The inventory clerk on Stony Stratford High Street goes to the bathroom taps before anything else, and they are right to. The water here runs at roughly 300 parts per million of calcium carbonate, so two years of ordinary use leaves a chalky bloom on chrome that a cloth will not shift. That is the benchmark an end of tenancy clean in MK11 has to beat: the check-in photographs, taken on the day those fittings were bright. We work to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, at £30 per hour per cleaner, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.
Last updated June 2026. We cover Stony Stratford and the whole of MK11, from the High Street, Market Square and Horsefair Green out to Wolverton Road, Mill Lane, the Calverton edge and the Fullers Slade and Galley Hill estates. This page sits inside the county directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Buckinghamshire.
The Georgian front, and the timber frame behind it
Stony Stratford is not grid-square Milton Keynes, whatever the postcode suggests. Watling Street, the Roman road, crosses the Great Ouse here and runs through the town as London Road, then the High Street, then Towcester Road. A weekly market was chartered in 1194. Two fires in the 18th century took out much of the town, and the rebuilding after them is why the place looks the way it does. Milton Keynes City Council’s own conservation area review puts it well: the fires gave the town its characteristic Georgian facades, but those stone and brick frontages often mask timber frame structures to the rear.
That single sentence explains most of our work here. A clean, formal Georgian front, and behind it a building that is older, odder and full of surfaces a modern flat does not have. Deep moulded skirtings. Panelled doors. Original staircases with turned spindles. Counterbalanced timber windows, including the unusual 24-over-24 arrangement at the Bull Hotel that the council document singles out. Number 48 High Street, Shell House, is Grade II* and its stone frontage hides a partly timber-framed rear range. You cannot clean a building like that the way you clean a new-build off the grid road, and an inventory clerk who works MK11 knows exactly which of those surfaces collects dust.
The other thing about a coaching-town high street is what sits above the shops. Flats over retail, reached by a stair off the back, often with a kitchen squeezed into a room that was never meant to be one and a bathroom shoehorned under a slope. Those lets churn. They also carry the longest check-in inventories per square metre of anything we handle in Buckinghamshire, because the clerk itemises the period joinery, the old glass and the fittings one photograph at a time.
Water at 300ppm, and what it does to a High Street bathroom
Anglian Water supplies the town, and Milton Keynes sits on limestone and chalk. The supply runs around 300 parts per million of calcium carbonate, which is in the very hard band and among the hardest in the country. In practical terms, every drop of water that has touched a tap in your flat has left a little of that behind.
Scale is the number one reason a Stony Stratford check-out fails on cleaning. It builds on the taps, the shower head, the screen, the bath glaze and the ring around the waste, and it does it slowly enough that you stop seeing it. The clerk has not stopped seeing it. They have a photograph from your first day showing bright chrome, and they hold it next to what is in front of them.
Two details matter on this stock. The scale has to come off rather than be wiped over, and a bathroom that has gone two years untreated is most of a morning’s work on its own, not ten minutes with a spray. And a good number of the older High Street and Market Square properties still have original or early chrome and brass, which rules out the brute-force approach a modern fitting would shrug off. We work those by hand, with the mildest thing that will do the job, because a stripped finish is a bigger deduction than the limescale ever was.
The clerk has not stopped seeing it.
Grout is the other one. Kitchen and bathroom grout decides more deposits in MK11 than carpets do. We scrub it. Where it is genuinely past saving, and in a long tenancy on old tiling it sometimes is, we photograph the state of it before we start, so nobody can bill you for wear that was already in the check-in pictures.
What 1 May 2026 changed for a Stony Stratford move-out
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force 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 rather than waiting for a fixed term to run out.
Here is the part people get wrong. The cleaning side of a move-out did not change at all.
The check-in benchmark still applies. The deposit maths is what it was the week before. What changed is timing, and timing is what bites in a town like this, where a lot of the letting stock is small, above a shop or in a converted period house, and turns over quickly. Less predictable end dates mean less predictable check-out dates, which means the slot you want is likelier to be taken. The advice is dull and it pays for itself: ring earlier than you would have done two years ago.
Milton Keynes licenses almost nothing, and it matters less than you think
Worth knowing if you let here. Milton Keynes City Council operates mandatory HMO licensing only. A property let to five or more people forming two or more households, with some sharing of facilities, needs a licence, and the council sets that out on its houses in multiple occupation pages. What the council has not done is bring in an additional or a selective scheme, so a standard family let or a small sharer house in Stony Stratford is not licensable here the way the same property would be in parts of London.
Landlords sometimes read that as a lighter touch at the end. It is not. Licensing decides who inspects the property while somebody is living in it. It has nothing to do with the hand-back. A licensed HMO and an unlicensed two-bed above a shop both get handed to an inventory clerk on the last day, and that clerk works to the same standard on both. The deposit turns on the photographs either way, which is why we clean to the inventory rather than to a general idea of tidy.
The 57 things we go through, room by room
Every booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of check-outs and ordered the way a clerk actually walks a property. The full list comes with the job. Here is the shape of it.
