Cleaner charging up to £45 an hour!

It's one of these things that you don't notice how good someone is until they're gone. The OP says the flats are basically clean and tidy anyway and there's not much to do. That's probably BECAUSE the cleaner guy is good as his job and keeps it that way. I'd wager the OP would soon notice if the guy left and someone "cheap" came in to do it instead.

This happened with our village Parish council. The council engaged a "lengthsman", basically a self employed glorified odd job man who did all kinds of things in the village, i.e. repairing broken benches and fences, cutting grass in council owned communal areas, gritting the footpaths in winter, cutting over-hanging hedges and cutting back weeds etc from footpaths. The annual accounts showed him being paid a hefty whack of money and at annual Parish council meetings, the "usual suspects" of local Daily Mail readers would always query the cost and suggest cheaper alternatives etc. Eventually, the guy retired. The council found a replacement who was cheaper. Inevitably at the next annual Parish council meeting, the same Mail readers were complaining about the state of the village, the litter, the damaged benches, the overhanging weeds/hedges, lack of gritting when it was icy etc etc! Basically, the old guy just noticed things as he went around the village and "just did it" when he saw something that needed doing. The new guy would only do something with a written purchase order, so every last thing had to go through a parish council meeting, meaning delays etc and those delays inevitably meant things got worse meaning more time to rectify and higher cost. The cost of the new guy is a lot more than the original guy, but the outcomes are far worse!

As I say, you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

He doesnt charge per hour, and by the sounds of it is very good at their job.

Pay someone £20/hr and watch them take 3 hours to do the same work.

The OP wants him washing the bins.

There are always people in the world who think cleaners should clean from start to finish, more is fine as long as they don't expect to be paid. Less is unacceptable, even if everything is done.

The OP needs to stop stalking him.

Exactly.

I'm employed but have a side freelance business. More than half of my freelance earnings are absorbed by taxes and overhead, and that's without "paying" myself for admin, marketing and other chores.

The complaint about this cleaner really gives me the rage.

@PinotPony ain't that the truth! We had one particular delight who did not understand the difference between the budget and the accounts and so spent ages demanding to see "invoices" for the £2000 we had budgeted for gardening and grounds maintenance in the next year. 😐

YABU and are a right CF.
From that he deducts tax, NI, pension, something to cover sick pay, something to allow him holiday pay, supplies, insurances etc etc. Then there’s all the administrative work that he has to do, which means he’s not on a job and therefore not being paid.
That amount is what his business charges, NOT what he earns. Ask your employer how much you cost them per year. It will be around 3 times your salary.

There’s always one resident in every block of flats who has nothing better to do with their time than question every decision made by the management company, because they think they could do a better job. They usually make life difficult for everyone.

OP, if you’re happy with the standard of cleaning, give it a rest! As everyone has told you on here, the cost seems reasonable.

It sounds very good value to me. Stop monitoring the cleaner's comings and goings it's weird.

How are you so sure that you are seeing every time he visits the flats? Do you never leave, and constantly watch the security cameras?

You've said yourself, the communal areas are always clean. He's doing a good job, yet you want to micromanage what he does, or contract out to a company rather than an individual - for no real reason except that you've seen him be there for an hour sometimes.

And people think highly of him - the utter bastard!

Do you, perhaps, own a cleaning company in need of contracts?

Also OP you say you have no visibilty of the costs your Managing Agents incur. You have the right to make a Sectio 22 request, this means you can see all of the documents that make up the sercive charge - so receipts, invoices etc..

Don't complain of not having rights when you apparently have not researched the ones you do have.

Exactly.

I can't even begin to understand the mentality of someone who would Scrooge over this. It sounds like a bargain.

so £117 a year for each flat for communal cleaning?

Are you mad OP? You say yourself that the building is kept clean, and has been for 12 years, reliably, and he also tests the alarms, and you're miffed because some weeks it only takes him an hour?

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. He sounds great. I'd pay him 45/week to come and clean my floors and stairs!

This thread is very embarrassing for you OP.

