Where the SE3 line into Cannon Street meets a tenancy ending
Westcombe Park station puts you into Cannon Street in about nineteen minutes, which is the main reason so many of the big villas up the hill have been carved into flats let to people who commute. When one of those tenancies ends, the move tends to happen fast, often on a weekday, and the inventory check-out gets booked before the kettle has cooled. That is the moment most deposits are won or lost.
We run end of tenancy cleans across the SE3 streets that sit inside the Westcombe Park Conservation Area, between the railway and the top edge of Blackheath. A two-bedroom flat here costs £243 for a full end of tenancy clean, priced by the property rather than by the hour, with our 57-point agent-approved checklist worked through room by room. That sentence is the short answer. The rest of this page is the detail behind it, including what the clerk marks down on these particular streets and why the Greenwich licensing rules matter to whoever is renting.
I have cleaned enough flats off Westcombe Hill to know the pattern. The bones of the place are Victorian and Edwardian, the windows are tall, and the kitchen is usually the thing that decides the report.
Here is what most people get wrong. A cleaning deduction is rarely about one filthy room; it is a list of small misses, each with a photo next to it, and they add up fast. The clerk does not argue with you on the day. They log the line, attach the picture, and the cost lands on your deposit weeks later when you have already moved on. Cleaning is the most common reason for a deduction and the easiest one to remove before it happens, which is the whole reason a professional clean to a written list pays for itself.
The villa-into-flats problem on the conservation streets
Most of Westcombe Park went up in the 1880s and 1890s as spacious detached houses and semi-detached pairs, with more modest terraces on Westcombe Hill, Ruthin Road and the east end of Humber Road. Walk Vanbrugh Park or Mycenae Road today and a lot of those villas have been split into two, three or four flats. That conversion history is the single biggest thing that shapes an end of tenancy clean around here, because it leaves you cleaning a flat that was never designed as a flat.
The whole pocket has clear edges, which is unusual for London and worth knowing when you book. The railway into Cannon Street runs along the north, the Blackwall Tunnel southern approach walls it off to the east, the heath sits to the south, and Vanbrugh Hill closes it on the west. That last road is named after Sir John Vanbrugh, the playwright and architect who built Vanbrugh Castle up the slope in Maze Hill, and the streets named after him carry some of the grandest houses in SE3.
The ceilings in those houses are high. The original sash windows are deep, with wide sills and shutter boxes that hold years of dust. Cornicing and picture rails run round the main rooms, and dust sits on top of every one of them where a tenant could never reach without standing on something. A check-out clerk knows to look up here in a way they would not bother in a 2015 new-build.
Period floors are the other catch. You get original boards, parquet in the better conversions, and the odd tiled hallway near the front door of a house that has kept its communal entrance. Each surface wants treating differently, and a mop that suits laminate will leave streaks or worse on waxed boards. Get the wrong cloth on an original floor and you have made the report longer, not shorter.
Then there are the kitchens and bathrooms that were fitted into what used to be a back bedroom or a return. Plumbing runs are long, extractor fans are often tucked behind a cupboard, and the grout in a shower enclosure squeezed into an awkward corner takes proper time. None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to clean with the building in mind rather than running a generic checklist past it.
A lot of those villas have been split into two, three or four flats, and that conversion history is the single biggest thing that shapes an end of tenancy clean around here.
We treat a converted villa flat differently from a purpose-built one because the work genuinely differs. The dust traps are higher, the floors are older, and the fixtures were retrofitted. Our cleaners price the job after they know which kind of flat it is, which is why two flats on the same road can come in at different points even when they are both nominally two-bedroom.
It is a settled, well-kept patch, helped by an active residents body. The Westcombe Society has looked after the area since the 1960s and runs things out of Mycenae House, the community centre on Mycenae Road in a former convent building next to the Georgian villa Woodlands House. People here tend to know their street, their neighbours and the condition the houses are meant to be kept in, and that culture feeds straight into how seriously the check-out inventories are taken.
The tone lifts again as you go south towards the Cator Estate, the large private estate off Blackheath Village with its own residents society and its own quiet rules about how the place looks. Lets on that fringe and on the smarter streets around the Royal Standard, the pub on the corner of Vanbrugh Park and Stratheden Road, tend to be family houses on longer tenancies, handled by agents who use detailed photo inventories at check-in. The longer someone has lived somewhere, the more wear there is to separate from genuine dirt, and a thorough clean draws that line clearly so a tenant is not charged for fair wear and tear that was never theirs to fix.
One practical note on the bigger houses. A three- or four-bedroom villa over two or three floors is a lot of surface area, and the original features collect dust in places a modern flat simply does not have. If you are on the upper floors of a conversion with no lift, say so when you book, because it changes how we stage the kit and the bin bags and how long the visit runs.
