Close to nine in ten Tower Hamlets households have a flat, so domestic cleaning there begins at the building’s front door. Weekly cleaners charge £23 an hour after a trial visit at £26 an hour.
Flats housed 87.8% of the borough’s households at the last Census, and 80.7% were in blocks designed as flats from the start. Houses are scarce: 8.8% terraced, 2.3% semi-detached and under one per cent detached. Private tenants are the biggest single group (38.2%), with council and housing association tenants close behind (35.9%); owners are 23.1% and shared owners 2.6%.
So a typical booking is a flat on one floor, frequently let, sometimes shared. That suits a short regular visit, and the private lets bring end of tenancy cleans as well.
Fobs, door codes and hours in a Tower Hamlets flat
Getting from the street to your flat is the part of a first visit that needs planning. Give the office the entry code, the floor, the flat number and where the fob or key will be when you book, and if the building has a concierge or a management office, tell them the cleaner’s name and day. A studio or one-bedroom flat is a comfortable 3-hour weekly visit. A two-bedroom flat with two bathrooms takes 3 to four hours, and a flat-share of three or four people usually needs four, because the kitchen and the bathroom carry most of the mess. The domestic cleaners page lists what a regular visit covers.
The cleaner works with your equipment and products. In a flat that means a vacuum that fits in the hall cupboard, a mop and bucket, cloths, a kitchen spray, a bathroom cleaner and something for limescale. Thames Water’s lookup places All Saints, Poplar (E14 0EY) in its Poplar zone; four 2025 samples there measured 252 to 285 mg/l, a mean of 272, and its report puts the hardness down to the chalk the water passes through, so taps, shower heads and kettles fur up quickly.
Shared flats, HMO licences and move-outs
Tower Hamlets has an additional licensing scheme across the whole borough, in force from 1 April 2024 until 31 March 2029. Any home let to a group of three or more who are not all one household needs a licence under it, and that includes a flat in a block. For a cleaner, a shared flat is one booking with several people behind it, so pick one sharer to deal with the office, agree who pays the cleaner on the day or takes the monthly invoice, and keep the products in one place everyone knows.
Moving out calls for a different service. A one-bedroom flat is £207 for an end of tenancy clean, a two-bedroom £243 and a three-bedroom £339, and the team arrives with all its equipment and products. The oven can be added from £31. A 50% deposit holds the date.
Parking a cleaner’s car in Tower Hamlets
Parking controls in the borough sit under four parent zones: A for Bethnal Green, B for Bow, C for Shadwell and Stepney, D for Poplar and Crossharbour. Most sub-zones are enforced Monday to Friday, half past eight to half past five, but west of Brick Lane the resident bays are watched seven days a week until 10pm. Only residents can buy visitor vouchers, through their own online account; a landlord letting the flat, or an owner living somewhere else, cannot. That matters for a move-out between tenancies: if the tenant has gone, nobody at the flat can buy a voucher. Where a cleaner has to pay for on-street parking, you are charged what was paid, never more than £40.
Domestic cleaning in Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green has some unusual layouts for a cleaner. Keeling House, the Grade II* listed cluster block Denys Lasdun designed in the mid-1950s, is built of two-storey maisonettes off access balconies that lead from a central core; inside, the cleaner works upstairs and down, so a second set of cloths and products upstairs saves trips. Inside the Old Bethnal Green Road conservation area, the Winkley Estate of 1898 to 1904 has three-storey red-brick terraces laid out with workshops for the furniture trades, cabinet making, upholstering and French polishing among them, and in the same conservation area Temple Dwellings are mansion flats reached by communal stairs. Sofas are cleaned where they stand: a two-seat sofa costs £57 with our upholstery cleaning, on a visit of at least £67. The Cranbrook Estate, built 1961 to 1968, runs from bungalows up to towers of 15 storeys, about 600 homes in all. For domestic cleaning by car, zone A has a twist: sub-zones A1 and A2 add Sunday mornings to 2pm.
Domestic cleaning in Bow
Round Tredegar Square the houses are three storeys plus a basement, stuccoed along the north side, and the streets beyond were completed over 1862 to 1889. A whole house there means four levels for the cleaner, a five-hour visit or more, though many of these houses are now divided into flats. The old Bryant and May match works on Fairfield Road, listed Grade II and built in 1861, closed in 1979 and is now the private homes of Bow Quarter. Houses are commoner in Bow West, where a quarter of households (24.9%) have a terrace and a tenth a flat in a converted house; Bow East is three quarters purpose-built flats (75.9%). Before a regular cleaner starts in a house that has been let or empty, book a deep clean, from £198, with the team bringing its own equipment and products; weekly domestic cleaning picks up from there. Parking: B1 is enforced Monday to Saturday, B2 on weekdays only and B4 runs until 7.30pm and on event Sundays at the London Stadium.
Domestic cleaning in Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is the most privately rented corner of the borough. In its ward 96.0% of households live in flats, and 53.6% are private tenants, more than in any other Tower Hamlets ward. Vertus, Canary Wharf Group’s rental business, has 1,893 build-to-rent flats across four buildings, and 23 acres at Wood Wharf are planned for as many as 3,600 homes. Tenants moving out can book a fixed-price move-out clean; tenants who stay can book weekly domestic cleaning. Canary Wharf Management treats the estate as private and looks after its roads, walkways and open space, about 40 acres in all, so ask your building how a visitor gets in and where a car may stop before the first visit. Height adds time too. The Landmark Pinnacle has 75 storeys, the tallest residential tower in Western Europe, and getting from the lobby to a high floor is part of the visit. If there is a concierge, leave the fob there for the cleaner.
