour, where a flat job does not fit | Part jobs and odd layouts | £30 per cleaner |
| Carpet shampoo add-on | Same visit | £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £115 whole 2-bed |
| Oven only, as a standalone | 1.5–2 hours | £77 single, £110 double, £114 range 90cm |
Covent Garden is central, and central usually means a surcharge. Not here. This is our standard tier, because the flats are old and awkward rather than large, and the awkwardness is our problem rather than yours to pay for. Kit, products and travel are in the price. No weekend loading, nothing bolted onto the invoice after the clerk has been. What does change a quote is condition: a long tenancy with heavy wear, a pet, a smoker’s flat, or a kitchen nobody has taken apart in four years costs more, and we say so on the phone rather than on the bill.
Then run the sum the deposit makes you run. A one-bed at £207 against a deposit that is routinely several thousand pounds in WC2E is not a close decision, and the cleaning deductions a Covent Garden clerk writes up (oven, scale, the gap behind the fridge, the film on the boards) rarely land under a couple of hundred once they are added together. Almost nobody does that arithmetic before the check-out. They do it afterwards, having already lost the cheap round.
Behind the numbers is a firm rather than a franchise: Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House 9919639, cleaning London since 2014. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, our 97% first-time pass rate is the figure we are actually judged on, and across the years that work has meant £1.2m deposits recovered for tenants who would otherwise have watched it go on cleaning charges. The 48-hour re-clean guarantee is the part that matters most on the day: if the clerk flags something we cleaned and you tell us inside 48 hours, we come back and put it right free.
Questions we get asked
Is this the same St Paul’s as the cathedral?
No. This page is St Paul’s, Covent Garden: the Actors’ Church on the west side of the Piazza, WC2E, in the City of Westminster. St Paul’s Cathedral is a mile east in the City of London, a different postcode under a different council. If your flat is near the cathedral, ring us anyway and we will point you the right way.
How much is an end-of-tenancy clean in St Paul’s, Covent Garden?
From £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. Covent Garden runs on our standard tier. The flats here are old and awkward, but they are not large, so there is no central-London loading on top. The written quote is fixed before we start.
Do I legally have to pay for a professional clean?
No. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 stops a landlord making professional cleaning a condition of the tenancy, and the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 left that alone. What you owe is the flat back at its check-in condition, fair wear and tear aside. Most people book us because matching a Covent Garden inventory by hand, across three floors, on the day the van is outside, is genuinely hard.
My flat is three floors up above a restaurant and there is no lift. Is that a problem?
It is the normal job here, not the exception. Tell us how many floors up you are, whether there is a separate street door or you come through a shared one, and whether deliveries to the units below block the entrance at certain hours. We carry our own kit up rather than count on access we might not get.
The flat is split over three floors. Does that cost more than a flat one-bed?
No. It is priced on bedrooms, so a vertical one-bed is still the one-bed rate. We do allow more time for the stairs, the angled ceilings and the extra skirting, because those floors get inspected too. The quote does not change because the flat goes up rather than along.
Why does the clerk always go for the extractor first around here?
Because a Covent Garden kitchen is small, it sits in the middle of a restaurant district, and it has usually been cooked in hard for a year by someone with no space to do anything else. The hood filter and the splashback are where grease shows first, so it is the most reliable place for a clerk to open the report with. We strip the extractor and soak the filter on every job.
Can you deal with the hard water marks in a WC2 bathroom?
Yes. Thames Water classes the supply across this part of London as hard, and it shows on chrome taps, shower screens and tile joints faster than most tenants expect. A cloth does nothing to it once it has set. We use a proper descaler and give it the time it needs, then check the chrome and the screen against the inventory before we pack up.
Will you damage old timber boards?
No, and this matters here because the upper parts around Maiden Lane and Henrietta Street are full of old boards. They get the right product for the finish and they are never flooded. Streaked or dulled timber left by someone else’s wet mop is a common deduction, so we buff it back where it is safe to do that and we tell you honestly when it is not.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or the agent flags something we cleaned, and you tell us within 48 hours of the job, we come back and re-clean that item free. The flat has to be in the state we left it, with nobody moved in. It is also why we ask you to book close to the check-out date, so the window is still open while the report is being written.
Does Westminster licensing affect my move-out?
It lands on your landlord rather than you, but it changes the tone of a check-out. St James’s, the ward Covent Garden sits in, is outside Westminster’s selective licensing scheme, so an ordinary flat let to one household needs no selective licence. Additional HMO licensing is borough-wide and does reach this postcode, so a sharer flat tends to come with a managing agent who is being inspected on the property, and inspected agents are less relaxed at hand-back.
Did the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change what I have to clean?
No. From 1 May 2026 Section 21 evictions are abolished and every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic one, so a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point. The cleaning obligation did not move. The effect around here is timing: notice is rolling, the flats re-let quickly, and check-outs land less predictably than they used to.
Booking it, and the delivery window problem
Booking is short. Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode, the number of bedrooms and your check-out date, or send the same to [email protected] out of hours and someone calls you back. We quote in about three minutes. A couple of photos of the kitchen and the bathroom sharpen it. Then we put a fixed written quote in front of you with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee stated on it, the team cleans to the 57 points floor by floor, and you get the before-and-after photo set with the invoice.
Three things are worth telling us when you book, and all three are specific to this patch. How many floors up you are and whether the street door is your own or shared with the unit below. When deliveries to the shops and restaurants underneath block the entrance, because on some of these streets the servicing happens early and a van of ours arriving mid-delivery simply waits. And how we get in: your key, a key safe, or an agent dropping one off. Covent Garden lettings desks are used to this, and the local agencies working the patch (Tavistock Bow on New Row is the obvious example) will usually sort a key hand-off without much fuss if you ask them a day ahead.
Book the clean for the day before your check-out where you can, or the morning of it. An empty flat photographs better for the clerk, and it keeps the guarantee window open while the report is still being written rather than after it has been filed. If a managing agent or a PA is running the hand-back because you have already left the country, which happens more here than anywhere else we work, give us their details and the letting agent’s and we will deal with both directly. If your check-out is tomorrow, ring anyway.
If the deposit conversation goes wrong after all that, it is not the agent’s call. It goes to the scheme’s adjudicator, and Shelter’s guidance on tenancy deposits walks through the steps in plain English. Our dated invoice and photo report are admissible, and a tenant with a complete paper trail very rarely loses.