Who is responsible for cleaning at the end of a tenancy?

You are, to the standard your tenancy agreement sets, with fair wear and tear allowed for. What a landlord cannot do is make you pay a fee for it. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 bans a required payment, so a professional cleaning fee you have to pay because the tenancy ended is not on the permitted list. What is recoverable instead is measured against the condition the home was in when you moved in.

Two things sit outside that ban. An optional paid cleaning service you choose to take is not a required payment. Nor is a claim for the cost of putting right a breach of the agreement, which is damages and is permitted. On scope, the ban takes in an assured tenancy other than one of social housing, a student letting within paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988, and a licence to occupy housing; social housing is outside it.

So can money still come out of my deposit for cleaning?

Yes. Paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 makes a payment of damages for breach of a tenancy agreement a permitted payment. What is recoverable is measured against the condition the home was in when you moved in: the agreement's standard sets what was promised, not what a landlord can charge. The distinction the Act draws is between a fee and a loss, and the amount has to reflect what was actually lost. Our full guide to whether a landlord can charge for professional cleaning works through the whole permitted list.

Who decides whether it was a breach?

Not the landlord alone, and not us. Where a deposit is protected and both sides agree to use it, the scheme's free adjudication weighs the evidence from both sides, and the disputed amount stays protected until the decision is made. A deduction has to be evidenced, not just asserted, and photographs from the start and end of the tenancy and the inventory are what tend to decide it. The condition side of the same argument is in our guide to deductions for wear and tear.

Common questions

Can a landlord charge a professional cleaning fee in England?

No. A professional cleaning fee, or a cleaning charge a tenant is required to pay whatever state the home is left in, is not on the permitted list in Schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019, so it is a prohibited payment. What the ban removes is the required fee, not a remedy for an actual breach of the tenancy agreement.

Can money be taken from a deposit for cleaning?

Yes. Paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 makes a payment of damages for breach of a tenancy agreement a permitted payment, so a claim for the cost of putting right a breach, for example a kitchen left in a state the agreement required it not to be left in, is permitted. The amount has to reflect what was actually lost, measured against the condition the home was in when you moved in: where some of the same cleaning was needed at check-in, the cost of putting the whole place into a better state than you found it is not a loss you caused, and where a deposit is protected the scheme's free adjudication can decide disputes if both sides agree to use it.

Sources

The primary sources behind this guide. Where the law and a summary disagree, the law is what counts.

• Tenant Fees Act 2019, Schedule 1 (permitted payments), legislation.gov.uk
• Tenant Fees Act 2019, section 1 (prohibitions applying to landlords, and the meaning of relevant person), legislation.gov.uk
• Tenancy deposit protection: disputes and problems, GOV.UK
• What makes a reasonable deposit claim, Deposit Protection Service