End of tenancy cleaning in and around Vauxhall Nine Elms Riverside

The clerk who checks a flat in one of the Nine Elms towers waits for the sun to come round, because the floor-to-ceiling glass and the gloss-black induction hob only give up their fingerprints and steam rings under a low, raking light. That is the surface these hand-backs are won and lost on. We have cleaned this riverside strip of SW8 since 2014, from the Sky Pool blocks at Embassy Gardens to the St George Wharf tower above Vauxhall station. End of tenancy work here runs at the same rate we quote across south London, £30 per hour per cleaner, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee tied to the check-out report. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the SW8 streets across Nine Elms and Vauxhall, from Nine Elms Lane and the Embassy Gardens cluster to Wandsworth Road, Bondway and the Albert Embankment frontage, with the SE11 edge across Vauxhall Cross. This page sits inside the Lambeth directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Lambeth.

The report that quietly decides your deposit

Start with the mechanism, because almost nobody does and it is the whole game. When you moved into your apartment, an inventory clerk walked it and wrote a report describing every surface, photographed, nearly always with “new” or “as new” against the kitchen and the wet-rooms, because in a tower this recent the fit-out genuinely was. At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares line by line. Anything worse than that check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, comes off your deposit. On brand-new stock the benchmark is unforgiving, because the report described a flat nobody had lived in.

The money is not abstract, and it is bigger here than almost anywhere in the borough. A two-bed in the Embassy Gardens cluster lets at well over £900 a week, so the deposit sitting in a scheme is a serious sum somebody has to account for. On the DIY hand-backs we get called in to rescue around Nine Elms, the deductions land in a pattern the clerks know cold: the scale on the chrome, the steam rings baked round the induction hob, the finger-band on the glass at hand height, and the dust line along the comfort-cooling grille. A clerk doing several of these a week on the same tower is paid to find fault, not to wave you through. You turn up with evidence rather than optimism.

The licence question here, and why Vauxhall is the odd one out

This is the one place a Nine Elms tenant gets a genuinely easier ride than a neighbour a few streets away. Lambeth runs a borough-wide selective licensing scheme, its second, in force since 1 September 2025 and covering nineteen wards, but only two wards sit outside it, and the Vauxhall ward is one of them. The riverside towers, Embassy Gardens, One Nine Elms, DAMAC Tower at Nine Elms and the St George Wharf tower, mostly fall in that Vauxhall ward, so a single-household flat in them does not need a selective licence at all. Cross into Oval or Kennington and the position flips, because those wards are inside the scheme. You can confirm an address on the Lambeth selective licensing page.

Two other schemes still bite, though, and they matter if the flat is shared. Lambeth has run borough-wide additional licensing for houses in multiple occupation since 9 December 2021, so a company let or a flat-share with three or more people from separate households needs an HMO licence wherever it sits, Vauxhall ward included, and a home of five or more falls under mandatory HMO licensing. The standard on a licensed HMO is written down and tighter on the shared kitchen and bathroom than on a single-household flat. So the licensing question here is really a question about who you share with, not where the tower stands.

This is the one place a Nine Elms tenant gets a genuinely easier ride than a neighbour a few streets away.

The other piece of law behind all this is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, in force from 1 May 2026. Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone, and every assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a rolling periodic one, so notice can come at any point in the year. The cleaning side of a move-out did not change at all. Five weeks’ rent stays the deposit cap below £50,000 a year, the landlord still has 30 days to protect it in an approved scheme, and fair wear and tear still applies. What shifted is timing. Nine Elms already churns faster than almost anywhere, full of company lets, international renters and one-year tenancies, and rolling notice makes those move-outs land even less predictably. So book the clean earlier than you used to, because the slot you want will be gone if you wait.

A strip of brand-new towers, block by block

There is almost no period stock on this stretch, which makes it unlike anywhere else we cover in Lambeth. The whole Nine Elms and Vauxhall riverside is a wall of towers thrown up since about 2015 on what was industrial land, masterplanned around the United States Embassy that opened in 2017 and the two Northern line extension stations, Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station, that opened in September 2021. New Covent Garden Market still trades behind it. What that means for a hand-back is that the flats fail on the same modern points wherever you are, and a clerk who works the strip knows them before the lift doors open.

