Woolwich Arsenal’s end of tenancy cleaning team

A check-out clerk at Royal Arsenal Riverside pulls the integrated dishwasher filter and looks at the balcony glass before much else, because a two-year-old riverside flat has nowhere to hide a smear and the move-in report logged both as new. So end of tenancy cleaning in Woolwich Arsenal turns on one thing: returning a nearly new flat to the line on the inventory. Monster Cleaning Ltd has done move-outs across the Arsenal towers and the older SE18 terraces since 2014, at £30 per hour per cleaner or a fixed price by size, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the SE18 postcode across Woolwich, from Royal Arsenal Riverside and the town centre out to Woolwich Common and Plumstead. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Greenwich.

Two move-outs in one SE18 postcode

The Elizabeth line opened at Woolwich on 24 May 2022, and a flat by the river went from a long trek to under twenty minutes from central London and a few from Canary Wharf. That single change pulled a wave of renters into SE18, and it is why the cleaning here splits so cleanly. One job is the new-build flat at Royal Arsenal Riverside, let by a managing agent and checked against a detailed inventory. The other is the older terrace or ex-council flat off Plumstead Road, let by a private landlord who has watched a dozen tenants come and go.

Both hand the keys back to someone with a clipboard, and both deposits ride on what they write down. Stand on the Thames Path by the old Arsenal gatehouse and you can read it in one sweep: behind you the restored listed gun factories and the new towers of the Berkeley regeneration, a masterplan of roughly 3,750 homes rising on the former munitions site by Dial Arch Square and the Woolwich Works cultural quarter. Walk inland past General Gordon Square and it flips to Victorian and Edwardian terraces, large interwar estates, and the ex-local-authority flats that make up much of the rented stock around Powis Street and the market.

These two markets fail a clean in different ways, so we clean them differently. A build-to-rent flat at the Arsenal is usually a few years old, with engineered floors, an integrated kitchen and a managing agent inspecting against a move-in report and concierge log. Nothing is worn, so the clerk grades on finish, not on fair wear, and the new-builds look easy but are not. Matt cabinet fronts mark with a smear, brushed-steel splashbacks hold every fingerprint, and an integrated dishwasher or washer-dryer is expected back spotless inside, filter included. Bathrooms tend to be compact wet rooms where one missed line of mould shows under bright light.

An older terrace carries decades of paint layers, a freestanding cooker with a grease history, and carpets that show every traffic lane, so the report leans on condition. That stock asks for other work: cornicing that has gathered years of dust, windows cleaned in their runners, and the cooker pulled out to reach the spills baked onto the floor beneath. Many still have fitted carpets on the stairs, the most photographed surface in a terrace check-out, because wear shows on it in a straight line.

A build-to-rent flat at the Arsenal is usually only a few years old, and nothing is worn, so there is nowhere to hide a streak.

Knowing which job you have shapes the quote and the kit we load. Either way the target is one line on the report: the flat returned in the condition recorded at move-in, allowing only for fair wear and tear.

What the clerk opens first in a riverside flat

A check-out is not a glance round the room. The clerk works the inventory line by line, opens what tenants leave shut, and photographs anything that does not match the move-in record. Our 57-point agent-approved checklist is mapped onto that report, so the order we work in follows the order they inspect. The kitchen and bathroom carry the most weight, because that is where grease and scale collect and where deductions start.

The kitchen, and the appliances people forget

The kitchen is where most of the time goes. We clean the oven inside, including the door glass and racks, degrease the extractor and its metal filter, wipe inside, on top of and underneath every cupboard, descale the sink and taps, and clean inside the integrated appliances a quick clean skips: the dishwasher filter, the washing-machine drawer and door seal, and the microwave. Where an appliance is freestanding and moves safely, we pull it out and clean the gap behind it, the first place a thorough clerk looks. In the Arsenal flats these units are nearly always built in, and integrated does not mean self-cleaning: the move-in report logged them as new.

The bathroom, the other deduction hotspot

We descale the showerhead, the screen and the taps, scrub the tile grout back toward its colour, clear black mould from the sealant around the bath and tray, and clean the toilet inside, under the rim and around the base. Mirrors and chrome are left without streaks, harder than it sounds under the lighting in a new ensuite. Then the rest of the flat, worked top down so nothing falls onto a surface already done: light fittings and switch plates, skirting boards and radiators, internal glass, sills and frames, and finally doors and handles. Floors go last. It is methodical on purpose, because a check-out report is methodical and a missed line is a missed deduction.

