End of Tenancy Cleaning near you

Section 1 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019 prohibits a landlord from requiring a relevant person to make a prohibited payment to the landlord or to a third party, to enter into a contract with a third party for a service, or to make a loan, in connection with a tenancy of housing in England. The structure of the Act is a ban with a closed list of exceptions: the current statutory guidance for enforcement authorities, in the version updated 1 May 2026 to reflect amendments by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, states that the approach to implementing the policy has been to ban all fees except those expressly permitted in Schedule 1 of the Act.

Schedule 1's permitted payments are rent; a tenancy deposit capped at five weeks' rent where the annual rent is less than £50,000 or six weeks' rent where it is £50,000 or more; a holding deposit capped at one week's rent; payments on default, limited to the reasonable evidenced cost of a lost key or interest on late rent at 3% above the Bank of England base rate; damages for breach; a payment on variation, assignment or novation capped at the greater of £50 or reasonable costs; a payment on early termination; and council tax, utilities, a television licence and communication services. A charge for cleaning appears nowhere on that list.

Enforcement is by local authorities and it has teeth. A landlord or letting agent who requires a prohibited payment can be given a financial penalty of up to £5,000. Where a further breach occurs within five years of a previous penalty that has not been withdrawn, the authority may instead impose a penalty of up to £30,000 or prosecute, and an individual convicted of the offence is liable to an unlimited fine. A financial penalty may be appealed to the First-tier Tribunal, which can confirm, vary or quash the notice but cannot vary it above £30,000.

Because a cleaning fee cannot be required, the obligation that remains is about condition rather than about receipts. The test applied at check-out is whether the property has been returned in the condition it was taken in, allowing for fair wear and tear — the deterioration that was always going to happen through ordinary, reasonable use over the length of the tenancy. Nothing in that test says the clean must be done by a company, and a landlord cannot require you to use a particular firm to do it.

The distinction that decides most arguments is between wear and damage. Carpet that has flattened along a hallway over three years, paint dulled around light switches, a slightly worn kitchen work surface and softened seals in an old shower are wear. A burn, a tear, a stain from something spilled and left, grease baked onto an oven, limescale allowed to build for years, or mould in a bathroom that was never ventilated are not wear, and those are the items that turn into deductions.

Adjudication also limits how far a landlord can go. Writing on London City Hall's blog, the head of adjudication at mydeposits — one of the government-approved deposit schemes — puts it as a principle: you are not entitled to end up in a better position than you would have been if the tenant had not caused any damage, adjudicators must ensure that any award is fair and proportionate, and a tenant is not responsible for reasonable wear and tear, including anything that will inevitably happen over the course of the tenancy. That is why claims for a whole new carpet where a section was damaged, or for redecorating a whole room, are so often reduced.

If you cannot agree how much of the deposit comes back, the scheme offers a free dispute resolution service. GOV.UK describes it plainly: your tenancy deposit protection scheme offers a free dispute resolution service if you disagree with your landlord about how much deposit should be returned, you will both be asked to provide evidence, and the decision made about your deposit will be final. Nobody visits the property. The adjudicator reads what each side sends.

That is why the check-in record decides so many of them. GOV.UK's How to rent checklist for England, updated 1 May 2026, tells tenants to agree an inventory or check-in report with the landlord before moving in and, as an extra safeguard, to take photos, because it makes things easier if there is a dispute about the deposit at the end. Without a dated record of how a carpet, an oven or a bathroom looked on day one, a claim about how it looks on the last day has nothing to be measured against, and a landlord carries the burden of showing that the condition changed.

The same guidance tells tenants what to do at the other end: remove all possessions, clean the house, dispose of rubbish and take meter readings, try to leave the property in the same condition you found it in, check that against your copy of the inventory, and take photos showing how you left it. Claims added after the check-out inspection, rather than recorded at it, are not usually successful in a formal deposit dispute.

This is the most condition-driven clean there is, and firms that quote it sight unseen are guessing. The figure moves on the state of the oven and whether it is single or double, how many bathrooms and how much limescale, how many cupboards there are to do individually, whether the property has been smoked in or had pets, whether carpets need a separate specialist visit, how long the tenancy ran, and how tight the gap is between your keys going back and the check-out inspection. A short notice booking on the morning of a check-out costs more than the same work booked a week out.

LokalMatch is where the enquiry goes, not who does the work. Set out the property, the check-out date and your postcode once, and cleaning businesses covering your area reply to you directly. Homeowners and tenants pay nothing; the businesses pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch performs no cleaning, influences no price, and does not vet, rank or recommend anybody who responds — which is exactly why it is worth asking each firm what is included, what is excluded, and what happens if the check-out flags something.