Embassy Gardens, the Ballymore development wrapped around the Embassy on Nine Elms Lane, is the block we book most. It is the one with the transparent Sky Pool slung twenty metres up between two buildings, and its apartments run the full modern kit: floor-to-ceiling glass on the reception, an integrated Miele or Siemens kitchen, a chrome rainfall wet-room and linear comfort-cooling grilles in the ceiling. Those grilles are the tell. Dust builds a visible band along the slot edge within a fortnight, the clerk shines a torch up it, and a quick wipe leaves the band behind, so we hand-vacuum each grille with a soft-brush head. One Nine Elms, the twin towers over the Park Hyatt on the corner by the station, and DAMAC Tower with its designer fit-out, are the same job in a taller shell. Nine Elms Point, the Sainsbury’s-anchored blocks by the station, and the older St George Wharf frontage that steps down to the river carry the same integrated appliances and the same glass.

The St George Wharf tower itself, the fifty-storey cylinder above Vauxhall station, is the one exception on age, since it and the lower riverside blocks opened from the late 2000s rather than the last decade. The kit is much the same, but the earlier blocks have had a tenancy or two, so the extractor baffle filters are greasier and the shower-screen seals want more work. Down at the Vauxhall gyratory the stock shades into a mix, with some older ex-council and mansion-block flats towards Oval and Kennington, which is a different clean again and a different licensing position, as above. Getting in on the day is its own puzzle in every one of these towers: the concierge controls the service-lift booking, and a hand-back with no lift slot does not happen, so we sort that when you book rather than turn up and wait. This is a world away from the terrace-and-estate cleaning we do a mile south, and the archetype here, the brand-new build-to-rent riverside tower with its glass, its German appliances and its concierge, is the whole story.

What the hard water does to a glass wet-room

South London runs on hard water, and the wet-rooms in these towers are built to show it. The supply across SW8 sits at roughly 302 parts per million of calcium carbonate, firmly in the very-hard band, and you can check the reading for a postcode on thameswater.co.uk. The fittings these developers specify as standard are exactly the ones that suffer: chrome rainfall heads, frameless glass screens on a metal rail, tall mixer taps. Scale climbs back onto all of it within a fortnight. The glass spots after two showers if nobody squeegees it, the tap grows a collar at the base, and the rail runner clouds over.

The trick is to descale before you pull the deposit off, not after. We soak the rainfall head, the aerators and the screen rail in a mild acid solution and give the deposit time to release, then polish, so it lifts in a single wipe instead of three hard passes on dry glass. A clerk on this strip looks straight at the tap base and the screen edge against the light, because those two tells say a flat was wiped over rather than descaled. Get the dwell time right and the wet-room stops being the thing that loses you the deposit.

The trick is to descale before you pull the deposit off, not after.

The 57 points we work through, room by room

Every hand-back runs the same kitchen, wet-room, bedroom, living, throughout order, because the kitchen swallows the hours and the wet-room is where the deposit is won or lost. The full 57-point agent-approved checklist comes with the job, or we walk you through it before we start. Here is the shape of it, tuned to what these towers actually fail on.

Kitchen

The integrated oven first: door split so the film between the panes comes out, racks soaked separately, interior and seals done. The induction hob gets a ceramic-safe paste and a non-scratch pad on the baked-on steam rings, never an abrasive, because the gloss-black ceramic scratches and the clerk sees it. The extractor hood baffle filter is pulled and degreased. Every cabinet inside and out, including the handle-less push-to-open fronts that carry a smear band at hand height. The integrated fridge and freezer, once defrosted, washed through with the seals scrubbed and the front re-polished. The dishwasher filter, the sink, the tap and the waste descaled, and the composite-stone worktop polished with a stone-safe cleaner, no acid. Then the reception glass on this side of the room, skirtings, sockets, and the floor last.

Wet-rooms and bathrooms

This is the failure point, so it gets the time it needs. The chrome rainfall head and the screen rail are descaled, the head soaked and then run to clear the residue. Glass screen both faces, tiles and grout at the scale line. WC bowl, rim, hinges, base and behind. Basin, tap and overflow, the chrome polished separately after the descale. Mirror, integrated cabinet, shaver socket and the extractor grille. The underfloor-heated stone or porcelain floor mopped with the edges by hand, mineral residue lifted, and the heated towel rail wiped down.

Bedrooms and living areas

The linear comfort-cooling grilles in the ceiling and along the skirting line, hand-vacuumed with a soft-brush head and finished with microfibre, because the dust sits in a band the torch finds. Fitted wardrobes inside and out, runner tracks, push-to-open fronts polished. Skirtings, door frames and both faces of every internal door with its brushed-steel handle. Recessed downlighters dusted and bezels wiped. The engineered-oak floor dry-buffed with microfibre, or the carpet vacuumed twice in opposite directions and spot-treated. The floor-to-ceiling reception glass and the sliding-door track out to the balcony or winter garden. Behind and under any freestanding furniture, and the smart-home panel and video-entry handset wiped at thumb height.

