Cleaning is the single most common cause of deposit disputes across all three government-approved schemes in England, and has been for years. What almost no page gets right is what the published percentages actually mean. The two headline figures in circulation measure completely different things, and adding them into a range produces a sentence that is wrong in a way that is easy to miss.
The Tenancy Deposit Scheme reports that cleaning appeared in 54% of the disputes it adjudicated in its Insured scheme in the year to 31 March 2025, making it the most common issue. Damage appeared in 49%, redecoration in 31%, gardening in 14% and rent arrears in 10%. Those columns add to well over one hundred, because a single dispute usually carries several claim heads at once. TDS puts it as cleaning remaining the most common area of dispute, appearing in over half of all cases in each year. The figures are published in the scheme’s statistical briefing.
The Deposit Protection Service publishes something structurally different. In its figures for the 2025 calendar year, released on 11 June 2026, cleaning was the top reason for a deposit claim for the fifth consecutive year, at 29.38% of claims, ahead of damage at 18.42%, rent arrears at 16.45% and redecoration at 10.88%. Those add to one hundred, because the DPS is measuring cleaning’s share of all the claim heads rather than the share of disputes it appears in. Its series has risen every year, from 24.57% in 2021 to 29.38% now, and the scheme sets it out in its own published release.
mydeposits, the third scheme, also identifies cleaning as its most common dispute type. It publishes no dated methodology alongside its figure, so it is worth reading as corroboration of the direction rather than as a measurement you can quote precisely.
Because they are not the same kind of number. The TDS 54% is a prevalence measure: of the disputes that reached adjudication, cleaning came up in just over half of them. It does not say cleaning caused those disputes, and it does not say 54% of deductions were for cleaning. The DPS 29.38% is a composition measure: of all the claim heads raised, cleaning accounted for a shade under three in every ten. One counts cases, the other counts claims.
So the widely repeated line that cleaning causes between 29% and 54% of deposit disputes is a category error dressed up as a range. It compares a share of cases with a share of claims and produces a spread that describes nothing real. Two further points of precision are worth carrying: the TDS figure covers TDS Insured cases in England and Wales rather than the whole market, and it is not a rising trend. Across eleven years of TDS reporting the cleaning share has moved between 42 and 65, and the current 54 is a fall from 65 the year before. The DPS series does rise. Different schemes, different measures, different shapes.
Rarer than the coverage suggests, and this is the context those percentages need. In the same reporting year TDS protected 4,706,470 deposits and handled 46,950 disputes, which is 1.00% of deposits protected. The scheme itself notes that disputes are raised in a low proportion of cases, typically fewer than 1% of tenancy deposits protected. So cleaning dominates a small population. It is the most likely reason you end up in an argument, and you are not especially likely to end up in one.
Because damage has a fact at the bottom of it and cleanliness has a judgement. A cracked basin is a cracked basin, and the argument is only about who pays and how much. Whether an oven is clean is a comparison against a remembered standard, and two reasonable people will place the line in different places.
Three things compound it. Cleaning is the last task in a move, done under time pressure by people who have been carrying boxes all day, so it gets the least attention of anything on the list. It degrades continuously rather than in an event, so there is no moment anyone recorded. And it is the one item where the tenant genuinely believes they have already dealt with it, which turns a deduction into a grievance rather than a bill. Damage claims get paid. Cleaning claims get contested.
On the documents, by comparing check-in evidence with check-out evidence. There is no statutory standard for inventories in England and no regulator of them; membership associations publish voluntary codes, but nothing governs the format. An adjudicator simply weighs what the two parties send in. TDS’s Director of Resolution has said that photographic or video inventories remain the single most effective way to support a claim, that they should be compared like for like at check-out with similar lighting and camera angles, and, most importantly, that adjudicators can only make decisions based on the evidence provided.
Read that last clause carefully, because it is the whole game. The adjudicator was not in the property. They are not deciding whether the kitchen was clean; they are deciding which party has shown them more about it. Tenancy length and betterment are then applied on top, so a long tenancy and an ageing item both pull the award down.
The common failure is not bad photographs, it is few photographs, taken of the wrong things, with no matching pair at the other end of the tenancy. A folder of twelve immaculate check-out images is worth very little if nothing comparable exists from day one.
The oven, the carpets and the garden, in roughly that order. The oven loses more deposits than any other single item because the door glass interlayer, the cavity roof, the rack runners and the seal all need equipment and dwell time rather than effort, and because each of them photographs unambiguously. Carpets lose because vacuuming is mistaken for cleaning; a traffic lane that needs professional carpet cleaning is a cleanliness issue, though a carpet that is simply worn is condition and should not be charged for.
The garden and the waste are the underrated ones, and in Birmingham they cost real money. Bulky waste collection from the council is chargeable, garden waste is a paid annual subscription and the household recycling centres run on a booking system, so anything left behind becomes a removal cost that lands on the deposit. In the large-household terraces of Small Heath and Sparkbrook, and in shared student houses, the abandoned mattress is a more expensive line than the entire clean.
No check-in inventory, or a check-in inventory with no photographs. Without a baseline there is nothing to compare a dirty property against, and the claim tends to fail however genuine it is. The second common loss is betterment: claiming a full replacement or a full professional clean where only part of the property needed attention, which is exactly the situation that produces a part award rather than a full one.
The third is relying on the tenancy agreement instead of the evidence. A clause requiring a professional clean is unenforceable as a payment obligation in England, and quoting it in a dispute submission does no work at all. What is enforceable is a documented change in condition, which is covered in detail in our note on whether a landlord can charge for cleaning.
Evidence at both ends and a clean that happens last. Read the check-in report in your first week and challenge anything wrong while the window is open. Take your own photographs on day one and keep them somewhere that is not just a phone. Clean after the van is loaded rather than before. Photograph the result against the same angles. Then hand the keys over with meter readings. Almost every cleaning dispute is really an evidence dispute, and evidence is cheap while you are standing in the property.
If you want the specifics of what gets flagged, the room by room checklist lists them in the order a report is written. If you would rather book it, tell us the property and the check-out date and we will scope end of tenancy cleaning against the inventory, work from our Selly Oak base across Birmingham and the West Midlands, and give you a price and an estimated time before we start rather than after.
Birmingham, West Midlands has one of the larger private rented sectors of any English city, at 22.6% of households in the 2021 Census and rising 4.7 percentage points in a decade. In the dense terracing off the Coventry Road in Small Heath and off the Stratford Road in Sparkbrook, and in the converted student houses of Selly Oak, tenancies turn over constantly and the paperwork behind them is wildly uneven in quality.
That unevenness is the story. Where a check-in report is photographic, dated and detailed, cleaning arguments tend to resolve quickly in one direction or the other. Where it is a tick sheet with the word good written next to twenty lines, neither side has much to stand on, and a disagreement about whether a kitchen was clean becomes a disagreement about whose memory is better.
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, Sparkbrook and Small Heath.
Adefem Concepts Solutions Ltd. is insured, locally owned, and based in Selly Oak, Birmingham.
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Room by room, in the order a check-out report is written: the oven, the fridge drip channel, the shower screen track and the window reveals.
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A blanket professional cleaning clause is unenforceable in England. A deduction for a property returned dirtier than it was let is not.
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The full scope room by room, including the jobs that are not in a deep clean as standard: carpets, upper windows, lofts, clearance and any repair.
Read moreSend a few details or photos and we’ll come back with a clear price and an estimated time, with no obligation.