Those figures are not decoration. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London, including firms that manage stock at the Arsenal, and the 57-point checklist is the cross-reference we keep against their inspection sheets. Insurance matters more in Woolwich than most places: the managed blocks will not let a contractor past the concierge without proof of cover, so carrying it lets us work the buildings where access is tightest.

The 97% first-time pass rate is the number we are proudest of, because the test is real: an independent clerk, a written report, and a deposit on the line. When a clean does land in the other three per cent, usually one overlooked detail in a tough property, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee means we return within two days at no extra cost. Since 2014 that work has helped tenants keep £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions. One caveat: we clean, we do not repair. A cracked tile or a scuff through paint is a maintenance matter, and if we spot one we flag it as wear rather than let you meet it.

The water, the oven glass and the balcony

Three details decide more Woolwich check-outs than tenants expect, and none come off with a supermarket spray. The first is the oven door glass, where a baked-on brown film survives a quick wipe and shows up in a clerk photo even when the rest of the kitchen gleams. Our specialist oven deep clean for integrated and range cookers strips the carbon from inside, the racks and the door glass, and degreases the extractor, so the appliance reads as cleaned rather than wiped. A single oven is £77, a double £110, and a range cooker £114, added to a booking or taken on its own. In the terraces a range cooker is common; in the Arsenal flats it is usually one built-in oven.

The second is hard water. SE18 sits in the Thames Water supply, very hard chalk-and-limestone water in the region of 250 to 350 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, and Thames Water classes the area as hard. That mineral crusts taps, showerheads and shower glass within weeks. A clerk runs a thumbnail down the tap and looks at the screen edge-on against the light, so the scale has to be taken back to the metal, not smeared around. The third is everything behind and beneath: the appliance gaps, the underside of the toilet seat, the tops of the units. We treat all three as standard.

A clerk runs a thumbnail down the tap and looks at the screen edge-on against the light, so the scale has to be taken back to the metal.

Carpets and the river-facing glass

Most Riverside flats are engineered timber in the living areas and carpet in the bedrooms, so the carpet work focuses there while the timber floors are mopped. Our carpet shampoo for the carpeted bedrooms uses hot-water extraction that lifts ground-in dirt out of the pile rather than freshening the surface. Carpets are £36 per bedroom and £43 per living or reception room, or £115 for a whole two-bed done together. Extraction cannot reverse a burn, a dye stain or genuine wear, and no clean can, but it moves a carpet from dirty to clean, which moves it from a deduction to fair wear and tear.

The balcony glass catches out the river-facing flats. A winter of Thames spray leaves the inside face hazy, and a clerk marks it down if it is left that way, so the inside of the glass, the frame and the runner debris are cleaned as standard. The outside face on the upper floors is a window-cleaner contract job because of the access, and we will say if your inventory requires it. If moving day is a headache too, we run a small-load Royal Arsenal removals service alongside the clean, which helps when a single goods lift and a booked loading bay make two firms on one morning hard to line up.

Why Greenwich licensing tightens the check-out

Woolwich sits inside Royal Borough of Greenwich property licensing, which changes who is watching the condition of your rental. Since 1 October 2022 the council has run selective licensing across five wards for a five-year term, and Woolwich Riverside and Woolwich Common are both on the list, alongside Glyndon, Shooters Hill and Plumstead, so Royal Arsenal Riverside and most of the town centre sit inside it. A separate additional HMO scheme followed, covering the whole borough, running from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028, for smaller houses in multiple occupation let to three or more people from more than one household. Larger HMOs of five or more still need the national mandatory licence on top.

A licensed property is one on the council record, which pushes landlords and agents toward formal inventories and independent check-outs. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026 and pulls the same way. Section 21 is gone, existing assured shorthold tenancies have converted to periodic ones, and cleaning evidence carries more weight when a deposit is disputed. The cleaning obligations themselves did not change. What changed is timing: move-outs are more frequent and less predictable, so the good slots go earlier.

For a tenant moving out, the upshot is simple. The final inspection is more likely to be done by the book, with photographs and a written report, so a clean that merely looks fine is less likely to pass than one that meets the inventory in writing. That is not a reason to dread the check-out. It is a reason to make the clean thorough and documented, so the same formality that protects the property also protects your money.

The HMO scheme bites hardest on the older shared houses around Powis Street and the streets off Plumstead Road, where a single terrace may be let room by room to people who have never met. That check-out covers the shared kitchen and bathroom several tenants have all used, so the load is higher and the standard no lower than for a single let. The classic failure is that each tenant cleans their own room and assumes someone else handles the communal spaces. Nobody does. We clean an HMO as one job against one inventory, communal areas included.

