£22 per hour for cleaning - REALLY?!

I charge 20ph in Cambridge. I have liability insurance up to 5mil, business car insurance and a DBS certificate. I supply all my own equipment.

I take payment in cash because I have had too many clients be late with bank transfers, sometimes by a week or 2. I’m a single parent and have bills to pay. I do have a business account that I deposit my cash payments into with paperwork kept for my taxes.

I know I do a good job and I could charge more for the area, but I have spent time cultivating a strong client base, leaving jobs that were unreliable payers or who have unrealistic expectations.

£20 an hour - supplies all cleaning products and materials, does a brilliant job and is totally worth that

All those people are free to start their own cleaning businesses if it’s so wonderfully well paid 🙄funnily enough none of them ever do!

If I employ someone in my own business and offer them £15/h it costs me about £21/h as an employer by the time I factor in pension, holiday pay, tax etc. (I don’t run a cleaning business)
Cleaners may also have costs like travel, insurance, supplies, parking on top of that rate. Why does this seem too much to you?

Self employed so need for cover pension tax and ni plus holidays

as well as pli - equipment - travelling time

cleaning is actually quite hard physical work and doing it 6/9hrs a day is tiring

there will be cheaper ones but it’s not a terrible wage /cost

Also, being a cleaner has a low bar to entry, most people could do the skill even if they don't have the stamina, but it also has a low bar to exit. If you don't pay enough, cleaners leave, move on, get other clients, find other jobs they prefer more.

That's what you are paying for, very few people do 40 hour weeks and there is no career progression, so you are essentially paying £20 for an hour of their time.

If you think this is an hour in which you can do your own cleaning instead, you are not obliged to pay!

There is a shortage of cleaners in my area, there's always people looking and most good cleaners have either none or very few slots.

I think it's because of Air B and B as well, we are in a touristy area and many people simply don't want to do the changes/bedding/clean up after holidaymakers.

I once worked as a chambermaid, the beds were killers, I lasted about a week!

But how much are they actually going to earn per week/oer year? Not many will get a regular 40 hours a week work will they? And clients drop them without notice so that's a loss to carry until they manage to replace them

Mine is £23 p/h
commuter town east anglia area
is the going rate / slightly on the lower side

Yes but the over paid spreadsheet readers won’t be able to afford the overpriced life saving cleaners if they’re all replaced with AI

The cleaners in my job are superb and as commonly said, they're the very first people you would notice hadn't turned up. They deserve to be paid more and home cleaners are no different.

I am currently struggling to find a good cleaner. I was someone reliable, who can work fast with good communication skills with common sense. I would pay £22 / hr for that.

What I'm not paying £22 for someone to not turn up, flit around plumping cushions but not changing sheets, to be on their phone at the same time or not speak a word of English (no I'm not writing everything down that I want doing so you can Google translate it, I don't have time).

All the above, and more, have happened on recent trials.

I think people think oh the going rate is X whether they have any skills or not.

There are professional cleaners. Dont be rude...what do you do love? 😘

Agreed but everyone has to cut their coat depending on their cloth.

@DorotheaShotterya proper cleaner should come to your house and see exactly what you want done. Then, should give you a price for the whole job - forget an hourly rate. The first clean is always more expensive to get it to a standard, then going forward you pay less for a standard clean either weekly or fortnightly.
They are providing a service, please don't try to knock the price down. You wouldn't do that to a plumber 🪠

Most folk don't realise how dirty their house is 🤷🏻

I wouldn't do it for less than £20 an hour, I have a mortgage and bills to pay - I can't live on 'pin money'.

If you do three 2 hour slots a day with travel in between you're only making £120 and out of that you're paying for products, equipment, petrol, gloves, tax, insurance, sick pay and holiday pay. Plus spending time on your marketing and business admin.

It's not a huge amount of money.

Ok fine but those who earn less than the cleaners won't think it's good value. Take carers through agencies for example

"By that logic, you want the taxpayer to subsidise your shopping, because many supermarket workers are in minimum wage!"

I've not come on here complaining about paying the going rate.

How much do you think they should charge? I'd say that's very reasonable.

Issue is that there's not that many very good cleaners.I had one and she was great but since she moved the 5 after that weren't really very good. One set gave a swish round with broom and mop and left house after 35 mins rather than the hour. That's just a pisstake

AI is never going to clean our houses but those over paid so important professions reading spreads sheets and having important meetings, well that's another matter. During Covid cleaning saved more lives than any 'profession' including the medical profession.

By that logic, you want the taxpayer to subsidise your shopping, because many supermarket workers are in minimum wage!

You just want the tax payer via UC to pay for your cleaning.

You can require your cleaner to be regulated and certified.

Minimum wage workers get holiday pay and usually sick pay… self employed don’t so things like that are also factored in to price