£22 per hour for cleaning - REALLY?!

[DorotheaShottery]

I was thinking the other day "Dot - you've had enough of this cleaning lark - get yourself a cleaner!"

I put some feelers out on FB and it appears the going rate is £20-£22 per hour!!

Is that normal in the not-SE-not-Cheshire parts of the UK? AIBU to think it's ridiculous?

Self employed don't get paid holidays, statutory sick pay, employers pension contributions, training paid by an employer, equipment/materials paid by and employer, travel costs paid by an employer, nor paid for administration/management time, marketing, accountants fees, insurance etc.

I always tell my clients to charge a minimum of twice the national minimum wage, so around £25 per hour to cover all the time they spend that they can't charge for and all the costs they incur and risks of unpaid time, bad debts, etc.

You really can;t compare wages of a worker with the charges of someone self employed.

My cleaner advertised on FB and I pay by bank transfer.
Also my window cleaner and the guy who cuts my grass, all bank transfer. It's not as common as it was for people to demand cash.

But, charging more cause you chose a seasonal job, with months not working (you could do other work!) is OK compared to a cleaner just working for wage?

Unless their customers all live next door to eachother, their working day will be a lot longer than 7 hours due to commuting between jobs etc that they can't charge for. Realistically, for being 7 hours a day out of the house, it's more like 4 hours actually working IF they can schedule all their jobs to be right after each other so to minimise wasted time between jobs.

That also doesn't cover holidays, sick time, time buying equipment/supplies, time doing the admin, book-keeping, annual meeting with accountant, going to the bank, etc etc.

People who are employed really struggle to understand all the "extras" in terms of time and costs that self employed have to bear.

You simply can't compare as it's too different.

Someone who has a lot more non-chargeable time due to seasonality, weather, etc HAS to bear that in mind when setting their charges. So yes, it's obviously going to be more expensive to hire someone who can't work all year round compared to someone who can, i.e. an indoor job not affected by seasonality or weather. Who else do you think is going to pay the gardener when it's snowing and he can't do any chargeable work? The tooth fairy??

They can BOTH charge what they want
People wll either pay for the service or they wont 💁

Cause then they would've working cash in hand and none likes that do they? They would be accused of being awful people and threads about them not paying taxes would happen. Also, cash isn't any good really, if you want to show you can afford housing, loans, mobile phone bills, clients offering cash keeps this myth going. Clients think them not having to pay vat /taxes helps or reduces material prices self employed people have to buy.
Cash in hand clients expect exact same rewards properly invoiced clients get for some reason too?
Cash in hand clients work can't be shared on social media pages, which is where advertising is now

They could get another job?
I'm self employed, my response was just to the varying aspects of how jobs are priced are viewed. I'm totally for anyone setting there price, it's the clients choice whom they pick.
OP not being happy with reasonable charges for a service she's looking for, was my gripe, not you!

In a number of local authorities the organised opposition to women getting fair pay has been from male dominated unions.

I see people are also still wilfully pretending that an employee hourly rate is the same as a business hourly charge. Either people are really stupid or self justifying squeezing the actual hourly wage of low paid women.

Exactly.

It's supply and demand. If there were loads of cleaners willing to work legitimately and do a good job for less then the going rate would be less, but as it is someone charging £22 and paying both employer's and employees NI contribution, pension, and also paying for damage and liability insurance and factoring in completely unpaid travel time between jobs and unpaid admin time including not only business paperwork but communication when people want to reschedule etc. is still ending up with not much more than minimum wage, for a lot more faff.

We had a fabulous cleaner until a few years ago but she decided to retrain and return to employment instead of self employment as all the extra stuff people don't think about aside from the actual cleaning meant she would be better off and less stressed.

We advertised for a cleaner offering £25 an hour for three hours per week and paid holiday for someone with proof of insurance who'd give us receipts - but only got applications from people wanting to work cash in hand with no proof of insurance which we weren't happy with. There are
agencies but from friends who use them they're very hit and miss, send different cleaners each time and don't always treat cleaners well. The agency staff also don't tend to have their own transport and want/ need picking up from train stations if you don't live on a public transport route!

Here good, reliable, independent private cleaners mostly get work by word of mouth and don't need to advertise, they charge more than £22 and they're like gold dust!

