End of tenancy cleaning for Stevenage homes

Why does a Stevenage inventory clerk head for the window track before anything else in the flat? Because the New Town estates were built with wide metal sills that trap grit, and a clerk who works this town has opened a thousand of them. We run Stevenage end of tenancy cleaning at that level of detail, agent-approved, from £30 per hour per cleaner for part-jobs outside the fixed packages, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee if anything we cleaned gets flagged at the inspection. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.

Last updated July 2026. We cover the SG1 and SG2 postcodes across Stevenage’s New Town neighbourhoods and the separate Old Town, plus the wider county on the same checklist. This page sits inside the regional directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Hertfordshire.

A grid drawn before the bricks arrived

Stevenage was the first place designated under the New Towns Act 1946, chosen months before the ink on the legislation was properly dry. The Stevenage Development Corporation, working under chief architect Leonard Vincent, laid the town out as a series of self-contained neighbourhoods rather than letting it sprawl the way older towns had. Bedwell went up first in 1952. Broadwater and Shephall followed in 1953. Chells, Pin Green and Symonds Green came later, through the 1960s and into the 1970s and 80s, each one built to the same broad brief of low-rise brick homes, generous green space and a strict separation of people from traffic.

That last part matters more than it sounds. Stevenage pioneered the Radburn layout in Britain, putting the front door on a pedestrian footpath and the car round the back on a hidden service road. It threaded the town with a segregated cycleway network so a child could reach school without crossing a road that carries cars. In 1959 it opened the country’s first purpose-built, traffic-free pedestrian shopping precinct. The clock tower in that square is Grade II listed now.

None of that is why a cleaner should care, on its own. It matters because a planned town repeats itself, and repetition is exactly what an inventory clerk relies on. The same window sill design turns up in Shephall, Pin Green and Chells alike. The same kitchen layout, fitted to a New Town standard rather than to individual taste, appears in a thousand semis across the town. A clerk who has inspected that kitchen a hundred times knows precisely where the grease collects, and checks there first.

The genuinely old part of Stevenage sits apart from all of this, up around the High Street, where a settlement has stood for the better part of seven centuries and a weekly market has run since a royal charter of 1281. That older centre is its own place with its own character and its own cleaning quirks, worth a separate conversation if that is where your tenancy sits. This page is about the wider New Town: the postwar estates, the pedestrian precinct and the neighbourhoods built around them, which is where most of Stevenage’s rented housing actually is.

The chalk in every tap

Stevenage sits on a chalk aquifer, and the water that comes out of every tap in town reflects it. Affinity Water supplies the area, and its own published water hardness data puts Stevenage at roughly 320 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, which sits in the “very hard” band and is well above the national average. That is not a marginal reading. It is among the harder tap water anywhere in England.

You feel it on the kettle first, usually, then you stop noticing it, the way anyone stops noticing a sound that never changes. A bathroom that looks fine to someone who rinses it every day can still carry a chalky crust at the base of the taps, a cloudy film across the shower screen, a tide line inside the toilet pan. None of that shifts with a cloth and spray. It needs a proper descaler worked into the metal and ceramic, then buffed dry so nothing hazes over for the camera the clerk brings.

We treat the whole run as one job rather than picking off the worst bit and leaving the rest half done: taps, spout, aerator, shower screen, showerhead, pan and cistern, kettle area in the kitchen too. In a hard-water town like Stevenage that is the difference between a pass and a re-clean call.

Bedwell to Symonds Green: one house, many times over

Ask what a typical Stevenage rental looks like and the honest answer is a New Town semi or short terrace, two storeys, ex-council in a lot of cases, built between the 1950s and the 1970s across Bedwell, Broadwater, Shephall, Chells, Pin Green, Symonds Green and Martins Wood. Wide window sills. A kitchen fitted to the standard New Town spec, so the awkward gap beside the cooker sits in the same place whichever estate you are in. A garden, more often than not, because that was part of the original brief for the town.

The Radburn layout gives us one practical headache on the day, worth mentioning because nobody outside the trade ever thinks of it. If the front door opens onto a pedestrian green and the car park sits round the back off a service road, moving a carpet machine or a heavy kit bag from van to door is a longer carry than it looks on the map. We plan the round with that in mind rather than turning up short.

