Regular housekeeping is £22 an hour, minimum three hours per visit, weekly or fortnightly. Deep cleans start at £340 for a three-bedroom house and are quoted by the room after that. End-of-tenancy starts at £395 for a two-bedroom flat and includes the return visit if the agent disputes anything. Oven cleaning is £85 for a single oven and £140 for a range cooker. Linen and laundry is £14 a basket collected and returned. Holiday-let changeovers start at £58 for a two-bed, or £74 with linen supplied. Every price on this page includes VAT, and there is no call-out fee to find later.

It means the smallest version of that job, done properly, and it is where about a third of our quotes land. A three-bed deep clean with a conservatory, a dog and eight years of limescale is not the same job as a three-bed that had one last spring, and we will say so at the walk-round rather than discover it on the day. When a quote comes in above the "from" price you get the reason in writing next to the number — hours, not vagueness. We have never once raised a price mid-job.

Regular clients are invoiced monthly in arrears and pay by standing order or transfer; one-off jobs are payable on completion. There is no contract, no joining fee and no minimum term. The first month is cancellable any time — including halfway through, in which case you pay for the visits you had. After that a week’s notice ends it. We hold the rate for twelve months from your first visit and give a month’s written notice of any change, which in fifteen years has meant four increases, each one explained in a letter.

People are surprised that £22 an hour is not £22 in somebody’s pocket, so here is the arithmetic. The cleaner is paid above the Real Living Wage as an employee, which means we also pay their National Insurance, their pension, their holiday — twenty-eight days — and their sick pay. Then there is travel time between houses, which we pay for and do not bill you; products, cloths and machines; the laundry of every cloth between houses; insurance; DBS checks; Bea’s time on the phone; and four paid training days a year. What is left is roughly eight per cent, which is the margin of a business that would rather be small and still here in 2040. A firm charging £15 an hour is not more efficient than us. Somebody is simply absorbing the difference, and it is usually the person doing the cleaning.

Fortnightly instead of weekly, with a slightly longer visit, costs about a third less a month and suits most houses better than people expect. A three-hour visit that concentrates on kitchen, bathrooms and floors beats four hours spread thinly. Doing your own laundry and putting our hours into the rooms is usually better value than the other way round. And if you are moving out, an end-of-tenancy clean plus your own hoovering beats paying us to do both. We will suggest all of these at the walk-round unprompted, which is either good business or bad salesmanship depending on who you ask.