So we don't have a cleaner even though we'd pay £25 an hour to one we could rely on and who is legit and trustworthy.

My Gardner is paid £15 an hour so not sure that’s right ,the ongoing rate for grass cutting weeding and low shrubs is that one . If you mean tree surgeons and people cutting things high up they use especializes equipment like cherry picker trucks and they are actually certified or the ones I had to use last year where . But they normally charge per work .

Sorry but I think you are nit picking. No I don't commute every hour or every other hour but my commute is 1hr 15 mins each way so that's 2.5 hrs a day which equals approx 7 x 20min trips and still nobody pays for my commute, nor would I expect them to.

Don’t think that’s the case in this thread . Factory workers are mostly men too and they get paid awful . As a example . I think this thread is about the fairness of paying unskilled workers this much and the reality is for me it’s not , but it’s supply and demand so others will be fine with it . I think there are much worse jobs getting paid a lot less . Should they all maybe earn more ? Probably yes but then we would need to pay more to all the ones that are professional jobs so again that would just increase the cost of living . It’s a bit like hairdressers charging £180 for a cut . I think it’s ridiculous but enough people pay it that they think it’s normal

I pay £20/hour in a not cheap part of London. I buy my own products and also pay her to have 3-4 paid weeks off in summer.

she was only £16/hr 2 years ago but raised prices twice as she needed to re COL. she bunches a few of us in same street together to keep her own costs down. I’d pay a bit more as she’s lovely and kind to the cats - but not £25/hr yet

Look up some of the cases on this - all the big cases are led by unions opposing pay equity.

In factories, male coded jobs pay more per hour than female coded jobs. That is why in 2026 we still have a sizeable pay gap between women and men.

Your hairdresser charging £180 pounds is a business charging you for a service - not receiving £180 per hour wage with all the nice permanent contract benefits on top. You are also entirely free to go to another hairdresser who is cheaper.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp? If someone quotes you for fitting a boiler do you assume the bill divided by the number of hours labour is the plumbers hourly wage?

There is absolutely no way I would let a bob-a-job teenager loose in my garden for weeding, mowing or cutting.

My gardener charges 20 quid an hour - someone who is knowledgable about the correct way to cut a hedge and the expertise to use the necessary equipment so as not to cross-contaminate, and knows how to compost the cuttings or shred branches. Someone who can maintain and fill the petrol mower and knows how long or short to cut the grass and when, depending on the season. Someone who can tell a weed from a shrub or perennial. Mundane jobs they may be, but also skilled.

@puddingwisdom but the conveyancers are not getting £300 per hour!

More like £20 per hour

The first one specializes in deep cleans and end of tenancy.

But the cleaner that said this was physically in the house lol. I asked her to show me the dirt that she was seeing and I didn't lol. She couldnt

This is surely just rage bait.

For one thing, if you're desperate for money why would you charge £10 an hour when the going rate is £20? Undercutting only requires going 50p or £1 under the competition's price.

For another even ignoring the fact that they'd need to travel to your house, working for your suggested £10 would be below minimum wage, therefore illegal, so you are saying it would be a good thing for people to work shady illegal cash in hand jobs without paying NI and without being insured.

I pay £15 / hour and provide the products. But I've known her for years.

Lol people here think solicitors get loads and most won’t . Our juniors earn £16 to £20 per hour , Conveyancing solicitors even if it’s years of experience earn less than £30 . Most have huge student loans to pay on top of taxes etc too .

Ok maybe that cleaner got it wrong due to lack of experience in the industry or maybe she was trying to rip you off, I don’t know, but it sounds unusual and not typical behaviour of most professional cleaners who are trading legally, and yet you did say that most of them do this?

If this keeps on happening to you then you might be looking in the wrong place for your cleaners, try word of mouth referrals or local recommendations then you’ll get a better quality service verified by others experience

No pension contributions, sick pay, holiday pay, guaranteed hours... being self employed is much more expensive than having a regular job.

Do you know of a single solicitor, chartered accountant, engineers etc who earn £22 per hour????

A 45k salary is £22 an hour depending on hours worked.

I would (and I do) just live with a level of dust that is not Instagram worthy. Paying £3.5k a year for 3 hours per week cleaning seems crazy.