Throughout

Every door top, handle, switch and socket faceplate. The apartment entrance door on both faces, the peephole and the video-entry handset. Hallway skirtings within the flat, the smoke-alarm housing dusted since the white plastic greys and gets flagged, and any loft hatch on a duplex or triplex. Then a final walk-through with a torch in low light, which is exactly how the clerk checks the grilles and the upper run of glass. The checklist is built for the hand-back and nothing else. Book a deep clean or a regular clean instead and we drop the inventory-fail items and pick up the lived-in ones, because a flat you are staying in does not need its comfort-cooling grilles photographed.

Two jobs often need their own pass. A full carpet clean, where a flat is carpeted rather than boarded, is what the carpet cleaning add-on covers on the same visit, and it is written into a fair few of the private tenancies here. If the integrated oven is the worst thing in the flat, standalone oven cleaning handles it on its own. The reception glass, where reach beyond the inside face is the issue, is a window cleaning job, and the engineered-oak boards in these receptions are what hard floor cleaning is for.

It helps to know the words the report is written in, because those words decide the deposit.

End of tenancy clean

The hand-back clean, built to the check-in inventory standard and designed for sign-off, with the flat empty and the 48-hour guarantee on it at £30 an hour per cleaner.

Deep clean

The same depth of work for someone who is staying, lived-in, with no formal standard to hit. We go harder on the surfaces you use and skip the inventory-fail checks a clerk would make. From £30 an hour.

Regular domestic clean

Ongoing upkeep on a home you live in, a domestic clean from £22 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly, not aimed at any report.

Fair wear and tear

The line between honest ageing, which a landlord cannot charge for, and dirt or damage, which they can. Shelter sets out where the line falls and how to challenge a deduction.

What it costs in Nine Elms, and the sum nobody runs in time

Here is the part people get wrong about this postcode. The rents are enormous, but our cleaning price is not, because Nine Elms is not a premium neighbourhood on our tier and we charge the same figures across south London. A studio starts at £156 and a one-bed at £207, which is where a good share of the tower flats land. A two-bed is £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed or duplex £425. Carpet shampoo, where a flat is carpeted, is £36 a bedroom and £43 a living room, or £115 for the whole carpeted area of a two-bed. Oven add-ons are £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a 90cm range. If you only want a top-up on a short company let rather than a full hand-back, it is £30 an hour per cleaner. Ignore any quote that dresses SW8 up as a luxury rate; the tower does not change what a two-bed costs us to clean.

The timings are honest because the flats are a known quantity. Two cleaners on an Embassy Gardens two-bed, full hand-back with the glass, the induction hob and the grilles, run about seven hours. A studio is a long morning. A one-bed at £207 to protect a deposit north of £4,000 is not really a decision, and most people only work that out after they have already lost a round of it.

Every Nine Elms booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If a clerk flags a line item that was on our checklist, we come back inside 48 hours and re-clean it at no charge, provided you tell us inside the window and nobody has moved in. Our 97% first-time pass rate across our Greater London work means the call-back is rare, but it is there in writing. There is a reason the agents on this strip know us: we are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and over the years that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions.

“My company let on a two-bed in Embassy Gardens ended when I was posted back to Singapore, and the agent had the next tenant lined up for the Monday. The clerk warned me the induction hob and the shower glass would be the failure points, and the last tenant had lost a chunk of deposit on exactly those. Monster sent two cleaners for a full day, ceramic-safe paste on the hob, a proper descale on the rainfall head and the screen, and they got every ceiling grille. Passed first time on the Thursday. Deposit back inside a fortnight.”
Wei Chen, Embassy Gardens two-bed, SW8, March 2026

Booking is plain. You phone with the postcode, the building name, the floor, the bedroom count and the move-out date, and we quote on the call from the fixed tier. We hold the slot without a deposit, so you pay on the day once the work is signed off, and we sort the concierge lift-booking window with you then. Nearby ground we also cover includes Vauxhall, Nine Elms, Oval, Kennington and Stockwell, with the rest of the borough on the Lambeth directory linked at the top of this page.

Questions we get asked

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in Vauxhall and Nine Elms?

A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425, on our standard south London tier. Nine Elms is not a premium area on our pricing, whatever the rents suggest, so ignore anyone quoting an inflated riverside rate for SW8. Carpet shampoo and oven add-ons are separate, and a part-job top-up is £30 an hour per cleaner.

How long does a Nine Elms apartment take to clean?

A two-bed in Embassy Gardens or One Nine Elms runs about six to eight hours with two cleaners, because the floor-to-ceiling glass, the integrated hob and the ceiling grilles each add time a standard flat does not have. A one-bed is nearer four to five. A studio is a long morning. A three-bed or a duplex can be a full day. We work to the checklist, not to the clock.

