domestic
Housekeeping and domestic help
A housekeeper costs £15 to £25 an hour outside London and £18 to £32 inside it, which is a few pounds above a cleaner for the same visit. The difference is not the rate, it is the remit: a cleaner is booked to clean and a housekeeper is booked to keep a house running.
What this covers
What it costs. A housekeeper costs £15 to £25 an hour outside London and £18 to £32 inside it. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Regular housekeeping in an occupied home, beyond a cleaning round
- Laundry, ironing and changing beds as a standing part of the visit
- Shopping, deliveries and letting tradespeople in
- Keeping linen, stores and the household diary in order
- Live-out and live-in arrangements, and holiday cover
What is involved
The distinction people search for is real. A cleaner has a scope and works to it. A housekeeper holds a standing brief that covers laundry, linen, stores, deliveries, waiting in for an engineer and noticing that the light bulbs have gone. It suits households that are out all week and do not want to manage a list.
That brief is also why the employment question matters more here. A cleaner working for several households on their own hours is self-employed without much argument. A housekeeper working set days for one family, using their equipment, to their instructions, may well be an employee, and that brings PAYE, holiday pay, pension auto-enrolment and employer's liability insurance with it.
Getting that wrong is not a technicality: HMRC treats the household as the employer, and the liability for unpaid tax sits with whoever engaged them rather than with the person doing the work.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask whether they are self-employed and working for several households, or looking for employment with one. Both are normal and they are different arrangements with different paperwork.
Write down the brief rather than the hours. Housekeeping expands quietly, and a brief nobody wrote down is one that grows until somebody is unhappy.
Agree what happens about keys, alarm codes and letting tradespeople in, because that is most of what the role actually involves and none of it is cleaning.
Common questions
Is a housekeeper just a cleaner who does more?
The work overlaps and the arrangement does not. A cleaner works to a scope; a housekeeper holds a standing brief for how the house runs, which is why the hours are usually longer and more regular.
Will I be their employer?
Possibly. Somebody working set days for one household, using your equipment, to your instructions, looks like an employee to HMRC, and the liability for PAYE sits with the household. Worth checking before, not after.