Domestic cleaning in Isle of Dogs
The Isle of Dogs holds older surprises among its newer blocks. Chapel House Estate, 120 homes built by the London County Council in 1920 and 1921, is neo-Georgian cottages and cottage flats north of Westferry Road. Wartime bombing badly hit the 19th century terraces in what is now the Island Gardens conservation area, and the homes that took their place are mostly from the late 1970s and early 1980s, three or four storeys high. In Island Gardens ward 18.1% of households have a terraced house; in Blackwall & Cubitt Town the figure is 4.0%, and over half (51.8%) of households rent privately. A cottage flat fits a 3-hour fortnightly visit at £24 an hour; a three-storey house wants four or five. Ironing can be added to a regular visit as extra time, priced on the call. Thames Water’s Isle of Dogs South zone gave 2025 readings between 228 and 289 mg/l (mean 261), so domestic cleaning there means limescale on the chrome taps.
Domestic cleaning in Poplar
In Poplar and Lansbury wards social tenants are the biggest group, 45.5% of households, and 82.5% live in purpose-built flats. They range from low to very tall. Picked in 1948 to be the Festival of Britain’s Live Architecture exhibition three years later, the Lansbury Estate is low-rise, yellow stock brick under slate roofs. Erno Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower climbs to 27 storeys, and his 11-storey Carradale House shares its conservation area; both were listed in 1998. Kitchens in family flats work hard, and the oven is usually the first thing a weekly visit cannot keep up with. An oven clean is booked separately, from £77 for a single oven; the racks and trays soak in a tub in your kitchen while the inside is done by hand. Chrisp Street’s B3 zone is enforced every day except Sunday, 8.30am to 5.30pm; zone D, covering Poplar and Crossharbour, runs on weekdays from 8.30am to 5.30pm. Domestic cleaning on the 20th floor takes the same hours as on the first, plus the time to get up there.
Domestic cleaning in Stepney
Stepney has two conservation areas from January 1973. Stepney Green has the Trinity Green almshouses of 1695 and a run of late Victorian mansion blocks: Cressy House from 1894, Stepney Green Court from 1895, Dunstan House from 1899. York Square keeps the early 1800s terraces of the Mercers’ estate and St Dunstan’s, the Grade I listed parish church. A mansion flat on an upper floor can mean stairs with a full bucket, so keep the mop and bucket in the flat. Half of households here (49.5%) are social tenants, and St Dunstan’s ward has the lowest private renting in the borough at 26.8%. Weekly domestic cleaning in a two-bedroom mansion flat fits 3 hours. Parking in zone C is mostly a weekday matter, 8.30am to 5.30pm across C1, C3, C4 and most of C2. Thames Water’s Stepney zone recorded a 2025 average of 270 mg/l, so leave a descaler with the rest.
Domestic cleaning in Wapping
Many of Wapping’s old warehouses are now homes. At Wapping Pierhead, where the entrance to the London Docks was filled in, Daniel Alexander’s pair of 1811 terraces stand either side, and many of its Grade II listed warehouses were converted into flats. Along Wapping Wall, after the docks closed in 1968, artists took over riverside warehouses as studios, and the conversions to homes that followed left the area almost entirely residential. Wapping High Street mixes warehouses of four or five storeys with smaller terraces and pubs, and narrow steps lead between them to the river. The ward has the highest share of owners in Tower Hamlets, 35.1%, against 47.9% renting privately. A household that keeps a regular cleaner for a long time can add jobs as it goes, the bed linen, the ironing, a monthly turn on the inside of the fridge; tell the office when a weekly visit needs to be longer. For domestic cleaning in E1W, the office confirms on the call whether a regular cleaner covers your street.
Domestic cleaning in Whitechapel
Whitechapel is heavily rented: 93.8% of households live in flats, 53.5% rent privately and only 16.6% own. Its two conservation areas are low-rise. Buildings in the Whitechapel Market conservation area rarely pass four storeys, and the same goes for most of the Myrdle Street conservation area, where Georgian terraces on Parfett Street, Myrdle Street, New Road and Cannon Street Road stand among Victorian and later tenement blocks. In a top-floor flat up three flights, keep the vacuum and mop in the flat itself. In a flat-share with four sharers, one kitchen and one bathroom, a weekly 3-hour visit spends half its time in those two rooms. If you want the bedrooms done, leave the doors open and the floors clear, and agree a rota with the cleaner for the rest. Domestic cleaning on a shared flat works best when one sharer is the contact.
Questions about domestic cleaning in Tower Hamlets
Can a landlord buy a visitor voucher for a cleaner in Tower Hamlets?
No. Tower Hamlets sells visitor vouchers to residents through their online accounts, and landlords letting the property or owners who live elsewhere cannot get them. For an end of tenancy clean in an empty flat, a team that drives pays for on-street parking and passes on the cost, which is capped at £40.
Is a regular cleaner available in E1, E2, E3 and E14?
Not in every postcode. Give the office your postcode on the call and it will say whether a weekly or fortnightly cleaner can take your day. We try to keep you with one cleaner from week to week. One-off, deep and end of tenancy teams cover the whole borough.
What notice do I give to stop a regular cleaner?
The first visit is a trial at £26 an hour, and the first four weeks are a settling-in period. After that, either you or the office can bring the visits to an end on 14 days’ notice. Cancel a single visit with less than two working days to go and half of it is charged; there is no deposit for regular cleaning, and you pay on the day or by monthly invoice.