How much do you pay your cleaner?

[BendydickCuminsnatch]

I know this has been done many a time, but the most recent thread I can find is from 3 years ago.

Can't find a cleaner locally if you can believe it (admittedly I haven't searched very thoroughly yet). Other than Molly Maid who are coming for consultation next week - £20 per hour!! That is the biggest hourly rate I've seen on other threads. Does it sound reasonable? Surrey and they provide all products and equipment.

£10 per hour, SE London. I round up though, so if she does 2.5 hours I'll pay her £30.

£10 p/h - or £30 per cleaning session, don't mind if she's done quicker, I leave her £30 each time.

£13 ph, South East

£10 per hour north west. Leave cash on the day for her. Any mores a rip off, look for a local independent person on Facebook or by recommendation. Agencies charge a small fortune and only pay the staff min wage

More than I pay my childminder which just seems wrong!

£10 Lancashire area

£12.50/hr Bristol brings own products

More than I pay my childminder which just seems wrong!

Dont confuse what you pay your childminder with what their actual hourly income is. They are more than likely looking after a number of children in the same hour that they are looking after yours and will be earning a higher hourly rate than your cleaner despite their attention being divided between several children. Your cleaner is only cleaning your house during that hour and will have used diesel and cleaning products to do so.

£12.50 ph using my products North West

£9 ph Sw London. I provide the products. That is what she asked for but looked cheap for the thread. I give her discretionary holiday pay and Xmas bonus too so adds up to more.

£50 for c.4.5 hours London zone 1/2. Sometimes its 4 hours, sometimes 5 depending on how much tidying is needed/how much ironing there is. Ask your neighbours if they recommend anyone. Often my cleaner cleans with a friend - they enjoy it more and it takes them half the time.

Ah, Stealth I think I may have written my post in such a way as to give duff information. I pay £33 for three hours cleaning but three cleaners come so it only takes an hour.

RudeElf is quite right, the price a cleaner charges you is one thing and how much she can take as a wage after business costs is a whole other figure. (costs usually include fuel, travel time, supplies, equipment, insurance and advertising at first).

A cleaner must charge the amount he/she needs to to operate his/her business and still bring in a decent hourly rate for themselves. I think a lot of cleaners underestimate what these cost will be and try to charge £10 per hour, but since demand for domestic cleaning far outstrips supply they are usually able to adjust their prices over time to get what they need to continue forward.

I would say a more realistic rate for and individual is from £12 per hour upwards ish and for a private company £15/hour upwards. Agencies can be cheaper as they pay low and send out self employed cleaners rather than employees of their company, they are often not fully equipped or fully managed like a private company or a franchise with employees like Molly Maids are hence the difference in both service level and price.

I think as long as someone is operating legally (ie registered as self-employed or as a company) and fully insured to protect you, it doesn't matter who you choose, they all be selling different service levels at differing price structures and you just need to choose the best match for you for both your budget and your own requirements.

We paid our cleaner £12 (south east) but recently upped it to £14. She comes for 2 hours every other week and is amazing - she gets at more done in 2 hours than I ever could

I did wonder!! Feeling less ripped off now...

£13.50/hour for 2 hours a fortnight. That's through an agency though, including the cleaner's wages, cleaning products and insurance etc.

Where do you search for cleaners anyways? Any Facebook groups? I tend to ask colleagues and friends for a recommendation, but that doesn't always work out...

We pay £13 per hour, through an agency and they provide own cleaning products. Also do an hours ironing. South Manchester / Cheshire

£10ph here, SE

£15 per hour. It's a small firm, so owner and 2 employees. Expensive bit of NW. It's the going rate here. They are v efficient.

£10 ph provide equipment she provides cleaning stuff. SE

You can pay anywhere between around £10 per hour and £25 per hour, obviously franchises who employ directly are the most expensive model and agencies are the cheapest but service level is usually reflected in the price you pay but not always, large franchises are reliable but tend to suffer high staff turnover wich can lead to inconsistent results.

We are a small private company offering a premium level of service, our staff are employed directly by us and not self employed, we are also fully-equipped and fully managed so that is our service level, we pay staff well and have each member of staff got through our training programme to fully understand our methods before they are able to attend clients unsupervised. This is why we are 'expensive' because we offer this level of service which comes alongside a large over-head and is expensive to run, margins are tight, we have to come in above £15 per hour but soon we will have to add VAT to this which will take our necessary price to at least £18 per hour per person on the team. We have been hovering below VAT threshold deliberately for this reason for over a year now but we will do it one day. For now we just keep all our staff fully booked and run a waiting list for new clients. I don't want to hire and train again only to then have to go through VAT then charge so much since we are already having to charge a premium rate. My friend has done this successfully though - her company is large and they do have to charge £18 per person per hour but they cannot hire and train fast enough to meet demand. We will do it too one day, but VAT is hugely daunting for me and we know we will have to do without a wage for a time whilst we go through the VAT threshold. It's scary, I wonder if we will be able to pay our mortgage for the few months when we are not drawing a wage ourselves.

Anyway back to the point, different service levels require a different charge, thus you usually get what you pay for, the bare bones of what you need is someone running a legitimate service ie insured and paying taxes to minimise risk for the homeowner. After that it just depends upon what you would like the service level to be as to how much you pay, there is the 'no frills' agency who send you a self employed person to manage yourself and with that you buy the cleaning stuff and have to manage the person yourself, and at the opposite end of the scale there are premium level services who are fully-equipped and who fully manage the staff for you so that you don't have to worry about or manage any aspect of the cleaning service again, but this is obviously the more expensive for the better results.

It surprises me when people think that what they pay is an actual wage!

I pay £14 an hour but she take home ironing for me included in this.

For £20 is that a minimum maybe?

£13ph, south east