The kitchen. The oven is stripped rather than wiped: racks out to soak, door glass split so the brown film between the panes comes out, then the interior, fan, element and seals. Hob rings and burners off, knobs off and washed. Extractor hood degreased inside and out, filter soaked or swapped. Every cupboard done inside and out, including the deep awkward-cornered ones in the old High Street kitchens where a run of units has been fitted around a wall that is not straight. Fridge, freezer, dishwasher filter, microwave inside, out and underneath. Washing machine drum, drawer and door seal, which is the first thing a lot of clerks open. Appliances pulled out so the gaps behind them get done, then put back. Sink, taps and plughole descaled, because the water here never gives that a miss. Tiles and grout scrubbed. Floor hoovered and mopped.
The bathroom. Scale off the taps, shower head, screen, tiling and waste fittings first, with the careful approach on original chrome and brass. Then the toilet done properly, inside, under the rim, the base, the cistern, the hinges, behind the pedestal. Shower screen both sides, tracks and sealant bead. Bath, basin, overflow, plughole and panels. Mirrors, cabinets and behind them where they come away from the wall. Extractor vent wiped. Floor into the corners and under the basin.
The period detail. This is the part that separates a Stony Stratford job from a job on the grid. Tops of panelled doors. Picture rails and any cornicing. The inner edges and spindles of an original staircase. Deep skirtings and moulded architraves. Window sills, reveals and frames on the inside, worked by hand, and we do not force painted-shut windows or old catches that a clerk never expected anyone to operate. That last point sounds like fussing until a clean cracks an old pane on a listed frontage, and the deduction is the glass rather than the dirt.
Everything else. Inside every wardrobe, drawer and built-in cupboard. Switches, sockets, fittings and shades. Radiators behind, under and on top. Walls spot-wiped, with a realistic line drawn, because nail holes and scuffs are a decorator’s bill rather than yours to scrub away. Hard floors washed with the right product for the material, and in the old houses that material is not always what it looks like. Then a final walk in inventory order, photographed room by room. That photo set is your evidence.
MK11 street by street: the stock changes as you leave the old town
MK11 is small enough to walk and varied enough that one method will not pass all of it. Three bands.
- The conservation core. High Street, Market Square, Church Street and the lanes around the surviving tower of St Mary Magdalen, the one building that came through the 1742 fire. Listed and period stock, flats over shops, long inventories, slow careful work.
- Horsefair Green and the lanes. Period cottages backing onto the green, plus the streets running down to Mill Lane and the Ouse. Small rooms, old glass, awkward stairs, and bathrooms that were fitted into whatever space was left.
- The estates and the edge. Fullers Slade, Galley Hill, the Calverton Road side and the newer infill towards the Milton Keynes boundary. Flat walls, flush doors, simple bathrooms, faster jobs. The scale problem is identical, because the water is the same water.
Old town and estate are different jobs and we price them by the property, not by the postcode. If you are just over the water in Old Stratford, or down towards Wolverton where the station sits on the West Coast Main Line about two miles away, we cover that too, with the same team and the same checklist.
What it costs, and the maths nobody runs until it is too late
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio, usually above a High Street shop | 3-4 hours, 1 cleaner | £156 |
| 1-bed flat, old town or estate | 4-5 hours, 1-2 cleaners | £207 |
| 2-bed period house or conversion | 5-7 hours, 2 cleaners | £243 |
| 3-bed house, Fullers Slade or Galley Hill | 6-8 hours, 2 cleaners | £339 |
| 4-bed house, conservation area or Calverton edge | 8-10 hours, 2-3 cleaners | £425 |
| By the hour, part jobs and odd properties | As needed | £30 per cleaner |
| Carpet shampoo add-on | Same visit | £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £115 a whole 2-bed |
| Oven on its own | 1.5-2 hours | £77 single, £110 double, £114 range |
Kit, products and travel inside MK11 are in those figures. They assume a property in normal lived-in shape. A long tenancy with heavy wear, a pet household or a period bathroom nobody has descaled in three years costs more, and we say so on the phone rather than after the job. No surprise lines on the invoice.
Then run it against what is at stake. A two-bed at £243 to protect a deposit of two or three thousand pounds is not really a decision, and most people only do that sum after they have tried it themselves, failed the check-out and lost the first round. Every booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the clerk flags our work inside 48 hours, and the property is still as we left it with nobody moved in, we come back and redo it free. Our 97% first-time pass rate means we rarely make that trip. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and across the years that work adds up to £1.2m deposits recovered, money that stayed with tenants instead of going on cleaning deductions.
Four jobs get muddled on the phone, and booking the wrong one wastes everyone’s morning.
- Check-in inventory report
- The document a clerk wrote on your first day describing every surface, with dated photographs. It is the benchmark your check-out is marked against, which is why we clean to it rather than to a general idea of clean.
- End of tenancy clean
- The hand-back clean, property empty, built to match that inventory and get the deposit back. Priced from £156, or £30 an hour per cleaner, with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee on it.
- Deep clean
- A reset for a home you are keeping. Lived-in, no formal standard to hit, no clerk at the end of it.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing maintenance on a rota, the same cleaner kept on the house, from £22 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly.
