Cleaner charging up to £45 an hour!

[Aanothernamechanger]

Regular MNuser but NC for this...

Need perspective, and also interested from anyone else who lives in a flat. I bought my flat in 2021. The building is a coming up to 18 years old. There are 5 floors and 20 flats in total.

Overall, the building is in very good condition, as it's generally treated well by people who live / visit here, and is well maintained, although this comes at a cost, hence my AIBU?

Our service charges are approx £2000 per flat per year, and I've recently (November) had the latest annual statement sent to me. On the breakdown of costs, the cleaning for the interior of the building comes in at £2340, which I work out to be £45 per flat per week. I hadn't given this any thought on previous years, probably because it seemed OK when compared to all the other expenses we have, and probably because the building never looks dirty, so I figured someone must be doing something - and I word that very carefully, in as much as I am not saying "you can tell when the cleaner has been", I am saying "it always looks clean, from one day to the next".

Anyway, it never occurred to me that the cleaner we have works for himself. I just assumed he probably worked for a company or an agency or whatever. But I was chatting to him in passing recently, and it cropped up in conversation that he is not an employee of anyone.

So here's my AIBU - 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. Added to which, I can see from my window (I WFH most days) when he arrives and leaves, and sometimes it's only an hour or just over! I queried this with the management company, and they said he (the cleaner) does not charge an hourly rate, he charges a fixed price per calendar month to turn up once a week to "maintain" (their words) the building. They say that the amount of time he takes to clean is at his discretion as he is trusted to keep on top of the cleaning schedule, and that some times he might be on site for several hours (I have never seen this, although with there being five floors there is no knowing where he is when he's here!).

I asked them what they do to make sure we are paying a fair price, and they admitted that it's been a long time since anyone else quoted for the cleaning, but said to me they hire loads of other cleaning companies for other buildings they manage, and "consider" (again their words) that the price would likely go up if anyone else was to take it over. Added to this, they said the cleaner tests the fire alarm and emergency lights which is something they say they could not trust most of their sub-contractors to do, as they don't always send the same people to clean and can't rely on them to do it properly. They said if they swapped cleaners then we'd have to pay separately for a member of the management company to come out each week to do the tests. I am not sure I believe any of that, but hey. They also said our cleaner is exceptionally reliable and very well liked by them and residents in my building and other buildings he cleans for them.

I have spoken to some of the neighbours about it to gauge opinion, which isn't easy as about half of the flats are rented, so the tenants don't care as they don't have to pay the service charges, their landlords do. However, there is one lady who has lived here since the flats were built, and until now she was always quite friendly with me, but when I mentioned this situation she became incredibly defensive (I didn't know until she told me, but she also pays the cleaner to do work in her flat from time to time and clearly thinks the sun shines out of his bum-hole), saying that he'd been cleaning the building for at least 12 years to the best of her memory, and that before then they'd had all sorts of problems with the building not being cleaned properly or regularly, and said there's no way she wants to go through all that again. She practically closed her front door in my face after this!

But I still can't get over how much our cleaner gets paid every week and I think the management company isn't doing enough to ensure we pay as little as possible. AIBU?

@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. 😐

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.

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.

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.

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.