Professional cleaning in Lambeth

Households in Lambeth divide into near-equal thirds: social renters 33.6%, owners 33.0% and private renters 31.4%. By ward, the private share climbs from 20.1% in Myatt’s Fields to 42.8% in Streatham St Leonard’s.

Selective licensing now reaches all Lambeth wards but two, Vauxhall and Waterloo & South Bank, and applies when a private let houses one household or two sharers. The first phase began on 2 September 2024 with Knight’s Hill plus three of the Streatham wards, and phase two brought in everywhere else on 1 September 2025. A shared house, meaning three or more occupiers who form at least two households, needs an additional HMO licence instead. That designation started on 9 December 2021 and, according to its notice, lapses on 8 December 2026 if not revoked sooner. In late October 2026 the council had not published a renewal date, so landlords of shared homes should watch the council’s page.

Between tenants, a one-bedroom flat’s end of tenancy clean starts at £207, a two-bedroom flat’s at £243, and a single oven on the same booking adds £31.

Central Brixton’s homes are mostly flats in mansion blocks, which the council places on Coldharbour Lane, Rushcroft Road and Electric Avenue. Electric Avenue, built from 1888 to 1891, was one of England’s first streets with electric lighting. Older still are the few houses that predate the railway: stock brick, stucco and timber sash windows, and on St John’s Crescent three storeys above a semi-basement. The conservation area was first designated on 20 October 1980, and its boundary was last redrawn in January 2024.

Hard water adds to the work. Thames Water took four samples in its Brixton supply zone in 2025, with a mean of 258 mg/l as calcium carbonate (243 to 272), so taps, shower screens and the kettle scale up between visits, and a weekly professional cleaning rota at £23 an hour keeps ahead of it. Near the station, Brixton Inner is controlled from Monday to Saturday until 6.30pm. Zone B stops at 5.30pm and zone E at 6.30pm, and both of those are weekdays only, so a Saturday booking close to the station still pays for the bay.

Selective licensing started in Lambeth with Streatham. Three of its wards came in on 2 September 2024 (Streatham Common & Vale, Streatham St Leonard’s and Streatham Hill East), and the other two, Streatham Wells and Streatham Hill West & Thornton, on 1 September 2025. Across all five, 35.3% of households rent privately.

The housing is mixed. Leigham Court Estate was the work of the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company between 1889 and 1928, long gridded terraces of houses and purpose-built flats, and an Article 4 direction applies in its conservation area (1981). EJ Tarver designed the Queen Anne style houses of Telford Park, a suburban estate laid out from 1878 to 1882 around Killieser Avenue, Telford Road and Criffel Avenue. A regular cleaner on domestic cleaning in a three or four-bedroom house usually needs four hours or more a visit.

Parking is easier than further north. The zones here are mostly short: Streatham Hill East and West have controls for just two hours, 10am to noon, Monday to Friday, St Leonard’s North from noon until 2pm, and Streatham Wells from 10am to 4pm. Lambeth’s zone map shows nothing at Streatham station or Streatham Common station. Professional cleaners arriving after noon in Streatham Hill usually park without a charge.

Vauxhall ward is 95.8% flats, and 5.6% of households are in shared ownership, the highest share among the seven areas on this page. From 1992 onwards a large complex of flats and offices has gone up at St George Wharf beside Vauxhall Bridge, with St George Wharf Tower completed in 2014. Bonnington Square has 18th and 19th century houses and came out of the squatting scene of the 1970s and 1980s; housing co-operatives now hold most of its homes. Lambeth first designated the Vauxhall conservation area in June 1981, along a line from Kennington Lane by way of Harleyford Road to Vauxhall Park.

Vauxhall is one of the two Lambeth wards outside selective licensing, so an ordinary let here needs no selective licence, though a shared home still needs an HMO licence. In a tower flat the work is mostly glass, kitchen and bathroom, and the cleaner reaches the flat by lift. Around the station the streets are in Kennington zone K, enforced on weekdays from 8.30am until 6.30pm, so professional cleaning on a weekday there usually carries a parking charge.

West Norwood has more family houses than most of Lambeth. In Knight’s Hill and Gipsy Hill wards 19.8% of households live in terraces and 16.1% in semis, against 15.0% and 7.8% across the borough, and 40.3% own their home. Four estates, Portobello, Holderness, Fern Lodge and York Hill, date from the late 1940s and the 1950s, built where big houses had been bombed or demolished. Norwood Road’s main parades, from York Hill to the station, were built in the decades either side of 1900, and the conservation area (June 1978) is centred on West Norwood Cemetery.

Family houses tend to keep fitted carpets on the stairs and in the living room. For carpet cleaning the cleaner brings portable hot water extraction machines; a living room costs £43 and each flight of stairs £41. The council’s zone layer shows no controlled parking at the station or on Norwood Road, which helps on a long job. Knight’s Hill ward entered selective licensing in the first phase, on 2 September 2024, and Gipsy Hill a year later, so professional cleaning between lets here usually follows a licensed tenancy.