What a Blackheath Westcombe clerk marks down
Westcombe Park sits in the Blackheath Westcombe ward, and the inventory clerks who work these streets see the same flats year after year. They check against the original inventory, room by room, and they write down anything that has changed since check-in. The list below is what actually costs tenants their deposit on SE3 conversions, drawn from the reports our cleaners get sent back.
The oven comes first, every time. A clerk opens the door, looks at the glass, pulls the racks, and a baked-on brown film is an instant note. We take the door apart, lift out the removable parts, and clean each piece on its own so the inside comes back to bare metal and clean glass.
Limescale is the second flashpoint, because the water round here is hard and it leaves a cloudy crust on taps, shower screens and the inside of any kettle left behind. A tenant wipes it; a clerk runs a finger over the chrome and feels it. We clear it down to a clean shine, mixer taps included, and we treat the shower screen rather than smearing it.
After those two, the marks tend to be these:
- Dust on the high ledges, picture rails and the tops of those deep shutter boxes that nobody reached all year.
- Grease on the wall behind the hob and on the extractor, which on a long galley kitchen spreads further than people expect.
- Soap scum and grout staining in a shower wedged into a converted corner.
- Window glass and frames, since the tall conservation-street windows show every streak when the south light comes in off the heath.
- Inside the kitchen units and the fridge, where crumbs and spills get missed at the back.
Our checklist has 57 points for exactly this reason. It is the same list the agents see, so nothing on it surprises them at the check-out, and it is built around the things clerks write down rather than the things that look impressive. We hit a 97% first-time pass rate across our jobs, which means almost every clean clears the inventory without a return visit. When a clerk does flag something, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers a free return within three days to put it right.
It helps that we work the whole flat in an order that matches the report. We start high and finish low, so dust knocked off a picture rail lands on a floor that has not been done yet, and the floors are the last thing touched. Skirtings get wiped along the top edge, not just the front, because that grey line of dust along the top of a skirting board is one of the most common notes a clerk writes and one of the easiest to miss. Light switches, sockets and the tops of doors come in for the same treatment.
Bathrooms in the older conversions are usually the slowest room, and not because they are filthy. Hard water builds a film on the taps, the shower screen and the grout that a sponge and spray will not shift, so we descale the fittings, scrub the grout line by line, and treat any mould in the corners rather than painting over it. The extractor fan gets cleared too, because a clogged fan grille is a quick note for a clerk who knows where to look. A bathroom that looks fine to a tenant can still read as tired under an inspection torch, which is the gap a proper clean closes.
The deposit itself should be sitting in one of the government-backed schemes, protected within 30 days of the landlord taking it. If you and the landlord cannot agree on a cleaning charge, the scheme runs a free adjudication service, and the adjudicator weighs evidence: the check-in inventory, the check-out report, and any proof that the place was professionally cleaned. That is precisely why we keep our work to a written standard, so there is something solid to put in front of an adjudicator if it ever comes to that.
Those numbers are not decoration. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and over the years we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. Agents keep using a cleaner who makes their check-outs quick, and tenants keep their money when the report comes back clear. The whole arrangement only works because the standard is written down and repeatable, not left to whoever turns up on the day.
The price, by property size, with nothing tucked away
We price by the size of the property, not by the hour. That matters on a move because you know the number before the cleaners arrive, and they stay until the checklist is done rather than watching a clock. A studio off Westcombe Hill and a four-bed house on Vanbrugh Park are very different jobs, so they sit at different prices.
Here is the full end of tenancy pricing, with nothing held back:
- Studio flat: £156
- One-bedroom flat: £207
- Two-bedroom flat: £243
- Three-bedroom property: £339
- Four-bedroom property: £425
If you would rather book cleaners by the hour for a part-job or a top-up, that runs at £30 per cleaner per hour. Most people moving out of a whole flat are better off on the fixed end of tenancy price, because the fixed price carries the guarantee and the by-the-hour rate does not promise a pass. The hourly option suits the case where you have already done most of the place and want a professional finish on the oven and the bathroom before the clerk arrives.
What the quoted price covers is the whole flat cleaned against the checklist. Inside the cupboards and wardrobes, the skirting boards, the insides of windows, the appliances that stay with the property, the bathroom scrubbed and descaled, the floors done to suit whatever they are made of. Carpets washed and ovens stripped are separate lines, and I will come to those, because on these streets they are usually the two extras worth adding.
Why fixed rather than hourly? Because an hourly clean rewards the slow and punishes the tenant who picked a clean firm. On a converted villa flat with awkward fixtures, an honest job can run long, and you should not pay more because your bathroom was tucked into a former box room. The price is the price.
