Is this incredibly expensive for a cleaner?

[Tinselandlights]

We have moved and left behind our old cleaner. We were in London and paid her £30 to clean our two bedroom tiny house. It took her just over two hours.

We've now moved to a four bed house (two double rooms, two tiny rooms upstairs), and have gone with a cleaning agency. They are charging us £91 a month for two hours a fortnight (two of them come every fortnight and do an hour together, once a month upstairs and once downstairs). It seems as though we need more hours from them to get a decent clean, but at roughly £45 a visit, they are on about £22 for an hours' work - is this incredibly expensive or usual? I appreciate they need to live, pay office staff and their pension etc, and this does include cleaning products but it seems loads!

I have previously worked as a cleaner so am not trying to get away with paying less than market rate, but our house isn't massive and they aren't even cleaning one of the bedrooms as my DH is using it as a study.

Sounds a lot to me - hourly rate I pay is £12.30

You’ll always pay more with an agency and that actually seems really reasonable to me.
£91 a month for 2 cleans so £45.50 for each 2 hours for 2 people so essentially you’re paying just over £11 an hour per person.
I paid more in Yorkshire for just over 2 hours with 2 people.

Sorry I’ve just seen an hour together not 2 hours. Slightly less reasonable then but not terrible

@Idontgiveagriffindamn

You’ll always pay more with an agency and that actually seems really reasonable to me. £91 a month for 2 cleans so £45.50 for each 2 hours for 2 people so essentially you’re paying just over £11 an hour per person. I paid more in Yorkshire for just over 2 hours with 2 people.

I think it's 1 hour person, 2 hours in total

It's way expensive imo. I don't have a cleaner now but a while ago when I did it was £10 ph, it can't have gone up that much

I used to pay I person £25.00 for 2.5 hours a week ,

Our cleaner charges £15 ph but we live in the SE, rurally, everything costs more here!

Was your last cleaner independent? You always pay more through the agencies as they need to make a profit too. I would imagine the cleaners themselves are getting about half the fee. The rest will be going to the agency.

It sounds very expensive to me. We pay 12.50 ( not through an agency). We approached an agency who quoted £25 an hour. Turns out, she’d just gone over the VAT threshold and was passing that cost on to new clients. The cleaners she had on her books certainly weren’t getting anywhere near that ( minimum wage, I expect). We found a SE cleaner in the end.

£15 an hour is the going rate round here.

Our cleaners do 2 hours a week and charge the same.

@HowToBringABlushToTheSnow

Our cleaner charges £15 ph but we live in the SE, rurally, everything costs more here!

Same. Rural SE as well.

I think £22 per person per hour sounds very expensive. I pay £11 and wouldn't consider this a very cheap area.

Cleaners in my area are in high demand at the moment, I don’t blame them for having higher prices tbh. Clearly people are paying those prices if that’s what they’re charging.

I pay £50pw for my cleaner to do 4 hours which does our 4 bed, London house - so £12.50ph. I think she's good value at that rate, but she's independent rather than through an agency. We also buy the cleaning products. I think it's quite a lot, but it doesn't surprise me as they are agency, I'd see if you can find a local independent cleaner. Although it means we have no cover if she is on holiday/ill etc and I doubt very much if she is insured if she broke something (she never has in 10 years).

Thanks all. @BelleBlueBell you're right, it is two people coming for an hour.

My DH and I had a row about it this morning because he had booked them and says I am critical if he ever does anything - I asked for a breakdown of what the money is going on because as several PPs have said, I can't imagine the cleaners are getting more than about £12 an hour.

£22.75 / hour for cleaning is expensive, but the worst part is I bet half of that goes to your cleaners and the rest to their boss. So youre not even getting much loyalty for that rate. I wouldnt use an agency for that reason. I ask other mums at the school, or people at work, if they have someone they would recommend, always worked well for me.

£11 per person per hour seems pretty reasonable tbh, my cleaner is £15 per person per hour.

It’s not £11 ph it’s £22 ph per person. Just change OP and find someone more reasonable. They don’t seem to be cleaning that efficiently although having said that 2 (man) hours every 2 weeks isn’t a lot for a 4 bed house

It does sound expensive at £22ph. We are rural SE and pay £14 per hour for 4 hours a week.

I'm in the South East. We don't have a cleaner now but pre-Covid we would leave £18 cash for the cleaner for 2 hours.

There was also a separate agency fee which I think was something like £25 a month.

So yes yours sounds quite expensive.

I’m a cleaner in the north, I charge £20 an hour.
People pay it because I’m reliable, experienced, insured , provide references from long term(5years +) clients etc. Pay peanuts get monkeys.

I wonder if you’re getting charged more because the frequency is low - as a PP says 2x 2-hourly visits a fortnight between probably means it’s harder/more labour intensive to clean/maintain?

(Sympathies on the husband moaning, mine likes to get the similar hump if I enquire into decisions/costs)

I paid £88 per fortnight to an agency - two people for two hours, so £22 an hour. Out of that came admin, insurance, any pension contributions the company paid for the employees and their national insurance, and the ridiculous branded car they came in. I am pretty sure the actual cleaners only got minimum wage or slightly above.

@DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou

£15 an hour is the going rate round here.

Our cleaners do 2 hours a week and charge the same.

Yes, same here but ours do 4 ours a week. We have a big house.

£12-15 is more normal, agencies are expensive though

It depends, if they do an amazing job and get lots done to a high standard then it's worth it, if they do a so so job then it's not. I don't mind paying more to get a really good service.