A flat above a High Street shop, in March
“Two of us shared a one-bed above a shop on the High Street for three years, up a stair at the back. Lovely flat, terrible bathroom. The suite was original and the check-in photos showed the taps and the screen properly bright, and by the end they had gone cloudy no matter what I did to them, because the water here is what it is. The clerk had the whole inventory on a tablet and went to the bathroom first, exactly as Monster warned us she would. One cleaner, most of a Wednesday, and about half of that was the bathroom alone. Nothing was taken off for cleaning. Full deposit back inside a fortnight.”
Priya, Stony Stratford MK11, March 2026
That job is typical of the old town: a long tenancy, a period bathroom, water at 300ppm, and a clerk who checks. What won it was not heroics. It was giving the bathroom the hours it actually needed, and having the dated photographs to hand when the report was written.
Questions we get asked
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Stony Stratford?
It is £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. Most MK11 lets are one- to three-bed, so the usual job lands between £207 and £339 before any add-on. If the property is an odd shape, or you only want part of it done, we work at £30 per hour per cleaner instead.
Do you guarantee the clean will pass the check-out?
Every job carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If the inventory clerk flags our work within 48 hours of the clean, and nobody has moved in since, we come back and put it right at no charge. We run a 97% first-time pass rate on end of tenancy work, so the guarantee is rarely called on.
Why does the water here cause so many failed check-outs?
Stony Stratford is supplied by Anglian Water and the Milton Keynes supply runs around 300 parts per million of calcium carbonate, which puts it in the very hard band. Scale sets on taps, shower screens, bath glaze and around the waste, and a wipe over the top of it does nothing. The clerk tilts a tap to the light and sees it straight away. We lift the scale rather than smear it, so the fitting photographs the way it did at check-in.
Can you clean a listed or period property on the High Street?
Yes, and a good share of our MK11 work is exactly that. The conservation area covers the High Street, Market Square and Horsefair Green, and plenty of the buildings are listed. On that stock we work by hand on the joinery, the deep skirtings and the staircase, and we keep anything aggressive away from original paint, plaster and old glass. A scratched architrave costs more than a missed oven.
Do you need to visit before quoting?
No. For a standard property we price it over the phone or by email from the bedroom bands. We need the address, the number of bedrooms and your check-out date. Photos of the kitchen and bathroom sharpen the quote.
Is the oven included, or is it extra?
A full oven clean is part of the end of tenancy package, door glass split and the interior taken back to bare metal. If the oven is the only thing your agent pulled you up on, we do it on its own: £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range.
Do you do carpets as well?
Yes, as an add-on on the same visit. Carpet shampoo is £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed carpeted area done together.
Does Milton Keynes HMO licensing affect my deposit?
Not directly. Milton Keynes City Council runs mandatory HMO licensing only, covering houses let to five or more people from two or more households who share facilities, and it has not brought in an additional or selective scheme. So most Stony Stratford lets are not licensable at all. Licensing decides who inspects during the tenancy. Your deposit is still decided by the check-in and check-out photographs.
Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change what I have to clean?
No. The Act went live on 1 May 2026, abolished Section 21 and converted existing assured shorthold tenancies to periodic ones, so tenants can give two months’ notice at any point in the year. The cleaning obligation at the end of a tenancy is unchanged. What changed is timing: move-out dates are less predictable now, so book earlier than you used to.
How far in advance should I book?
Three to five days is usually enough, and a week if your check-out is in the last few days of a month. Book earlier for the StonyLive week in early June, when the old town gets busy and access takes planning.
Do you cover the estates as well as the old town?
Yes. We work the whole of MK11: the High Street, London Road and Towcester Road run, Market Square, Horsefair Green, Church Street, Wolverton Road, Mill Lane, Calverton Road, and the Fullers Slade and Galley Hill estates.
What happens if my landlord still disputes the cleaning?
It goes to your deposit scheme’s adjudicator, at TDS or whichever scheme holds the money, and they decide on the dated check-in and check-out photographs rather than on anyone’s account of events. Our invoice, our before-and-after photo set and any re-clean record are all admissible. Shelter’s tenancy deposit guidance walks through the steps if you get that far. Most people do not, because a documented professional clean removes the cleaning argument before it starts.
Booking it, and the StonyLive week
Ring 0333 555 2076 and we price it in about three minutes: postcode, number of bedrooms, check-out date, and anything you already know is a problem. Out of hours, email [email protected] and someone rings you back. We book you in for the day before your check-out where we can, so there is a buffer if something needs a second pass. The property wants to be empty when we arrive, furniture out and rubbish gone, because anything left behind is somewhere the clean cannot reach and the clerk can.
One local note that only matters if you know the town. StonyLive runs for nine days in early June and Folk on the Green takes over Horsefair Green in the same stretch, so the High Street and the lanes around Market Square get busy and parking round the old town gets tight. If your check-out falls in that window, say so when you book and we will plan the access and the timing around it rather than turn up and find nowhere to stop.
Then it is simple. We clean to the checklist, we photograph every room before and after, and you get an itemised invoice on company-headed paper. That is your evidence pack.
Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House 9919639, doing this since 2014. If your check-out is tomorrow, ring anyway. We will do what we can.