To think £17 an hour for a cleaner is unreasonable?

[Misericord]

Is genuinely not sure if I am BU here.

We moved to London a while ago and are looking for a cleaner. The one we had out of London was £13 ph (and AMAZING). Most of the people we’ve got in touch with recently haven’t responded and the one that has has said £17ph.

AIBU? Or is this just the cost of a cleaner?

Way too high. I pay £12/hour in East Surrey.

Presumably the cleaner is bright enough to know what people are or are not paying. If £17 is too steep then the price will drop because there will be no demand for that service. As the price is currently £17, we can only assume there is work to be had at that price, so the price is reasonable.

Most of the people we’ve got in touch with recently haven’t responded and the one that has has said £17ph.

So this unskilled manual worker has actually developed both their cleaning skill set and their understanding of basic business principles to a point where they understand the market, they understand supply and demand, and they are pricing accordingly.

Huh, not bad for a dumb old unskilled manual worker, eh?

Haven't RTFT but I pay £15/hr in Yorkshire.

It's on the high end of reasonable.
Cleaners do not earn that much, that £17 per hour includes travel time, fuel, cleaning products, holiday/sick pay and probably other things I haven't thought of.

Also, there is nothing stopping anyone from becoming a cleaner so I don't see why people are complaining that the wage is too high.

We pay £12 p h in Yorkshire

I pay £12.50 per hour plus £5 towards travel/time costs in an afflluent leafy suburb of London (note I am neither affluent nor leafy personally) probably works out at about £14/15 per hour.

I split the travel costs (total £10) with a friend who also uses her as she travels about an hour by bus to get to us.

She is amazing though and whenever I think she's expensive I look happily upon my sprkly (for about 3 hours) house and smile and sigh.

Try a local facebook page for recommendations.

It's likely to be around 30 minutes travelling time for each job as well as an empty calendar around slots -

Clean Sue's house 9.30-10.30, travel to Jim's house, allow for 30 minutes travel (15 minutes plus loading car, late finish at Sue's etc)

Jim's house 11-1pm

Lunch and travel to Karen's house 2-3pm

So if you wanted a job around school hours you've paid yourself £40 if £10 an hour. 5 days a week, £200 a week.

Set aside your provisions for holiday pay, tax, pension, emergency sick pay. Car costs including petrol (travelling to 15 jobs a week, car necessary). Your own mop, hoover etc and wear and tear on those.

You'd be working and travelling and washing your rags, refilling products etc in the evening, working and travelling about 30 hours a week for £200 a week.

As opposed to working 20 hours national minimum wage with possible paid breaks and holiday pay, sick pay etc included with possibly no car costs needed and just a travel in and out of work needed, at £156 a week.

And it's not easy to be self employed and run your own business.

Really paying over £10 per hour is not too much.

All those posting about nurses pay should check your privilege shame on you equating a safe secure employed hourly rate with an insecure self-employed rate.

Mine is £35 for two cleaners, no set time frame other than they do everything that needs doing. They're generally here for about 1 to 1.5 hrs so that's somewhere between £17.50 and £11.66 per hour depending on length of stay. I'm not 100% convinced by this business model, though - she told me that she doesn't clean by the hour, she prefers to do everything that needs doing, but it's really easy to nitpick and say well you didn't clean that mirror or you didn't pull the shower screen out and clean it properly (that particular problem I think is caused by our dodgy shower screen - it's really stiff and she probably thought it was broken and didn't want to make it worse. I'm going to make sure it's left unfolded next time). It means I can only afford them once a fortnight, as well. I know there are people in my area (Midlothian, not in Edinburgh) paying £20 for 2 hours and tbh I'd rather that, if it meant I had someone coming weekly rather than fortnightly.

*So this unskilled manual worker has actually developed both their cleaning skill set and their understanding of basic business principles to a point where they understand the market, they understand supply and demand, and they are pricing accordingly.

Huh, not bad for a dumb old unskilled manual worker, eh?*

Exactly.

I think this is a bit like when I was at school plumbing, electrics etc as a career was deemed a poor man's career choice not a choice for those that went to grammar school.

But then it started to be realised that plumbers etc were earning far more than their grammar school counterparts.

@NoMudNoLotus

*All those that are happy to pay £17 ...

Have you ever considered championing for more pay for nurses ?

Nurses get paid nowhere near that .*

Neither do probation officers, prison officers or PCs, nor do a lot of social workers. People don't seem to have any idea.....

Cleaners are not employees, unless of course they work for a company and then all business rates will have to include the cost of their labour and other running costs.

They are often self-employed therefore not entitled to statutory benefits like holiday pay etc. Business rates still apply for solo cleaners, they must price as high as their local market can bear in order to come in at above min wage (in comparison to an employee). £10 per hour only just cuts it.

If their skill set is good enough and the market will bear them making a decent living with all costs (including travelling around all day, fuel, travel time etc) accounted for and taken into consideration then they need to be charging at the higher end to make it a worth while job for them to be doing full-time.

Cleaning service providers from small solo operators and the big companies charge anything from between £10 per hour and £25 per hour in the UK, but anyone serious about developing their business needs to be at the higher end of that range to make it work.

When we had a regular cleaners they were technically £15 per hour bringing their own kit and cleaning products. They were ok but didn't clean under things and not that I asked them to but they informed me they don't empty bins. so actually they had 2 people doing 1 hour. It gave an ok clean. They never really did my kitchen apart from the sink but we keep things pretty clean.

I had weekly but apparently most people have 2 hours every fortnight ?!

Getting rid of the cleaners is horrible.

I then had a better cleaner, lady on her own. She was £14 per hour bringing own stuff too. She was very thorough, moved things etc but said she needed 3 hours to do my house. I only gave her 2 hours so some things wouldn't get done. In the end I couldn't justify it once my baby was out of the newborn phase.

I'm now my own cleaner due to finances. I'm much better but not very regular.

I'm in outer Surrey if that helps.

The people saying more pay for others per hour doesn't make sense. You are working a shift. A cleaner doesn't work every hour .. at most they could go one to the other but there would be unpaid gaps and most people want mornings etc. So I imagine at most 2-3 clients a day and that sounds exhausting if they are doing a thorough job.

My cleaner is cheaper than that but - if you don't want to pay it, don't pay it. They can tell you their rate, and you can accept or not.

But cleaners don't get sick pay, holiday pay, maternity leave, national insurance contributions, pensions or a christmas party. And they have unpaid travel time between appointments. So you might easily have to raise your hourly rate to get to the point where you had pro rata minimum wage. I expect they're not raking it in.

I cleaned 31 hours a weeks, for just over a month, a morning shift and evening shift in two different places. It was tiring but managable. I actually felt way more energetic on my days off, and I lost over a stone, that my cleaning job now, keeps off. 16 hours of physical labour/exercise is hard to make up in your free time, when there isn't the extra incentive of being paid. I think if I had a desk job my weight would suffer, (have heard other cleaners say similar).

This is extremely helpful - thanks so much for all replies. Really useful to have a bench mark - and recommendations too!

The £17 is regardless of hours worked, which is why I was even more surprised as we would be asking for about three hours a week.

Thank you!

Amy

Ps I always pay my cleaner when I go on holiday so that they aren’t out of pocket - but that was without such an hourly rate!