Whilst I am sure there are exceptions people don’t generally visit their beauty therapist or use a taxi driver for the same slot every week. A milkman is providing you with goods so is not comparable.
Loads of people have a regular taxi to work or school or as part of their daily care needs package. I disagree about the milkman – yes, it is providing goods, but a very large part of it is the service, especially nowadays when few people have them, so it isn’t just going to every door on the street like in the past. It isn’t at all comparable to going in to Tesco and taking a bottle of milk from their fridge shelf.
In my case my cleaner started doing 6 hours a week for me. She now does min 16. She gave up other jobs and put her eggs (mostly) in one basket. The least I can do is treat her decently.
I’m not her employer. She does more hours for me than any other single family. But she cleans more hours for other people in total than she does for me.
These two statements conflict each other, but as other PPs have said, you want to avoid putting too many eggs in one basket without the security of an employment contract. If she does at least 16 hours a week for you (you must have a colossal house!) and you care about her job security, you would be as well making the effort to employ her properly – there’s nothing stopping an employee from doing extra jobs in addition to their main one, as long as they declare their income.
I work as a cleaner and it's a very physical job. I also spend time travelling between clients. The result is that a cleaner could never work full time hours say 9-5 like you could in other NMW roles. I'd be on my knees.
I charge £12 an hour for a good service.
Oh, I know that it’s a physically exhausting job – but isn’t that the same for people doing the same job but on an employed/agency basis? I don’t think you can imply that those on NMW aren’t providing a good service, just because they aren’t SE. Also, office and shop work aren’t the only alternatives by way of tiredness comparison – I doubt that most builders float in home after a full day at work, all full of beans and bounding with energy.
As I said, employed people have to travel to and from work and some, including a lot of carers, don’t get paid for their travel time between lots of clients, even if they are employed and on the payroll. I’m not saying that you should only charge NMW: I’m saying aren’t all of these factors why you charge considerably more – including extra travel and dead-time between clients?
There's a strange inference on here that cleaners are ripping their customers off by charging more than NMW 
or that they should easily have savings or be able to cope because their hourly rate is slightly higher?
Why the confused face after NMW? Yes, it isn’t a lot, but plenty of people DO only get paid that for their very hard work, it isn’t just a theoretical consolation prize beneath everybody’s dignity. I’m saying that, for right or wrong, most people consider the job of cleaning a NMW-level job, but pay SE cleaners significantly more because being SE requires more income to cover all of the extra costs and uncertainty, and it saves them the massive effort, commitment and expense of having to become employers rather than clients.
What is the reason for cleaners charging several pounds above NMW
On this I disagree. It’s a market like any other and I pay a good rate because I want it to be a good job. I also want someone on time for the right amount of hours. In London this means paying more than nmw (usually £12 to £15)
Are you saying you disagree that SE cleaners do charge more than NMW or that they should? That was only the first part of my question – I was clearly not saying “Justify WHY you charge more!” but asking “Surely the reason you NEED to charge more is to cover all of these factors”.
Whoever asked about cleaners charging above minimum wage.. Say you start with 12 p/h. Take out insurance, fuel, products, the one week annual leave I allow myself (can't afford to take more). My accountancy fee (for not working under the radar). I'm working from the moment I arrive at my first client to the time I leave my last. That 12p/h isn't 12 by the time all the deductions are made.
To reiterate, this is just confirming my point about WHY SE people charge more per hour than an employed person would receive. I am not saying that SE folk shouldn’t be charging more than NMW. Incidentally, employed people also have a lot of deductions from their earnings, once they’ve used their tax-free allowance, and don’t get their travel costs to and from work paid for either.
Just out of interest, to the cleaners expecting clients to keep paying them when they’re prevented from working and earning by COVID or whatever, because you’ve built up a special personal relationship: does that relationship work both ways in that you would clean for them free of charge for a few weeks or months if a long-standing regular client suddenly found themselves unable to pay you because of losing their job, sickness or whatever?