Is oven cleaning included in end of tenancy cleaning?

It should be. Usually it is not. Most London cleaning companies quote the tenancy clean, then add £25 to £75 for the oven — and some do not mention it until the day. On our end of tenancy and deep cleans it is included, at no extra cost.

Which is odd of the market, when you think about what the oven is: the single item most often flagged at a check-out inspection, and the most common cleaning deduction from a deposit. The thing most likely to cost you money is sold as an optional extra.

Why the oven decides so much

Cleaning is the largest single cause of deposit disputes in the UK — it appears in more than half of all Tenancy Deposit Scheme cases, and accounts for 29.4% of all claims at the Deposit Protection Service. And within cleaning, the kitchen dominates: in a survey of 600 landlords and letting agents, 84% named the kitchen as the room most often left unclean.

A clerk opens the oven door, photographs the back wall and the roof of the cavity, and the picture goes in the file. It is the easiest thing in the property to evidence, which is precisely why it gets claimed for.

What a proper oven clean actually is

The difference between a real oven clean and a wipe is not effort, it is the racks coming out and the door coming apart.

• The racks and shelves, soaked rather than scrubbed — carbon does not come off with a cloth.
• The door glass, between the panes. Most oven doors come apart with two screws. Grease migrates between the layers and cannot be reached any other way, and it shows in every photograph taken towards a window.
• The back wall and the roof of the cavity, which is where carbon builds and where a surface wipe never reaches.
• The grill pan and the compartment behind it, which usually has not been touched in years.
• The extractor filter above the hob — metal mesh, lifts out, hot water and degreaser. Two minutes, skipped on most cleans, checked on most check-outs.
• The hob, under the burners and behind the control knobs. The knobs pull off.

If a quote does not say the racks and the door glass, assume neither is happening.

What it costs on its own

For comparison, Checkatrade puts a typical London oven clean at around £87.

So on a two-bedroom tenancy clean, a company quoting £30 less than us and charging £69 for the oven is £39 more expensive, not £30 cheaper. That is the arithmetic worth doing before you compare two quotes.

The wording to get in writing

Whoever you book — us or anyone else — ask for this in an email or a message, not on the phone:

“Please confirm the quoted price includes a full oven clean, with the racks and the door glass done, and the extractor filter, with nothing added on the day.”

Three things that answer settles: whether the oven is in at all, whether it is a real clean or a wipe, and whether the price can move once they are in the property. A company that will not put it in writing has told you the answer.

The other questions worth asking at the same time

• Is the price fixed, or an estimate that can be revised on the day? A price with “from” or “starting at” in front of it is an opening position.
• How long is the re-clean window? Much of the market gives 48 or 72 hours, which can expire before the check-out report has even been written. Ours is seven days.
• Are the cleaners employed or subcontracted, and DBS checked? Worth asking of anyone you are giving keys to.
• Do you get a photographic record? It is what settles an argument later.

Why ours is included

No promotion and no catch. Charging separately for the most common reason a deposit gets docked has never made sense to us — it turns the one job that most needs doing into the one a customer is most likely to decline. It is in the price at every size, on every end of tenancy clean and every deep clean, and you can see the price before you speak to anyone on the calculator.