One thing we ask before a clean. The flat needs electricity on, hot water running, the fridge and freezer defrosted, and personal belongings cleared out. A cleaner cannot deep clean behind a fridge that is full and frozen, and a defrosted fridge that has been emptied is the difference between a clean appliance and a damp note on the report. If any of that is going to be tight on the day, tell us when you book and we will work the timing around it.
How Greenwich licensing rules shape who rents here
Greenwich runs more landlord licensing than most London boroughs, and it changes who your neighbours are. A lot of the converted villa flats around Westcombe Park are let as shares, and that brings them inside the council’s rules. If you are renting here, it is worth knowing where you stand, because a licensed property is a more closely watched property.
The Royal Borough of Greenwich runs a borough-wide additional HMO licensing scheme that started on 1 January 2024 and runs to 31 December 2028. It catches smaller shared houses, the ones with three or four people from more than two households, which is exactly the shape of many of these conversions. A larger share of five or more people from two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence on top, as it does anywhere in England. You can check the current position on the council’s own private rented property licensing pages.
Selective licensing is the part people get wrong. Greenwich does run a selective scheme, but it only covers parts of Plumstead, Glyndon, Shooters Hill, Woolwich Common and Woolwich Riverside, and it runs to 30 September 2027. Blackheath Westcombe is not in that selective area. So a single-family let here does not need a selective licence, while a shared villa flat almost certainly needs an additional HMO one. That distinction trips up tenants and small landlords alike, and getting it wrong can cost a landlord a civil penalty.
Why does any of this touch a clean? Because a licensed HMO is inspected against standards, and the inventory check-out on a licensed flat is usually stricter, with the agent keen to hand back a property in licence-standard condition. A clean that clears a licensed-HMO check-out is a clean that has done its job properly.
The wider law is moving the same way. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 has reshaped how tenancies end and how disputes get handled, and the duty to leave a place in the condition you found it, fair wear and tear aside, has not gone soft. The mandatory HMO threshold of five or more people from two or more households is set out in the government guidance on houses in multiple occupation, which is worth a read if you are not sure which bracket your share falls into.
- End of tenancy clean
- A one-off deep clean of an empty rental, measured against the check-in inventory, done so a tenant gets the deposit back.
- Check-in inventory
- The report and photos made at the start of a tenancy that record the condition of every room. The check-out is judged against it, fair wear and tear aside.
- Additional HMO licence
- A Greenwich licence for smaller shared homes of three or four people from more than two households, required borough-wide from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028.
- Selective licence
- A licence for ordinary private lets in named wards only. In Greenwich it covers parts of Plumstead, Glyndon, Shooters Hill, Woolwich Common and Woolwich Riverside, not Blackheath Westcombe.
- Deposit protection
- The legal scheme your deposit must sit in within 30 days. See the government guidance on tenancy deposit protection.
Carpets, ovens and the extras that move a deposit
On a converted flat the two extras that decide a borderline report are nearly always the carpets and the oven. A standard end of tenancy clean is thorough, but a heavily soiled carpet or a caked oven needs deeper work than a surface clean, and a clerk knows the difference at a glance.
Our deep carpet cleaning uses hot water worked into the pile, left to lift the dirt, then drawn back out with the grime. It pulls out what a vacuum leaves behind, and on the older floors here it is the bedrooms and the lounge that benefit most. Carpets run at £36 per bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bedroom flat done together, which is the option most flat-movers take.
The deep oven cleaning is the one I would not skip. We take the glass door apart, lift out every removable part, and clean each piece separately until the baked-on residue is gone. A single oven is £77, a double oven £110, and a range cooker £114. Given how often the oven is the first thing a clerk inspects, it is cheap insurance, and the bigger family kitchens up towards the heath often have the range that needs the dearer clean.
Two more extras come up on these streets. The tall conservation-street windows show every smear, so exterior window cleaning with water-fed poles and purified water leaves the glass clear without streaks, and it reaches the upper sashes of a three-storey villa safely from the ground. And upholstery that came with a furnished let gets the same hot-water treatment as the carpets, drawing the moisture and the dirt back out of the fabric, which matters if a sofa or armchair is listed on the inventory.
If you want the lot handled in one visit, our deep cleaning service ties the extras to the end of tenancy clean so one team does everything on the same day. And if you are staying in the area and want a regular clean once the dust of the move has settled, our domestic cleaning team covers ongoing work across the borough.
None of these are padding. Each one targets a specific note a clerk writes, and skipping the right one is how a deposit gets chipped. Read your own check-in inventory first; if it listed clean carpets and a spotless oven, those are the conditions you have to match.
