Can a Landlord Charge You for Cleaning? The Rules in England

In England a landlord or agent cannot require you to pay for a professional clean at check-out, and cannot require you to use a particular cleaning company. They can deduct from your deposit to return the property to the condition it was let in, if they can evidence it. Those two sentences look contradictory and are not, and the difference between them is where almost every argument about cleaning charges actually sits. This is general information about the law in England only; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run different rules.

What did the Tenant Fees Act 2019 actually ban?

It banned landlords and agents in England from charging tenants anything other than a defined list of permitted payments. Rent, a capped deposit, a capped holding deposit, utilities, council tax and a small number of default fees are permitted. Everything else is a prohibited payment, and a compulsory end-of-tenancy cleaning charge is one of the things it swept away. It applied to new tenancies from 1 June 2019 and to all existing tenancies from 1 June 2020, so it now covers everybody. You can read it on legislation.gov.uk.

The same Act set the deposit cap. It is not a flat five weeks, as it is often reported. It is five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under fifty thousand pounds, and six weeks’ rent where the annual rent reaches that figure or more. Breaching the fees ban is a civil offence carrying a financial penalty, a further breach within five years is a criminal offence with an unlimited fine, and a local authority can impose a substantial penalty as an alternative to prosecuting.

Is a professional cleaning clause in the tenancy agreement enforceable?

Not as a requirement to pay. Government guidance for landlords and agents answered the question in one line: you cannot require a tenant to pay for a professional clean when they check out, and you cannot require a tenant to use a particular company to clean the property. A clause obliging you to produce a receipt from a professional cleaner, or to pay a fixed cleaning fee at the end of the term, is asking for a prohibited payment.

There is a wrinkle worth knowing, because it explains why so much online advice on this is now vague. That guidance document was withdrawn from gov.uk on 8 May 2026, and the two pages that replaced it contain no wording about professional cleaning at all. The Act itself has not been amended or repealed, so the legal position is exactly what it was; there is simply no longer a live government page that states it in terms. Treat the 2020 guidance as a withdrawn explanation of a law that is still in force, rather than as current guidance.

What can a landlord still deduct for?

Returning the property to the condition it was let in, evidenced properly. The guidance was explicit that where a property is not left in a fit condition, a landlord can recover the costs associated with returning it to its original condition, and should justify those costs with suitable evidence such as an independently produced inventory, receipts and invoices. That is a compensation claim against the deposit, decided on evidence, and it is a completely different mechanism from a fee written into the contract.

The standard applied is matching, not exceeding. The property comes back cleaned to the standard it was in at the start, which for a house let in ordinary condition is not the same as a showroom finish. Costs also have to be proportionate to the work genuinely needed. In one published mydeposits case study an adjudicator awarded 65% of a claimed deep-clean cost, on the basis that only part of the property actually required cleaning. Partial awards like that are the normal shape of a cleaning outcome, not an unusual one.

Why does the check-in inventory decide it rather than the clause?

Because the claim is about a change in condition, and you cannot demonstrate a change without a starting point. There is no statutory standard and no legally mandated format for inventories in England. No body regulates them. An adjudicator simply weighs whatever evidence the two sides supply, and a detailed, dated, photographic check-in report is the strongest document either party can hold.

That cuts both ways, and it is the part most pages skip. A landlord with a thorough photographic check-in report and a matched check-out report is in a strong position whatever the tenancy agreement says about professional cleaning. A landlord with a clause and no check-in evidence has the weaker case of the two. The leverage was never in the clause. On the flat conversions around Moseley and the rented terraces of Kings Heath, that is the single thing worth checking at the start of a tenancy rather than the end.

What is fair wear and tear, and what is betterment?

Fair wear and tear is deterioration that occurs naturally or through your reasonable use of the property, and no deduction can be made for it. Carpet pile flattening along a hallway, paint dulling, grout losing its brightness over years, a worn stair nosing: those are the property ageing while somebody lives in it, which is what rent is for.

Betterment is the related principle that a landlord must not end up better off than they were at the start. A five-year-old carpet cannot be replaced with a new one at your expense. A property let with a tired oven cannot be handed back with a reconditioned one on your deposit. Adjudicators factor in the length of the tenancy and the age and condition of what is being claimed for, and they reduce awards accordingly, which is why full-value cleaning claims so often come back part-paid.