Fewer lets come up in the Old Town itself, but where they do the job changes character: picture rails, deeper skirting, the high-level dust that older rooms hold onto, and a slower, more careful pass rather than a scale job. Newer stock is arriving too, in the flats going up around the town centre, and those inspect just as sharply in a different way. A brand-new grout line has barely been used, and a precise clerk checks it anyway.

The Radburn layout gives us one practical headache on the day, worth mentioning because nobody outside the trade ever thinks of it.

The 57 things nobody checks until moving day

End of tenancy cleaning is the hand-back clean, matched line for line against the inventory rather than a general tidy. It runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist built around what a Stevenage clerk actually opens. Here is what that covers.

• Oven: dismantled, racks and trays soaked, door glass split and cleaned between the panes, interior stripped back to bare metal.
• Hob and extractor: rings or ceramic top descaled, splashback cleared, canopy degreased, filters soaked.
• Kitchen units: every cupboard and drawer emptied and wiped inside and out, handles cleaned, doors nearest the cooker degreased.
• Worktops and tiling: surfaces cleared, joints scrubbed, splashback grout brought back as far as it honestly will go.
• Sink and taps: scale lifted from the mixer, spout and aerator, basin polished, waste and overflow flushed.
• Fridge and freezer: defrosted if left running, shelves and drawers washed, seals cleaned.
• Washing machine: drum wiped, detergent drawer descaled, door seal cleaned where mould gathers, filter checked.
• Bathroom scale: shower screen, taps, showerhead and chrome descaled and buffed dry, no cloudy film left for the photograph.
• Toilet: pan descaled under the rim and at the waterline, cistern wiped, seat and hinges cleaned.
• Bath and basin: surfaces cleaned, overflow flushed, sealant lines scrubbed.
• Tiles and grout: wall tiles washed, spot mould treated rather than wiped over.
• Extractor fan: cover removed, dust cleared, cover washed and refitted.
• Internal doors: both faces, top edges, handles and frames wiped.
• Skirting and architrave: wiped throughout, including the runs behind doors that get missed.
• Switches and sockets: light switches, sockets and thermostat faces cleaned of marks.
• Walls: spot-cleaned for scuffs where the surface allows it.
• Windows: glass, frames, sills and tracks cleaned inside; the wide New Town sills get the tracks checked properly.
• Window furniture: handles and stays wiped, blinds dusted, curtain poles and tracks done.
• Built-in wardrobes: emptied, shelves and rails wiped, runners and unit floors cleaned out.
• Carpets: vacuumed throughout, edges and under accessible furniture. Machine carpet cleaning is a separate add-on.
• Hard floors: washed, edges and corners detailed, no mop film left to dry cloudy.
• Stairs: treads, risers, spindles and handrail done, which matters in the two-storey semis.
• Radiators and pipework: fronts wiped, tops dusted, visible pipe runs cleaned.
• Light fittings: shades dusted, reachable bulbs and pendant fittings wiped.
• Cobwebs and high dust: ceilings, corners, door tops and high ledges cleared.
• Cupboards and bins: under-sink area cleaned, any bin cupboard washed out, airing cupboard slats wiped.

What the council does, and does not, licence

Stevenage Borough Council runs a simpler licensing picture than plenty of its neighbours. There is no selective licensing scheme anywhere in the borough, so most tenants in an ordinary single-family let have no council licence to think about at all. Mandatory HMO licensing does apply, under the national scheme that took effect on 1 October 2018: a larger shared house let to five or more people forming more than one household needs a licence, with set space standards attached.

The one rule that actually catches landlords out is planning rather than licensing. The council has had an Article 4 Direction covering HMOs in force since 20 September 2017, made in September 2016 and confirmed the following May, which removes the automatic right to convert an ordinary family house into a small shared HMO without planning permission first. A landlord cannot quietly turn a Bedwell semi into a shared house any more. And in a newer move, the council confirmed fresh Article 4 Directions over the Gunnels Wood and Pin Green employment areas on 21 January 2026, aimed at stopping offices and light industrial units converting to flats without permission, which is a landlord and developer question rather than a tenant one.

