commercial
Communal area and block cleaning
Communal area cleaning costs £40 to £150 a visit for a small block and £150 to £400 for a larger one, usually on a weekly or fortnightly rota. It is paid for out of the service charge, which means the people who see the work and the person who signs the contract are rarely the same people, and that shapes everything about how it is bought.
What this covers
What it costs. Communal area cleaning costs £40 to £150 a visit for a small block and £150 to £400 for a larger one. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Entrance halls, stairwells and landings on a fixed rota
- Lift interiors, door glass and intercom panels
- Bin stores and refuse chutes
- Window cleaning to the internal common parts
- A signed visit record left in the block
What is involved
The visit record is the product as much as the cleaning is. Leaseholders are paying through a service charge they can query, and a managing agent needs to show what was done and when, so the trade leaves a signed sheet in the hall or logs the visit electronically. A contractor who cannot evidence attendance is difficult to defend at a service charge consultation.
What gets cleaned is narrower than people expect. Common parts are the hall, stairs, landings, lift and bin store; the inside of a flat is nobody else's business and the outside of the building is a different contract. Most disputes in a block come from the edges of that list rather than from the standard of the work.
Bin stores are the recurring problem. They are the one area where the cleaner is dealing with other residents' behaviour rather than with dirt, and no rota fixes a chute that is being misused. Good contractors report it rather than absorbing it, because it is a management issue wearing a cleaning issue's clothes.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask what evidence of attendance is left behind. A signed sheet or a logged visit is what answers a leaseholder asking what they paid for.
Ask exactly which areas are inside the specification and get it in writing. Almost every dispute in a block is about scope rather than standard.
Ask who supplies the consumables and the power. Some blocks have no accessible socket and no water in the common parts, which changes the equipment and the price.
Common questions
Who pays for it?
The leaseholders, through the service charge, with the freeholder or managing agent holding the contract. That split is why specification and record keeping matter so much in this corner of the trade.
How often should a block be cleaned?
Weekly for most blocks with a lift or more than a handful of flats, fortnightly for small low-rise ones. Frequency is usually set by the service charge budget rather than by the dirt.