Did the Renters’ Rights Act change any of this?

No, and it is worth being precise because a lot of content published in the last year gets this wrong in both directions. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and its main provisions commenced on 1 May 2026. Assured shorthold tenancies are abolished; existing ones converted automatically to assured periodic tenancies on that date and fixed terms are gone. Section 21 is abolished, not due to be abolished. Rental bidding is banned, rent in advance is capped, rent can be raised once a year with two months’ notice, and tenants have a right to request a pet.

What the Act did not do is touch end-of-tenancy cleaning. It relabelled the deposit protection provisions of the Housing Act 2004 from shorthold tenancy to assured tenancy and preserved the Tenant Fees Act caps, and that is the extent of it. If you read anywhere that the Renters’ Rights Act banned professional cleaning clauses, that is wrong: the ban came from the Tenant Fees Act 2019, several years earlier. The government’s own text of the Act is the place to check anything specific.

What if the deposit was never protected properly?

That is a separate issue with its own remedy, and it is the strongest card a tenant can hold. Under section 213 of the Housing Act 2004 a deposit must be protected in an authorised scheme and the prescribed information given to you within 30 days of it being received. If that did not happen, section 214 requires the court to order the deposit repaid or protected and to order a payment to the tenant of between one and three times the deposit, payable within 14 days. It is frequently reported as three times the deposit. It is not: three is the ceiling, and the multiple is at the court’s discretion. The provisions are at section 214.

What should you do if you disagree with a proposed deduction?

• Do not agree in writing. Once you consent to a deduction the scheme will release that money and the matter is closed
• Ask, in writing, for the check-in report, the check-out report and an itemised invoice or quotation for the work claimed
• State clearly which parts you accept and which you dispute. The undisputed portion should be released to you without waiting
• If you cannot agree, raise a dispute with the scheme holding the deposit. Adjudication is free to both parties and is decided on documents rather than in person
• Meet the scheme’s deadline for submitting evidence. Anything sent late is simply not in front of the adjudicator
• For advice on your own tenancy, use your scheme’s dispute service or Shelter’s housing advice rather than a cleaning company

Do you have to book a cleaner at all?

No, and it would be dishonest of a cleaning company to imply otherwise. Nobody can require you to hire us, or anybody else, and if you have the time, a decent check-in report and a property in reasonable order, doing it yourself is a perfectly rational choice. The room by room checklist a clerk works through is published in full so you can. Booking a clean is a way of buying time and a consistent standard on a fixed date, which is why it makes most sense on a compressed handover such as a June changeover in a shared student house, or where a property has been let for several years.

Where the calculation genuinely changes is the specialist items. An oven door interlayer, a heavily soiled carpet and a grease-loaded extractor take equipment and dwell time rather than effort, and they are also the items most likely to be flagged. The scheme data on which items actually generate claims is in our piece on deposit disputes and cleaning.

The practical summary is short. Ignore the clause, photograph the property on day one, keep the check-in report, and match it at the end. If you decide you would rather hand the job over, tell us the check-out date and whether the property will be empty, and we will scope an end of tenancy clean against the inventory and give you a price and an estimated time before we begin rather than afterwards. We are based in Selly Oak and work across Birmingham and the West Midlands.

End of Tenancy Cleaning in Birmingham: what we actually see

Tenancy agreements circulating in Birmingham still carry clauses drafted before the Tenant Fees Act came into force, and a clause sitting in a document is not the same thing as an obligation the law will back. It turns up most often on the shared-house agreements around Selly Oak and Bournbrook and on the flat conversions in Moseley and Kings Heath, where a template gets reused for years without anybody reviewing it.

The other thing worth noticing locally is how uneven check-in evidence is. A managed let through a lettings agency usually has a photographic check-in report. A direct let on a subdivided Victorian house frequently has a one-page tick sheet or nothing at all, and that difference decides far more deposit outcomes than the wording of any cleaning clause does.

We do this work across Birmingham and the West Midlands. If you want the detail on how we do it and what it costs, see our end of tenancy cleaning service, or read about the areas we cover it in most: Selly Oak, Moseley and Kings Heath.