Booking a clean around a Westcombe Park move
The timing on a Westcombe Park move is tighter than people plan for, because the check-out is usually fixed to the day the tenancy ends and the agent wants the keys back clean. Book the clean for the day after the van leaves and before the check-out appointment, so the flat is empty when we arrive and still spotless when the clerk walks in. We work seven days a week, so a Sunday move out and a Monday check-out is no problem.
Parking is the honest downside. The streets inside the conservation area are residents-permit controlled for much of the day, the roads off Westcombe Hill are narrow, and a big villa conversion rarely has a space that goes with the flat. Tell us when you book if loading will be awkward, and we will plan the visit and the kit around it rather than circling for twenty minutes.
Getting here is easy enough for our cleaners, which keeps your slot reliable. Westcombe Park station is on the Greenwich line in Zone 3, the same Southeastern trains that run into Cannon Street and Charing Cross, and the buses 108, 335 and 422 run from the Blackheath Standard at the top of the hill. The Standard, with its parade of shops and the M&S Simply Food over on Stratheden Parade, is the landmark we point people to, and Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory are a short walk west for anyone doing a last look round the area before they go.
Because we are local to SE3 rather than crossing London to reach you, we can usually fit a Westcombe Park job in at short notice, often the same week, and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee is easy to honour when the team is already nearby. That reliability is half of why agents around Blackheath and Greenwich keep us on their lists; the other half is that our report and theirs use the same checklist, so nobody is arguing about what clean means.
To book, call us on 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your postcode and the size of the flat. We will give you the fixed price there and then. Our office is at 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS, and you can also reach us through the contact page. If you are moving within the area, we cover the wider hub at end of tenancy cleaning across Greenwich, along with neighbouring Blackheath and Charlton.
Once the deposit comes up, do read your own scheme’s guidance. Shelter sets out clearly how to get your deposit back, including what counts as a fair cleaning deduction and what does not. Keep your receipt and any before-and-after photos from the clean, because a clean check-out report backed by evidence is your strongest hand if a deduction is ever disputed.
Questions tenants in Westcombe Park ask
How much is an end of tenancy clean in Westcombe Park?
It is priced by property size: £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bedroom flat, £243 for a two-bedroom flat, £339 for a three-bedroom property and £425 for a four-bedroom property. The price is fixed before we arrive, so there are no surprises on the day.
Do you charge by the hour or by the property?
By the property for end of tenancy work, so the cleaners stay until the 57-point checklist is finished. If you only need a part-job or a top-up, by-the-hour cleaning is available at £30 per cleaner per hour.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or agent challenges the standard of our work, we come back free within 48 hours to put it right. It is there because almost every clean passes first time, and the few that get a note are sorted quickly.
Will the clean get my deposit back?
A clean cannot promise it on its own, since deductions can be for damage or rent too, but cleaning is the most common deduction and the one we remove. We have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning charges.
Is the oven cleaning included or separate?
Oven cleaning is a separate line because it needs the appliance taken apart. A single oven is £77, a double £110 and a range cooker £114. On most check-outs the oven is the first thing inspected, so it is worth adding.
How much is carpet cleaning with the end of tenancy clean?
Carpets are £36 per bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bedroom flat done together. The deep clean uses hot water worked into the pile and then extracted with the dirt.
Do you clean the period sash windows in these flats?
Yes. The insides are part of the standard clean, and exterior glass is done with water-fed poles and purified water so the tall conservation-street windows come back clear without streaks.
Does my Westcombe Park flat need an HMO licence?
If it is shared by three or four people from more than two households, it needs an additional HMO licence under Greenwich’s borough-wide scheme, which runs to 31 December 2028. Five or more people from two or more households need a mandatory HMO licence.
Is Westcombe Park in a selective licensing area?
No. Greenwich’s selective scheme only covers parts of Plumstead, Glyndon, Shooters Hill, Woolwich Common and Woolwich Riverside until 30 September 2027. Blackheath Westcombe is outside it, so an ordinary single-family let here does not need a selective licence.
What do you need ready before the clean?
Electricity on, hot water running, the fridge and freezer defrosted, and all personal belongings cleared out. Those four things let the team deep clean the whole flat, appliances included.
Can you clean on the day of the check-out?
Yes, and it is often the best plan. We work seven days a week, so booking the clean between the van leaving and the check-out appointment keeps the flat spotless for the clerk.
Do you cover the rest of the SE3 and Greenwich area?
We do. We clean across Greenwich and the neighbouring areas including Blackheath, Charlton and Maze Hill, so a move within the borough stays with the same team.
How do I get a price and book?
Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your postcode and the number of bedrooms. We give you the fixed price on the spot and book a slot that fits your move.
Is the checklist the same one the agents use?
Yes. Our 57-point checklist is agent-approved and we are on the books of 300+ letting agents, so the clerk at your check-out is marking against the same points we cleaned to.