£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?

Southwest here; paying mine £17 per hour. She uses my materials. Father in East Anglia pays the same.

have only read OPs posts.

Well, OP you have the choice: pay up or put up. The price of something is what the market will take, and as you may have already found out there are often waiting lists for good cleaners, and good cleaners can pick and choose their customers.

The choice is entirely with the customer: pay, or do it yourself.

That seems high but it sounds like it's just the market in your area. I'm in an affluent part of the Midlands and pay my self-employed cleaner £50 for three hours, so £16.67 per hour. She brings her own cleaning products, cloths, and hoover.

I think £22 is reasonable. Some people's homes are absolutely filthy and disgusting. If you could charge more, would you really consider cleaning someone's toilet for minimum wage?

MN generally hates anyone who is self employed - they think they’re either tax dodging or taking the piss.

Having seen inside a lot of houses where people have no idea how to clean, I think being able to do it to a high standard within defined timeframes hits the standard of professional.

And of course men generally seem to need specific instruction in the art of cleaning so it must be incredibly skilled if the natural leaders of the world need stringent guidance 🙃

Edit: argh, quote disappeared!

I’m not interested in having a cleaner because I want to do things on my own schedule and not have to tidy up because the cleaner is coming the next day! That’s my main reason.

But I’m also not going to pay someone more than I earn an hour to do something I can do! Once you get to the £20+ mark, well that’s more than I get an hour once my deductions for tax etc are taken out.

I also don’t hire decorators or gardeners for the same reason.

It's not like, how much do you think it costs an hour to employ someone on PAYE?

South east - I’d say that’s probably about right. We stopped having a cleaner during Covid as DH was on the vulnerable list. We were paying £18 then with them supplying products.
I miss them…they used to do 4 hrs but 2 or 3 of them would come together so they wern't here too long. Children’s teddy bears posed on beds/chairs, loo roll ends folded into little hotel origami shapes. I loved them! My robot hoover is no replacement!

that's a pretty rubbish comment. "pin money"?

That's absolutely your choice to make, so all good. I wouldn't dream of paying the prices to go to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant when I could go to a much cheaper place or make the meal myself, so I don't go. I highly doubt that Gordon cares about losing my potential custom, though!

See above the PP from a regulated profession, dental hygienist. Ditto care workers- domicilary care workers also travel client to client, paid minimum wage and are regulated in most UK countries. New Teachers, teaching assistants, nurses, childcare workers, security professionals. All regulated. Most at or near minimum wage.

I had a cleaner briefly when I went back to work after mat leave, their hourly rate was more than mine and it was absolutely worth it. I don't think cleaners are inherently worth less money per hour than me.

It was £20 when I had one a decade ago… that’s only £8 above minimum wage and has to include travel costs, equipment, insurance , pension, sick pay etc

Its a luxury service…

Interesting someone referenced conveyancing. A role which is likely to be automated (at least in part) going forward.

Cleaning is unlikely to ever be fully automated. Expect roles which require human intervention to be increasingly valued and remunerated. Ironically, many of these are roles in traditionally female led professions.

In the past, we paid well for roles where there was a lot of danger or heavy manual work. Then those jobs got automated or outsourced to other countries. A lot of the roles we paid well and valued in the past, including some legal work will be similarly automated going forward. And with people not skilled to take it on (yes, cleaning is a skill) then there is also the demand and not the supply. Plumbing didn't used to be a well paid profession. Is now and will continue to be.

She doesn't send invoices. She cleans at the same time every week with no in between communications and we pay when she is done. All the other stuff is normal self employment. It isn't an an out of pocket expense which people are referring to with fuel and materials, which would be tax deductable anyway, as would any specific work clothes. But, everyone has to replace their clothes, it is hardly a cleaner specific expense.

Yeah that's poor. I come from aine of domestics and growing up my best friends mum also cleaned the big houses. They cleaned to earn money to live.

Mine is £20 ph in N Wales. We have the same bills as anyone to pay.

And cleaning products.

Care workers have had successful tribunal claims that they should be paid for travel and waiting times between seeing clients.

Employment Tribunal holds that homecare providers agree to pay backdated National Minimum Wage to care workers for travelling and waiting time between care appointments

So anyone now not paying them for this will open themselves up to tribunal claim.

I can't believe you're arguing against someone making their living. You all sound like men who claim to value and support prostituted women but still try to bargain down their prices.

Goes to show how sheltered your life must be.

Do you have any idea how some other people live? I could show you pictures of inside someone's home who my sister used to clean for, I personally wouldn't place a rabid dog in this shit hole yet they expect her to come in and clean their mess up. These are supposedly highly educated people with very good jobs.

You really have no idea. Cleaners deserve to be paid well just as much as anyone who works hard.

Of course it will take its toll on anybody working such crazy long hours - whether through personal choice or inability to make ends meet by working any less. Do you actively choose to work that many hours, or are you still at a relatively junior stage of your profession?

I presume you're taking regular breaks and have properly assessed your desk setup and angles of your monitor and keyboard? If not, that will be a big factor.

I'm not remotely suggesting that solicitors don't work hard, but it's mainly mentally tiring, surely? By contrast, I highly doubt that many cleaners would find it physically possible to work for that long in a day; but then they can probably listen to the radio/music/audiobook whilst they're at it, which you obviously can't.

My cleaners that I get through an agency are £25/hour: north England.

When I was in London up until 2022 I had a cleaner who I think charged £12 an hour, she was absolutely brilliant at first and I chose to pay her around £30 for each 2 hour clean instead of £24.

I have no issue with paying £25 but most of the cleaners I’ve got from the agency so far were nowhere near as good as my London cleaner who I found off gumtreee.

That said my London cleaner did start slacking. I’d pay for two hours but she’d leave early and I was fine with that when she’d cleaned everything but the last time she came she arrived earlier despite me asking her not to come until after a certain time (I was WFH) and then tried to leave way early.

But someone doing a so-so job for £12 an hour is different from someone doing it at £25 an hour. So I rarely use the cleaners now and just use the money to invest in cleaning supplies and gadgets to make it easier for me to clean.

If they can’t /dont clean better than me I’m loathe to keep hiring them.

How do you think minimum wage workers are getting to work? For most of them, it’s not free. My cleaner does a lot less mileage than I do commuting to my one place of work.