End of tenancy clean

A one-off clean built to pass an inventory check-out and get a deposit back, done to the letting-agent benchmark with the flat empty, at £30 per hour per cleaner or a fixed price by size, with the 48-hour guarantee on it.

Deep clean

A reset for a home you are keeping, lived-in, with no formal standard to hit and no clerk to satisfy, priced from £30 an hour.

Regular domestic clean

Ongoing weekly or fortnightly maintenance with the same cleaner kept on the home, from £22 an hour weekly, £24 fortnightly.

Fair wear and tear

The reasonable deterioration a property suffers from normal use over a tenancy, which a landlord cannot charge against your deposit.

What it costs, and the sum worth doing

Our end of tenancy prices are fixed by the size of the property, not by the hours a team spends, so you know the figure before we arrive and a hard job never costs more on the day. Woolwich runs at our standard SE18 rates, with no London-zone premium loaded on top.

Two things move a quote beyond size. Condition is the first, and it is where the markets diverge: a two-year-old Arsenal flat handed back in reasonable order sits at the base rate, while a terrace with a freestanding oven nobody has touched in a year and a long tenancy behind it needs more labour for the same headline size. The honest thing is to say so in the quote rather than spring it on the day. Add-ons are the other, mainly carpets and ovens, priced separately so you only pay for what the inventory calls for.

Most Royal Arsenal Riverside one-beds land at exactly £207, because the stock is so consistent block to block, while the larger penthouses and duplexes can sit a tier above their bedroom count once floor area is counted. Run the sum the way the deposit makes you: a one-bed at £207 against a deposit of several thousand pounds is not really a decision. If your property does not fit the fixed bands, we also work at £30 per cleaner per hour, which suits a part-furnished let where only the kitchen and bathroom need doing.

“Handed back a one-bed at Cannon Square after two years. I thought a new-ish flat would be easy and then saw the state of the shower glass and the extractor. Two cleaners came the morning after I moved out, did the whole flat and the balcony glass, and the managing agent signed it off with no deductions. Full deposit back inside two weeks. Cheaper than losing any of it.”
Daniel, Royal Arsenal Riverside SE18, March 2026

Moving around the goods lift and the ferry

Moving day in Woolwich has its own logistics, and we plan the clean around them. In the Arsenal blocks the constraints are vertical: a single goods lift shared by the whole building, a loading bay that has to be booked, and a concierge who needs notice before a cleaning team and a removals van turn up together. Some buildings restrict moves to set weekday hours, which can clash with a tenancy that ends on a Saturday. We can work to a concierge access window, sign in at the lobby, clean the flat and lock up, so you are not waiting while the lift queue forms.

On the terraced streets off Plumstead Road and around Beresford Square the constraints are horizontal: controlled parking, narrow frontages and a removals lorry all competing for the same stretch of kerb. Booking the clean for after the van has left, or for the gap day between one tenancy and the next, lets us work an empty property with nothing left to trip over. Many tenants simply leave a key in a key safe or with the concierge, so the clean can happen while you are already across the river on the ferry or out on the DLR.

The order of the day matters. The clean should come after you have moved out and before the check-out, so the clerk walks into a finished property rather than one still drying. If the inventory appointment is locked in first, tell us the time and we work back from it, and if the clerk runs late we can split the job and finish before they arrive. We work seven days a week across SE18, which matters when so many tenancies end on a Friday and the keys are due back on the Monday.

Across SE18 and the streets we cover

Woolwich Arsenal is the centre of our patch, and inside Woolwich we work the whole postcode, riverside and town centre alike: the blocks of Royal Arsenal Riverside and Cannon Square, the streets back from the Thames Path, and Powis Street, Wellington Street, Beresford Street, the flats along Plumstead Road and the smaller blocks on Warren Lane and Spray Street. Same checklist, same price, same guarantee, whether the flat is a build-to-rent studio or an ex-council two-bed near the Royal Artillery Barracks.

Beyond the postcode boundary we clean along the river to Charlton, a mix of terraces and newer riverside flats in SE7; up the hill to Plumstead, largely terraced and much of it let room by room; and east to Thamesmead, with its estates and new SE28 waterside blocks. The town of Greenwich to the west sits under the same borough hub. Because the licensing regime and many local letting agents run right across these areas, a clean that satisfies a check-out in one tends to satisfy it in the next, and we keep one standard rather than a softer version for the cheaper postcodes.

Questions we get asked

How much is end of tenancy cleaning for a one-bed at Royal Arsenal Riverside?

