Can a landlord require professional cleaning at the end of a tenancy?

No. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, a landlord or letting agent in England cannot make you pay for professional cleaning, and a clause demanding it is not enforceable as a fee. What they can hold you to is the cleanliness standard recorded at check-in. Fall short of that, and a deposit deduction is allowed.

What the Tenant Fees Act banned, and from when

The Act works by listing the payments a landlord or agent in England is allowed to take, then banning everything else. That permitted list is short: rent, a refundable tenancy deposit, a holding deposit of up to one week’s rent, payments for utilities, communication services, the TV licence and council tax, up to £50 (or the reasonable cost, if higher) to vary or assign a tenancy, payments where you ask to end the tenancy early, and default fees for late rent or a replacement key.

Cleaning is not on it. Neither is an end of tenancy fee, an admin fee or a check-out fee. The ban applied to new and renewed tenancies from 1 June 2019 and to every existing tenancy from 1 June 2020, so it covers you whenever your tenancy began.

One related figure worth knowing while you are in the paperwork: the deposit itself is capped at five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks’ rent above that.

The clause that keeps turning up anyway

Plenty of agreements still carry a professional cleaning clause. Usually the template was drafted years ago and nobody has been back to it since. It cannot be charged to you as a fee, and you are not obliged to use the company your landlord nominates. Government guidance to tenants is blunt about this: do not pay a banned fee, even where it appears in the advert or in the contract you signed.

What a landlord can still hold you to

Here is the part that catches people out. You are free to clean the property yourself, but you have to hand it back in the condition recorded at the start of the tenancy, allowing for fair wear and tear. If your check-in inventory describes a professionally cleaned home, that is the bar your check-out is measured against, whoever does the work. Where the property falls short, the landlord can make a reasonable deduction to put it right. Our guide on whether a landlord can charge for cleaning works through how those deductions are judged.

The distinction is payment versus standard. They cannot bill you for a cleaner. They can measure the property against your inventory and claim the shortfall.

A deduction is a claim, and a claim needs evidence

If a cleaning charge ends up at your deposit scheme, an adjudicator decides on the paperwork in front of them and nothing else. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme’s adjudication team makes the point plainly: a photographic or video inventory, signed and dated by both parties, is the single most effective way to support a claim, and check-out photographs carry far more weight when they are taken in similar lighting and from the same angles as the check-in set.

Two limits apply to any deduction. It can only return the property to its check-in condition, not improve on it. And fair wear and tear, the ordinary dulling of a place lived in for a year or three, is never chargeable. Our guide on what to photograph before you hand the keys back covers the shots that actually get used.

What is at stake, in numbers

Cleaning is the most common trigger of all. In 2024/25 it featured in 54% of the disputes the Tenancy Deposit Scheme adjudicated, ahead of damage at 49% and redecoration at 31%, and the average protected deposit reached £1,175. The Deposit Protection Service sees the same pattern in its own caseload, with cleaning behind 26.64% of disputes and property damage 27.30%.

Set that against what the work costs. A two-bed flat starts at £243 with us, and oven cleaning, the add-on almost every inventory calls for, is £77. Around £320 for the whole job, against a deposit that averages more than a thousand pounds. For most people it is not a close call.

If you have already paid a banned fee

Keep the receipt and a copy of the clause it was charged under. Your local council’s trading standards team enforces the Act and can investigate a prohibited payment, and you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal to recover the money. Where the charge came from a letting agent, the agent must belong to a redress scheme, either The Property Ombudsman or Property Redress, and a complaint there is free.

DIY or book it: which leaves you better off?

If you have the time, the products and a forensic eye for kitchens and bathrooms, cleaning it yourself is perfectly valid, and plenty of tenants pass that way. The risk is that the judgement is made by an inventory clerk rather than by you, and once a deduction is proposed you have little say over what it costs.

Booking your own end of tenancy clean is the version you control. You choose the company, you fix the price before anyone arrives, and you finish with a dated invoice that makes a cleaning deduction much harder to argue for. Cleans start from £156, you can price your property with an instant quote, and every clean carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee (terms apply): if the check-out report flags our work, we come back and put it right.

Quick answers

Can a letting agent put professional cleaning in the contract? They can write it in, but since June 2019 it is not enforceable as a paid requirement, so you cannot be charged a fee for it.

Do I have to use the landlord’s cleaner? No. Clean it yourself or pick your own company, as long as the result meets the check-in standard.

Can they still deduct for cleaning? Yes, but only to return the property to its check-in condition, not to make it cleaner than it started, and not for fair wear and tear.

Does an invoice guarantee I get the deposit back? No, but it is strong evidence. A dated invoice for a professional clean shifts the argument onto the landlord to show what was still wrong.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Tenant Fees Act 2019 guidance for tenants
• Tenant Fees Act 2019 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Deposit Protection Service: causes of deposit disputes
• TDS adjudication team: what 2025 taught us about deposit disputes (NRLA)

This article is general guidance for tenants in England, not legal advice. Tenancy agreements and deposit scheme processes vary, so check your own and speak to a qualified professional if you need advice.