Ask around Winchester and you'll get answers anywhere from £12 to £50 an hour. The spread is real, and it's rarely explained.
The range. A good, insured, self-employed cleaner in and around Winchester costs £17 to £25 an hour direct, or £22 to £50 through an agency. £15 gets quoted as "the going rate" more than any other number, and it sits at the bottom of the market, where there's usually no insurance and no checks behind it.
What the range means
£12 to £16 an hour, cash. Usually someone working informally with no insurance and no checks. It's the cheapest option and carries the most risk. If something gets broken, or someone gets hurt in your home, there's nothing behind it but goodwill.
£17 to £25 an hour, direct. A self-employed cleaner you found through a neighbour or a local group. This is the going rate for good independents around Winchester, and plenty of them are excellent. You do the vetting, and you sort the cover when they're ill or away.
£22 to £50 an hour, through an agency. Someone else has done the checking. Two firms that look identical from the outside can be £20 an hour apart, for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the clean is.
Questions worth asking before you agree anything
- Are you self-employed, and do you have your own public liability insurance? Ask to see it. £1m of cover is standard.
- Has anyone looked at the house before quoting? A price given over the phone from a bedroom count is a guess.
- What happens when you're ill or on holiday? For an independent cleaner the answer is usually "you'll miss a clean". Fine if you know in advance.
- Am I paying the cleaner or the company? If it's the company, ask what the cleaner gets. If they won't say, ask why.
- Is there a contract, a joining fee or a separate agency fee? All fine as long as you know before you sign.
- Is VAT included, and is travel on top? Ask for the full amount you'll pay, extras included.
Why the cheapest quote often costs more
The quote well under everyone else's is usually built on hours that are too short. Your cleaner has three hours of work and two hours of paid time, so the same thing gets skipped every week.
Then you either say nothing and slowly get less happy, or you ask for more and it turns awkward. Short hours are the most common reason an arrangement falls apart in the first six months. Paying for the hours the job really takes is cheaper than replacing a cleaner twice.
Working out what your house needs
The hourly rate is easy to compare. The hours are harder to judge.
The number of bedrooms is a poor guide on its own. Older houses run longer than their room count suggests, with deep skirtings, sash windows, flagstones and awkward staircases, and Winchester has plenty of all four. Pets add time, so do small children. Fortnightly visits need a little longer than weekly ones, because a fortnight of dust and limescale is more than twice a week's.
So we don't quote hours from a table. We agree them at a free visit to your home, walking around it with you, and you can change them at any time.
Why the agency band is so wide
Which model it is. An introduction agency and a cleaning company are different businesses that look the same in a search result. It's the biggest single factor, and there's more on it below.
VAT. Above £90,000 of turnover a year, a business has to register and add 20% to your bill. A smaller operator doesn't. That's why "£30 an hour" and "£30 an hour plus VAT" are £6 apart for the same clean.
Employment costs. A company that employs its cleaners pays their National Insurance, pension, holiday pay and sick pay on top of the wage. Those costs are built into the rate you pay.
Extras on top of the headline rate. These can include mileage, travel time, a joining fee or a monthly agency fee you weren't told about at first. Each is legitimate, but each can make the rate you pay higher than the rate you were quoted.
So the expensive end can still be good value. Comparing two hourly rates just tells you very little on its own.
Introduction agency or cleaning company
A cleaning company employs its cleaners, sends whoever is free, and keeps the difference between what you pay and what the cleaner earns. It carries the employment costs, the VAT and the overhead, so your rate is higher and the cleaner's share is smaller.
An introduction agency introduces you to a self-employed cleaner. You pay the cleaner directly, and the agency charges a separate fee. It uses that to find and check your cleaner, and to arrange cover or put things right when you need it. Less sits between you and the person doing the work.
Both models work, and the gap between their rates says nothing about the standard of the clean.
Which model we use, and why
We're an introduction agency, and we chose that model deliberately. It lets a cleaner keep the independence most of them want and take home a rate they're happy with, while we find and check your cleaner, and arrange cover or put things right when you need it, awkward conversations included. You get the quality assurance of a company and one self-employed cleaner who gets to know your home.
We publish our split. £25 an hour: £20 to your cleaner, £5 to us. You pay your cleaner by bank transfer into their own account, and the cleaning money never passes through us.
That split matters to you as much as it does to us. A cleaner who's paid properly for hard work, enjoys the job and feels well treated tends to stay with a household for years. One who feels squeezed moves on, and you're starting again with someone who doesn't know your home or how you like it done.
We come and look at your home before quoting, because that's the only way to get the hours right. If you'd like that, tell us about your home and we'll come back with a price and a cleaner who fits.