Office cleaning contract costs in the UK, and the £14 test that catches bad quotes

Last Updated on September 17, 2026

Contract office cleaning in the UK typically costs £15 to £25 per cleaner hour, £21.50 to £25.50 in London. Wages, holiday pay and employer NI alone cost roughly £15 an hour, so any quote near £14 cannot pay legally.

Checked on 11 September 2026.

Very few commercial cleaning firms publish prices at all. The figures below come from the handful of UK cleaning companies that do, each checked live on 11 September 2026. Treat them as guide prices. Your quote will be built from a site survey, not a rate card.

What contract office cleaning costs

The per cleaner hour distinction matters. Two cleaners for two hours is four cleaner hours. Ask which basis your quote uses.

Ad-hoc or one-off cleans run higher per hour than contract work because there is no guaranteed volume. If you only need a fortnightly tidy, expect the top of the hourly range, not the bottom.

The £14 test

This is the fastest way to judge any office cleaning quote, and it needs no industry knowledge. It is simple arithmetic on gov.uk figures.

From 1 April 2026, the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour (gov.uk, checked 11 September 2026). On top of that, an employer must fund:

• Statutory holiday: 5.6 weeks a year, which adds 12.07% to every worked hour. That is £1.53 an hour.
• Employer National Insurance: 15% on earnings above £96 a week in the 2026 to 2027 year (gov.uk). For a cleaner on typical part-time hours that adds very roughly £1 to £1.90 an hour.

So £12.71 + £1.53 = £14.24 before employer NI, pension contributions, insurance, supervision, sickness cover, materials, travel between sites or any profit at all. Add NI and the real cost of legally employing one cleaner for one hour lands around £15 to £16.

A quote at £14 per cleaner hour or below cannot cover those costs. Something is being cut: the cleaner is underpaid, holiday is not being honoured, the cleaner is pushed onto self-employment to dodge employer costs, or there is no insurance behind the contract. None of those problems stay the contractor’s problem. Unpaid, uninsured, badly supervised cleaners become your problem, inside your building, out of hours, holding your keys.

Cheapest quote wins is the single most expensive habit in this market.

What moves the price

• Frequency. Daily cleaning costs more per month but less per visit than weekly. Most small to medium offices settle on three to five visits a week.
• Out-of-hours access. Evening and early-morning cleans are standard, but weekend, overnight or holiday-period work usually prices higher.
• Floor types and layout. Carpet, hard floor polishing and lots of small rooms take longer than open-plan vinyl. ACS lists carpet cleaning at £40 to £60 an hour and floor polishing at £30 to £50 as separate services.
• Washrooms and consumables. Hand towels, soap, toilet rolls and bin liners are included by some contractors and charged separately by others (LWR Group). Get it in writing either way.
• Security requirements. Vetting, DBS checks, escorting rules and restricted access all add cost because they add time and admin.
• Minimum visit lengths. None of the pages checked published a minimum, but most contractors set one in practice. Ask what the shortest visit they will quote is before you design a specification around 45-minute pop-ins.

Two contract points worth one line each. If you switch contractor on an existing contract, TUPE rules can transfer the current cleaners to the new firm on their existing terms, so ask any bidder how they handle it. And business-to-business cleaning quotes are usually given excluding VAT; none of the price pages checked stated a VAT basis, so confirm whether your figure is ex VAT before you compare quotes.

The two-minute quote check

1. Ask for the hourly rate per cleaner behind the quote, then run the £14 test above. If the rate is at or under £14, ask how the cleaner is paid. Listen carefully to the answer.
2. Ask whether the cleaners are employed by the contractor or subcontracted. Employed with payslips is the clean answer. Layers of subcontracting are where wage and vetting problems hide.
3. Ask for the employers’ liability and public liability insurance certificates, not a verbal yes.
4. Ask for the specification sheet: which areas, which tasks, how often, and whether consumables are included. No written specification means no way to hold anyone to anything.
5. Ask who covers sickness and holidays. A one-person price with no cover plan means missed cleans.

If you run a cleaning company

Almost nobody in this sector publishes prices. That is an opening, not a rule to follow.

Publish your hourly rate basis, even as a from figure, and state what a standard visit includes: tasks, consumables, insurance held, whether your cleaners are employed. Buyers running the checks above will shortlist the firm whose numbers already add up in public. You do not need to publish your margin, you need to publish your basis.

Whito has a fuller guide on exactly this: what to publish when the sector publishes nothing.

Red flags

• A quote at or below £14 per cleaner hour. The arithmetic above says it cannot legally add up.
• No insurance certificate produced on request.
• No written specification sheet, just a monthly figure.
• Vague answers on whether cleaners are employed or subcontracted.
• A price with no stated VAT basis, discovered only on the first invoice.

What this page does not cover

Domestic and residential cleaning, which prices differently and is quoted per hour to householders. Specialist and industrial work: clinical cleaning, kitchens to food-safety standards, high-level or post-construction cleans. Facilities management contracts that bundle cleaning with security and maintenance. Prices outside the UK.

Method and limits

Every figure above was taken from a page fetched live on 11 September 2026: gov.uk for the National Living Wage and employer NI, and three UK cleaning companies that publish guide prices (LWR Group, MNSS Ltd, ACS Office Cleaning). The sector publishes very little, so these ranges rest on a small number of firms willing to name numbers, and company price pages are marketing documents. Monthly figures are indicative, verify at quote stage. The £14 test uses statutory figures and simple arithmetic; the NI element varies with hours worked.

Sources

• gov.uk National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates. National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour for 21 and over, from 1 April 2026.
• gov.uk National Insurance rates and categories. Employer Class 1 NI at 15% above £96 a week, 2026 to 2027.
• LWR Group, how much does commercial cleaning cost. Contract hourly rates, per square metre rates, small-office monthly range and worked example, guide dated June 2026.
• MNSS Ltd, London office cleaning cost. London rate of £21.50 to £25.50 per cleaner hour, published August 2026.
• ACS Office Cleaning, office cleaning cost London. London hourly rates by office size and the £20 to £30 UK average.

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More guides for commercial cleaning: Whito’s commercial cleaning hub.

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Whito

Whito is an independent UK research bureau. We ask the AI engines what they recommend, then check the businesses they name against Companies House and the sector registers. Figures we publish carry the date they were checked. Companies cannot pay to appear or to rank.

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