£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?

I don’t have a cleaner and I don’t think this is outrageous if someone does a good job. Cleaners travel between jobs so are highly u likely to earn 7 x £25 each day, plus they have overheads, as others have said. And how quick are they?

Don’t pay it then - it’s hardly rocket science 🥱

Mine is £17 per hour, does four hours. If she puts her rates up again I will move to her coming fortnightly instead of weekly as I'm at the max I am prepared to pay weekly. Round my way, this seems to be the way things are going. Cleaners are getting more expensive so people have them less often. I suppose that's good for the cleaners in that their days are filled but it probably means managing more clients overall.

I agree completely. I’m a nurse, 33 years qualified, had to do diploma, top up degree & course specific to role & only on £17/hr! One of our nurses has recently left & set up as a cleaner as it pays better & significantly less risk.

I work for myself in food safety. I can tell you now my hourly rate is higher than £22 an hour. But I'm also not fully employed for 8 hours a day every day.

This is what I'd think a cleaner has to include in their costs. Remember many are self employed or self employed and contracting for another company. So included will be:

• Hourly rate
• Tax
• Travel costs to and from the client
• Travel time (you can't sell time when you're travelling, so for every, say, 2 hours you spend in a house, you won't be able to sell at least 30 minutes either side, unless the next house is literally next door). Over a day they may only be able to actively work for 5-6 hours.
• Insurance (even if contracting for another company, they will need liability insurance)
• Materials, chemicals, cloths etc. Soon mounts up.
• Admin time (invoicing, purchasing materials, reconciling invoices) again, takes surprisingly long especially when you're doing small pieces of work for lots of people
• Other costs. Try running your own business without a laptop, decent internet, a car, appropriate clothing etc.
• Bad debt. I'd imagine in this line of work people not paying is pretty common.
• Lost interest. Most invoicing is in arrears. Significant nowadays even if it's only 7-28 days.
• Mark up from any contracting company (obviously not applicable if directly invoicing.)

Oh, for the days of slavery, feudalism, and serfdom, eh...? Maybe if they're small and undernourished enough, they can clean your chimney while they're at it....

Back in the day cleaners may have been doing it for pin money, now they are doing it to make a living. Do they not deserve to make a living working?

Mine’s £22 plus vat. I really value the service and it’s worth every penny.

It's the same with childcare - another profession that just happens to have a vast majority female workforce. People expect somebody to look after their children so that they can go out to work and earn a living, but are then amazed that the person caring for their precious child might also need and expect to do the same!

It's interesting how people assume that a cleaner should work for as little as they possibly can, but never seem to query how much a plumber, electrician or car mechanic charges for their labour (usually far more per hour than a cleaner).

As a former cleaner I earned it I had smearers people literally smeared feaces around the toilet seat for a few weeks and expected me to be able to get it pristine again I had to carry around brass cleaner wood cleaner some houses used bleach some you couldn't use bleach one I ended up caring for the dog another had money all over the floor so i couldn't vacuum until everything was picked up dirty tissues stuffed everywhere I worked a factory where the men would attempt to use the urinal while we were cleaning it literally the manager had to stand guard

I worked for an agency at that point and I can tell you they ripped us off paying us like staff but treating us as self employed i wasn't paid nearly enough to deal with half of it

Good luck with that.🤣🤣

We pay £20 ph and she brings her own cleaning products. It’s the going rate. It’s not a massive salary is it? I’m not sure how cheap some people think these things should be. Also never had a cleaner who wanted cash, it’s always been bank transfer. Most people who clean as their only job will want bank transfer rather than cash - they’re declaring their income like anyone else is. If you ask a lady down the street and she’s doing it for a bit of cash as pocket money and you’re her only clients then course she isn’t declaring that! But that’s not your concern is it, it’s up to her to declare it.

£20 an hour in the SE (posh town where traders automatically add 10% to any quote just because of the post code). Independent cleaner, not an agency so fewer overheads, though. I think £20-22 seems a bit steep, but not sure whether your area is also expensive (isn’t Cheshire where the footballers and other wealthy elite all live?)

Its avg 20/hr round me. I used to do it. If you live a normal life you can probably only 'sell' 5 - 6hrs a day due to traveltime between sites, so thats 100 - 120/day. No sick or holiday pay. Average that out against a min wage job and it's comparable. 120/day 50 weeks of the year = 30k. Take off all your own admin, insurance etc. Still sound so amazing?

That's not what professional means though. It means you get paid for what you're doing. A professional footballer doesn't have any qualifications above what Bob in the park on a Sunday has, but he has a level of skill that people are willing to pay for, hence he is a professional footballer. A professional cleaner cleans for a living. And deserves to get paid, and WILL get well paid if she is good at it. Just because it's a service people devalue whilst also preferring not to do it themselves doesn't mean it's not a respectable profession.

This is encouraging me to get off my arse and clean my house! But I would say £20ph sounds fair.

It’s £25 an hour here I’m told, we don’t have a cleaner, most cleaners have wait lists because there’s more demand than supply. The only cheaper option is to get a teenager, even they charge £15 an hour, the teens wanted £20 to clean each car too. Supply and demand is being well taught at the local secondary school!

I forgot to mention on my earlier post, self employed people get no paid breaks, no holiday pay, no sick pay and no pension.

So don't underestimate how much that mounts up to.

@WinterNightStars I think that speaks to how nursing is undervalued rather than cleaning overvalued. As someone who is trained in hygiene, I find hospitals fascinating. I often look at cleaning standards and practices and find them wanting (obviously nothing to do with nursing but it speaks to how the NHS undervalues essential employees whose role is important to keep people well).

I don’t mind paying £20/25 an hour for a cleaner. It’s not a very nice job and it’s hard work

We pay 17.50 ph direct to our cleaner in west London. I think she charges more to some other clients. It is a luxury. I think if she were to put it up any more we would clean for ourselves. She might be leaving for her home country soon and I am not sure I will look for a replacement.

Im not sure about this... someone working on a till in asda etc (not belittling this btw) is unlikely to call themselves a professional.

It’s £16 for the cleaner we have, worth every penny and I expect if she has to put her prices up (seems to be the way it’s going) I’ll pay that happily too - up to the point we can afford.

It’s a luxury, but it really does make a positive impact on all our lives and it’s not one I’d give up easily!

I’d want at least that to have to clean for someone else, and I doubt I’d do as good a job.

You don’t sound very nice OP. It’s a female dominated work skill and I’ll happily pay that and actually pay more via a women owned company who actually gives them holiday leave and pays them a proper salary.

From that, I would take that nurses are not paid enough; not that cleaners are paid too much. It doesn't have to be a race to the bottom in majority female occupations.

It's interesting the internalised misogyny that calls this "unskilled".

The case in Birmingham with the equal pay claim was mostly due to refuse workers (mostly male) being paid more and with better perks than cleaners (mostly female). Both deal with waste. Refuse workers do not have to deal with literal crap.

I work in food and hygiene is a tough job. People who are good at it are fast and work bloody hard. I'd challenge anyone who thinks it's unskilled to try what they do.