Yabu.
Less than fifty euro a week to clean the common areas of a building that size, as well as testing alarms and emergency lighting, is a bargain. He is reliable and the work is carried out to good standard.
Aside the amount charged, your main complaint is that the cleaner is liked. Surely most of this is people appreciating the work he does, his reliability and responsible nature. If he was doing a shit job and they were still keeping him on because he was laugh or they socialised with him I would understand, but that doesn't seem to be the case, you have no issues with the standard of the work.

I think your cleaner is a victim of his own success.
If the building is cleaned and maintained to a good standard £45 / hour is cheap.
You could have someone charge £25 / hour and take two/ three hours to do same work as your cleaner does now.

No-one would do this job for less.

If you employ a cleaner, or someone to do a task (I use Task Rabbit occasionally for one-off jobs that I can't do myself) there will almost always be a two hour minimum charge.
It's not worth anyone's travel time for a one hour charge of, say, £25.

This is quite bizarre. You are wound up about trying to save yourself maybe £1 a week. And setting up a management company would be a ridiculous amount of work, responsibility and pain (and cost), in order to do so.

This thread is hilarious. The OP would rather take the time and trouble of setting up a management company in order to, essentially, oust a well-liked cleaner out of their job for having the audacity of charging her roughly £2 a week to clean the communal areas of her block of flats. Imagine being that fucking tight-fisted and mean-spirited.

She practically closed her front door in my face after this!

Right enough, I'd probably close the door in the face of someone who begrudges a hard-working self-employed person that everyone else seems happy with, £45 a visit, but would yet be happy to pay the same amount to some grubby agency.

So...your cleaner leaves everything on 5 storeys spotless at all times but you feel aggrieved that you have to reward him with the princely sum of £2.25 a week?
Well of course you're not being unreasonable. The lazy slacker is clearly rolling in clover. What a bloody cheek. I think you should go around all your neighbours and complain bitterly. Then, for good measure, you should post all over the internet about this waste of space. Perhaps you could contact the Daily Mail too.
What a loser. I'll leave you to ponder who that last sentence refers to.

I think what we pay for the cleaning would be fair if it was a company who sent staff, but I think it's a lot for someone who works for themselves.

It is a cleaning company. The owner sends himself to clean the building in addition to paying all the expenses and doing all the admin of running a company. This is how being self-employed works... you're responsible for filling the roles of both employee and employer.

You seem to have made some really baseless assumptions about this cost being too high despite people who have more knowledge telling you otherwise and are refusing to let those assumptions go.

Wind your neck in. The guys gets £45 per week from your building in total. That’s all he gets. And you think it should be less? Do you actually believe you will find a cheaper cleaning company than £45 per week TOTAL? Not per flat, but the total charge is £45 per week.

You will never find another cleaner who will do that.

You sound like an idiot.

Well are you unhappy with what he does? You haven't mentioned.

The place is well maintained as you say, so why do you begrudge it?

Seriously OP you really don't grasp the fact normal people are happier not to over complicate their lives is things are well run.
You go ahead and get your directors together (you'd need more than one), sort out all the paperwork, organise yearly AGMs, annual budget and annual accounts which will need to be submitted by a specific deadline every year. Also you'd need a business bank accountant for the company with x number of signatories. All of these are headaches which will not be making material savings compared to the current setup. Unless a lot of you residents volunteer to do a fair bit free if charge. I'm guessing you'd be happy to work for free in the name of communal good.
Let it be. The guy is doing a good job. He is trustworthy and well liked. No idea why you dislike him so much or why you begrudge whatever he's earning. He's not stealing from you. Under £3/week FFS, that's the cost of a loaf of bread.

You really don't understand what is involved in being a director like this!
You will have 19 neighbours complaining to you about everything. You will end up thinking £45 a week was so trivial when you're spending all your time be hounded by neighbours over really petty things like how much you're spending on a new cleaner AND a contractor to test the fire alarms AND why isn't the place as clean as it used to be.

This really isn't worth the fight!