A standard one-bed flat is £207 at base SE18 pricing, paid on completion. A studio is £156, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425. Carpets and ovens are priced separately and added only if the inventory needs them. Penthouses and duplexes at the Arsenal may sit a tier up once floor area is counted, and we quote on that in advance.

Do you work with the managing agents and inventory clerks at the Arsenal?

Yes. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London, including firms that manage stock at Royal Arsenal Riverside, and we have cleaned for tenants checked out by the independent clerks those agents appoint. Our 57-point agent-approved checklist cross-references the inspection sheet the clerk works from.

What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?

If the inventory clerk or the letting agent flags any item we cleaned within 48 hours of our visit, we come back and put it right at no charge, provided the flat is still in the state we left it. We have held this guarantee since 2014, and the 97% first-time pass rate is what it has produced. No clean reverses genuine wear or existing damage, but the cleaning standard itself is guaranteed.

Does the clean cover the kitchen extractor and the integrated appliances?

Yes, and they are where most check-outs are won or lost in a new-build flat. We degrease the extractor canopy and lift out the metal filter to clean both layers, and we clean inside the integrated dishwasher, washer-dryer and microwave, filters and door seals included, because the move-in report logged them as new. The oven, hob and racks are cleaned as standard.

Is the water in Woolwich hard enough to matter for the check-out?

Yes. SE18 is on the Thames Water supply, which is very hard water, roughly 250 to 350 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre. Scale builds on taps, showerheads and shower glass within weeks, and a clerk checks for it closely. We descale back to the metal rather than smear it around, which is one of the details that separates a pass from a deduction here.

Do you clean carpets at Royal Arsenal Riverside?

Yes. Most Riverside flats are engineered timber in the living areas and carpet in the bedrooms, so we shampoo the carpeted rooms with hot-water extraction and mop the engineered floors. Carpet shampoo is £36 per bedroom, £43 for a living or reception room, or £115 for a whole two-bed done together.

Do you handle the balcony glass on the river-facing flats?

The inside face of the balcony glass is cleaned as standard, along with the frame and any runner debris, because Thames spray and grime build up over a winter and a clerk marks it down if it is left hazy. The outside face on the upper floors is a window-cleaner contract job because of the access, and we will say if your inventory requires it.

Do I need a licence to rent here, and does it affect my clean?

The licence is the landlord’s responsibility, not yours. Woolwich Riverside and Woolwich Common sit inside Greenwich selective licensing, with a borough-wide additional HMO scheme on top, which mostly means the letting is documented and the check-out is done formally with photographs. For you as the tenant, that just makes a thorough, recorded clean more worthwhile.

How do I pay, and can I get a receipt for a deposit dispute?

Bank transfer or card on completion. There is no deposit to leave and no card surcharge. We invoice the same day for tenants who need a receipt for a dispute through a scheme such as the Tenancy Deposit Scheme or mydeposits, because a paid professional invoice is useful evidence if a deduction is proposed.

What happens if my flat fails the inventory check?

Send us the clerk’s check-out report. If anything we cleaned is on it, we are back within 48 hours at no charge. Anything outside our scope, such as broken fittings, paint scuffs that will not lift, or owner-side wear and tear, gets flagged honestly, so you know what is our re-clean and what is a deposit conversation with the landlord.

Are you insured, and are your cleaners vetted?

Yes. We carry public liability and employer’s liability cover, which the managed blocks at the Arsenal require before they let a contractor past the concierge, and that sits behind the £1.2m in deposits we have helped tenants keep since 2014. Our cleaners are vetted and trained on the 57-point checklist before they work alone. We are not an agency model.

Do I need to be at the flat during the clean?

No. Most tenants leave a key in a key safe or with the building concierge, and we sign in at the lobby, work the flat, and message you when we are done. That suits the Arsenal blocks, where access runs through a concierge desk and a booked goods lift rather than your own front door.

Book your Woolwich clean

When your move-out date is set, lock in the clean for after the van has gone and before the check-out is booked. Call 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your Royal Arsenal Riverside or SE18 address, your hand-back date and your bedroom count. We confirm a fixed quote inside two working hours, book a slot to start the day you hand the keys back, and send our own team with all the kit. A couple of photos of the kitchen and bathroom sharpen the quote.

Your deposit should sit in a government-approved scheme, and a professional clean at a fixed price, done to the inventory, is the simplest evidence you can put on your side of a dispute. Get the clean right and it comes back in full. Ring 0333 555 2076 and we will get your move-out booked.