None of this changes what an ordinary tenant needs to do at hand-back. Cleaning obligations sit outside the licensing rules entirely, and the local lettings market runs through a small group of established firms. Belvoir, covering Hitchin and Stevenage together, and Country Properties, whose Stevenage branch sits on the High Street, are both names our team sees regularly on inspection paperwork. Their clerks work the same patch week after week, so they know exactly which corner of a 1960s Shephall semi tenants tend to skip. We have learned the same lesson from the other side of the same job.

A billion pounds going into the middle of town

The town centre is mid-rebuild. The SG1 regeneration scheme is the biggest piece of a roughly £1 billion, twenty-year transformation of Stevenage town centre, and it is visibly under way rather than a plan on a shelf. Mace has been building Claxton House, 261 new flats near the pedestrianised precinct, which topped out in January 2026. The Guinness Partnership has already completed the first phase of its Danesgate development, 143 new homes, all of it affordable and allocated through the council’s waiting list. Queensway North went through a separate £50 million redevelopment that is finished and trading, and it brought Autolus Therapeutics, a life-sciences company, into a new European headquarters in the middle of town.

What that means for us on the ground is a growing slice of very new stock sitting a short walk from decades-old New Town semis. A newer flat cleans up fast because there is no build-up of years to shift through. It is also inspected more precisely than an older property, because the finish is meant to be pristine and a clerk checking a brand-new grout line has nothing to excuse. We treat a Claxton House handover and a Bedwell semi as two different jobs with the same 57-point standard behind both.

What it costs, room by room

Stevenage is priced at our standard rate, not a London premium, so the number we quote on the phone is the number on the invoice. Carpet cleaning sits outside the package as an add-on: £36 per bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for the carpets through a whole two-bed. Ovens come included in the full end of tenancy clean; on their own, booked as a standalone job, it is £77 for a single oven, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range.

If you only need one piece of the job rather than the full hand-back, cleaning the oven alone or having carpets professionally shampooed can both be booked as standalone services, no full clean required. For a landlord turning over a new SG1 flat before the first tenant moves in, a builders’ clean ahead of handover is a different service again, worth asking about separately.

“Three years in a two-bed on Long Chaulden, Shephall. The oven had never had a proper clean and the kitchen units near it were the same. Two cleaners came for six hours, did the whole flat plus the carpets in both bedrooms. Country Properties signed it off with nothing deducted and the deposit was back inside three weeks.”
Priya, Shephall SG2, April 2026

The jobs that earn a re-clean notice

We rarely get called back. When a clerk does flag something, it is almost always one of the same handful of jobs, worth naming plainly.

1. Oven door glass. Grease creeps between the two panes of the door, and a clerk holds the door up to the light rather than just glancing at the front. A general wipe misses it every time.
2. Showerhead and tap scale. In water this hard, a showerhead that still runs cloudy or a tap with a white crust at the base reads as never properly cleaned. It has to be descaled, then dried, not just rinsed.
3. Sealant staining. Pink or grey discolouration in bathroom sealant photographs badly. It needs treating, not just wiping over.
4. Behind and under appliances. The floor and wall behind a slid-out fridge or washing machine gets checked in an unfurnished hand-back and skipped by a rushed clean.
5. Window tracks. The channel under a wide New Town sill holds grit and dead flies, and a clerk runs a finger down it as a matter of routine.

Avoid those five and you have dealt with most of what actually loses a Stevenage deposit on cleaning.

End of tenancy clean

The hand-back clean that gets the deposit released. Matched against the inventory, done once, backed by the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

Deep clean

A reset for a home you are staying in, with no inventory to satisfy and no fixed benchmark beyond your own standard.

Regular domestic clean

Ongoing maintenance on a weekly or fortnightly visit, priced per cleaner per hour rather than as a fixed package.

Check-in inventory

The signed report and photographs taken when a tenancy starts. Everything at check-out gets measured against this document.

Booking around a King’s Cross commute

A good share of our Stevenage bookings come from people moving for London work. Stevenage sits on the East Coast Main Line, and a fast train gets you into King’s Cross in around twenty-two minutes, which pulls in renters who need a flat signed off cleanly between one tenancy and the next. We see traffic the other way too, families leaving a London flat for more space and a garden further out.

Booking is short.

1. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your postcode and the number of bedrooms.
2. We give you a fixed price on the call and a slot, usually within a few days, timed around the check-out your agent has set.
3. The team cleans to the 57-point checklist. We ask that the property is empty and the utilities are still connected, so the oven, taps and hot water all work on the day.
4. If your clerk flags anything we cleaned within 48 hours of the inspection, we come back and re-clean it free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone and existing tenancies have converted to periodic agreements, so a tenant can now give notice at any point rather than waiting for a fixed term to end. The cleaning side of a move-out has not changed at all. What has changed is timing: move-outs across a town this size are likely to spread more unevenly through the month than the old fixed-term pattern used to produce, so a tenancy that used to end predictably now might not.

That guarantee is why agents keep passing our name on. We hold a 97% first-time pass rate, and across the years we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents nationally, Belvoir and Country Properties among the names we see regularly in Stevenage. The end of the month is the busy stretch here, since most tenancies still turn over then even under the new rules, so if your check-out date is fixed it is worth a call as soon as you know it.

Questions we get asked

How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Stevenage?

A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed house £425. Carpet cleaning is extra at £36 a bedroom. These are fixed Stevenage prices at our standard rate, confirmed on the call before you book.

Do you guarantee the clean will pass the inventory check?

We hold a 97% first-time pass rate and back every job with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If your clerk flags anything we cleaned within 48 hours of the check-out inspection, we return and re-clean it at no charge. The work follows a 57-point agent-approved checklist built around what clerks in this town actually inspect.

The bathroom has scale build-up from the hard water, can you shift it?

Yes. Stevenage runs on Affinity Water and the supply is very hard, around 320 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, so scale on taps, showerheads, screens and toilet pans is the most common flag we see here. We descale the metal and ceramic properly and buff it dry so there is no cloudy film left for the clerk’s photographs.

There is a mould patch in the bathroom. Will that cost me the deposit?

Not if it is treated properly before check-out. A spot mould patch in a bathroom corner is usually a cleaning issue rather than building damage, and we treat it rather than wiping over it. We have cleared photographed patches like this and had the clerk sign the property off with no deduction.

What does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 mean for my Stevenage tenancy?

Your deposit stays protected in an approved scheme and a landlord still cannot keep money for fair wear and tear. Section 21 is abolished and existing tenancies now run as periodic agreements, which mainly affects notice periods and timing rather than the cleaning standard itself. Cleaning faults remain chargeable; ordinary wear does not.

Which parts of Stevenage do you cover?

All of it: Bedwell, Broadwater, Shephall, Chells, Pin Green, Symonds Green, Martins Wood, the town centre flats going up around the SG1 regeneration scheme, and the Old Town around the High Street. We cover the SG1 and SG2 postcodes and the wider Hertfordshire county on the same checklist.

Is Stevenage’s New Town housing different to clean from an older property?

Yes, in the details rather than the standard. The estate houses built from the 1950s onward have wide window sills with tracks that collect grit, and kitchens fitted to a repeated New Town layout, so the same problem spots turn up house after house. Older Old Town properties want a slower pass for picture rails and high-level dust instead.

Do I need to be there during the clean?

No. Most tenants leave access details and collect keys from the agent afterwards. We ask that the property is empty of furniture where possible and that water and electricity are still connected, because the oven, taps and hot water all need to work for a proper clean.

How far in advance should I book?

A few days is usually enough, but the end of the month is the busiest stretch since most tenancies still end then. If your check-out date is fixed, call as soon as you know it and we will work around the inspection time your agent has set.

Is carpet cleaning included in the price?

Vacuuming is included throughout. Machine carpet cleaning is a separate add-on: £36 per bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for the carpets across a whole two-bed.

Do you work with letting agents in Stevenage?

Yes. We clean to the standard local agents and their clerks expect, including Belvoir and Country Properties, and we are on the books of 300+ letting agents nationally. Agents pass our name on because the re-clean guarantee means fewer disputes for them to manage.

Does Stevenage Borough Council require a licence for my rented home?

Almost certainly not, unless you are in a larger shared house. There is no selective licensing scheme in Stevenage, so an ordinary single-family let needs no council licence at all. Mandatory HMO licensing only applies to shared houses of five or more people forming more than one household.