Do I need a licence for my flat, or does my landlord?

Your landlord does, and in the Vauxhall ward it may be simpler than you think. The Vauxhall ward sits outside Lambeth’s selective licensing scheme, so a single-household flat in a tower like St George Wharf or Embassy Gardens does not need a selective licence, though Oval and Kennington next door do. If the flat is a shared HMO with three or more people from separate households, the borough-wide additional HMO scheme applies, and five or more sharers falls under mandatory HMO. Either way the paperwork is the landlord’s job, not yours and not the cleaner’s.

What about the hard-water scale on the chrome fittings?

It is the failure that costs the most deposits in these towers. The supply here runs at roughly 302 parts per million of calcium carbonate, very hard, and the high-spec chrome shower heads, screen rails and mixer taps show every spot. We soak the head and the aerators in a mild acid solution and give the deposit time to let go, then polish, rather than scrubbing dry glass for twenty minutes. A generic bathroom spray will not lift set scale, which is why wiped-over flats fail on this point again and again.

Do you cover Battersea Power Station too?

We clean it, but a heads-up on the boundary: Battersea Power Station and the blocks along Electric Boulevard sit across the river border in Wandsworth, not Lambeth, so the Lambeth licensing position on this page does not apply there. The build-to-rent operator runs its own hand-back checklist instead, which is usually at least as strict. We work to that checklist plus our own 57-point standard, whichever is tighter.

Do you clean the floor-to-ceiling glass and the balcony?

The inside face of all of it, yes, with a flat-edge squeegee and a microfibre detail pass and no ammonia, because the coated glass in these blocks reacts badly to it. The sliding-door track out to the balcony or winter garden gets vacuumed and wiped. The outside face of a high-level balcony we clean where we can reach it safely from inside; anything needing rope or cradle access is a specialist window job we would quote separately.

Do I have to be there, and how does the concierge fit in?

You do not need to be there. Most of our SW8 clients leave a key with the concierge desk, whether that is at Embassy Gardens, One Nine Elms or the St George Wharf tower, or they set us up on a key safe. The one thing we do need in advance is the lift-booking or service-lift window, because in most of these towers the concierge controls it and it is the binding constraint on the day. We send a written check-out report by email when we finish.

Can you clean the integrated Miele and Siemens appliances safely?

Yes, and they need the right approach or they mark. The gloss-black induction hobs and brushed-steel oven fronts scratch under a standard scouring pad, so we use a ceramic-safe paste and a non-scratch pad on the hob and soft microfibre on the steel. The oven door is split so the film between the panes comes out, the extractor baffle filter is pulled and degreased, and the handle-less push-to-open fridge and dishwasher fronts are re-polished so they do not carry a smear band at hand height.

Do you guarantee my deposit back?

We cannot guarantee the deposit itself, because an inventory covers plenty of lines we never touch, such as paint, wear and tear and the landlord’s own furniture. What we guarantee is the cleaning. If the inventory clerk flags a cleaning item on our checklist within 48 hours of our visit, we come back and put it right at no charge under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee, as long as nobody has moved in. Our first-time pass rate sits at 97%, so the call-back is rare.

What if my landlord uses a specific inventory firm?

Tell us the firm when you book. We work regularly with the clerks the Nine Elms agents instruct, and with the in-house letting teams at the build-to-rent operators, so we can brief the team to the points a given clerk is known to check. If the operator runs its own pre-set hand-back checklist, send it over with the booking and we clean to that alongside our own.

How much notice do you need, and can you do a company let quickly?

For a studio or one-bed we can usually fit you in inside 48 to 72 hours. Corporate and company lets often turn around on a tight window, so if a tenant is out on the Friday and the next one lands on the Monday, phone the office and we will do what we can, especially if a team is already finishing nearby. The lift-booking window through the concierge is the real limit, so the more notice you give us, the better the slot.

Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change the clean?

No. From 1 May 2026 Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone and assured shorthold tenancies have converted to rolling periodic ones, so notice can come at any point in the year. The cleaning obligation at hand-back is exactly what it was. The real effect on a high-churn patch like Nine Elms is timing: move-outs land less predictably, so book the clean as early as you can rather than leaving it to the last week.

Do you take card on the day?

Card and bank transfer are both fine, and we do not take a deposit to hold the slot. You pay once the flat is cleaned and signed off. We send an itemised invoice on company-headed paper for the deposit file, which is worth keeping if a clerk raises anything later.

Book the riverside clean

Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Tell us the building, the floor and the move-out date, and we will quote on the call and book the lift window with your concierge.