House Cleaning near you

Cleaning firms use the same three or four words for very different pieces of work, so the scope has to be agreed rather than assumed. Ask for the list in writing before the first visit and keep it with the booking, because it is the document you will point at if the result is not what you expected.

Nothing in UK law requires a cleaner to hold a criminal record check, and there is no cleaning register to look them up on. If you want one, you are asking for a specific product from a specific service, and the three parts of the UK run different ones. Knowing which is which stops you accepting a certificate that says less than you think.

In England and Wales the Disclosure and Barring Service issues a basic check, which shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions, a standard check, which shows spent and unspent convictions and cautions, and an enhanced check, which adds information held by local police that is considered relevant to the role, with a further version that checks the barred lists. The higher levels are tied to eligible roles and are requested by an employer or organisation rather than bought by anyone who fancies one, so for ordinary domestic cleaning a basic check is the level usually in reach.

This is the distinction most households never think about, and it is the one that has real consequences. If you engage a cleaner directly, set the hours, supply the equipment and tell them how the work is done, you may be their employer rather than their customer, whatever the arrangement is called. Employment status in UK law follows the substance of the arrangement, and the categories that matter are employee, worker and genuinely self-employed.

The practical consequences attach to that status. Almost all people classed as workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year, which is 28 days for someone working five days a week and is calculated proportionally for part-time hours. The National Minimum Wage covers workers but not self-employed people running their own business. A cleaner who works for several households, brings their own products, sends invoices and decides how the job is done looks self-employed; one who works fixed hours for you alone, to your instructions, with your equipment, may not.

Health and safety law draws its own line here. The Health and Safety at Work Act does not apply to the employment of domestic servants in a private household, so a cleaner you employ directly sits outside it, but a cleaner who is self-employed or supplied by an agency is covered by the Act. Booking through a company moves the employment questions, the insurance and the health and safety duties onto that company.

Where cleaning is done as work, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations apply to the products used. Substances hazardous to health include chemicals and products containing chemicals, along with fumes, dusts, vapours and mists, and HSE's rule of thumb is blunt: if the packaging carries any of the hazard symbols, it is classed as a hazardous substance. Professional-strength oven cleaners, drain products, descalers and disinfectants routinely qualify.

The duty falls on the employer, not on you, but it tells you what a well-run cleaning business looks like: it has assessed the risks from the substances it uses, including storage, handling and disposal, it prevents exposure or controls it where prevention is not reasonably practicable, and it has given staff information, instruction and training about those risks and the precautions taken.

A sensible first visit starts with a walk round: the rooms in scope, the floors and their finishes, the oven, anything fragile, anywhere off limits, and how long the round takes. That walk is what turns a guess into a quote, and it is also when you find out whether someone listens. Agree the scope, the frequency, how access works and how you will flag a problem, then let the first clean test the estimate.

On LokalMatch you describe the property and the clean once, in your own words, and cleaning businesses that cover your postcode get in touch with you directly. The businesses pay for the requests they receive; you pay nothing to ask. LokalMatch does not do the cleaning, does not set or approve anyone's prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend the businesses that reply, so the checks in this guide, the insurance, the scope in writing, the arrangement for keys, are yours to make.

The common complaints are not dramatic. A finish damaged by the wrong product, a vacuum against a skirting board, an ornament knocked from a shelf, a mark left on a glass shower screen that was already etched by limescale. What decides how these end is whether anyone is insured and whether the condition of the room was ever recorded.

Cleaning bought from a business is a service, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 supplies terms into that contract whether or not anyone wrote them down. Every contract to supply a service is treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. Where no price was agreed, the consumer must pay a reasonable price and no more, and where no time was agreed, the service must be performed within a reasonable time.

The remedies follow the same pattern. Where the service falls short, the consumer can require the trader to re-perform it within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience, at the trader's cost. Where repeat performance is impossible or does not happen in a reasonable time, the consumer can require a price reduction by an appropriate amount, refunded within a set period using the original payment method and without a fee for doing so. In practice, asking the firm to come back and finish the rooms it missed is both the fastest route and the one the Act points at first.