Main price driver
Access and method
What equipment gets you to the work, and how long it takes to set up and take down.
Access changes the quote
Specialist Cleaning
The jobs a routine clean cannot reach. We survey the site, agree the method, then quote, so nothing gets damaged and no rule gets broken.
90 Day Quality Guarantee
In writing, on every contract
Directly Employed Cleaners
No zero hours, no subcontract chain
Survey and Method First
Agreed before anyone starts work
Commercial Premises Only
Businesses and organisations, not homes
What This Covers
Specialist cleaning covers commercial work a routine clean cannot handle, such as high level access, jet washing, deep cleans and controlled environments. Clenova carries out specialist cleaning for London businesses only, never homes. Every job is surveyed first, priced from that survey, and backed by a written 90 day guarantee.
Specialist Planning
A fire risk assessment comes back with one line on it. Dust build-up on the sprinkler heads, eight metres up. Your cleaning team is excellent. They also have no safe way of getting there.
It is not about effort or standards. A job becomes specialist when it needs access equipment, a written method, or a regulated standard sitting behind it.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 set no minimum height at all. So a cleaner on a step ladder above a stairwell falls under exactly the same law as someone on a platform thirty metres up. Most buyers assume the rules only start at scaffold height.
belongs to routine cleaning that runs on a schedule . Specialist work sits alongside it and gets planned on its own.
Find the group your job sits in. If it is not listed, call us, because the team covers more than these pages show.
Risk and Method
Specialist jobs carry risks that routine cleaning does not, and some duties remain with the people who control the site or commission the work. Three areas cause the most trouble.
Access
HSE's provisional 2025/26 figures record 31 worker deaths from falls from height in Great Britain, around a quarter of all worker deaths that year. The Work at Height Regulations apply wherever a fall could cause personal injury, so the paperwork matters on a mezzanine as much as it does on a roof.
The duties do not stop with the contractor. HSE says they also apply to people who control work at height, including facilities managers and building owners who bring contractors onto a site. The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 also makes contractor competence relevant when an occupier entrusts work to an independent contractor.
Each job gets a method statement and risk assessment naming the access equipment, the exclusion zone and the rescue plan.
Runoff
Jet washing produces dirty water, and where that water goes matters. Current Environment Agency guidance says contaminated water from activities such as yard cleaning must not enter surface water drains. It should go to an approved foul drain, be recycled, or be collected for proper disposal.
That still matters when a detergent is described as biodegradable, because detergents and other substances can pollute water. On a city centre job, blocking drains and capturing runoff can take longer than the washing itself.
Heritage
Westminster has 56 conservation areas, covering 78% of the city. Works that alter the character of a listed building can require listed building consent, and carrying out controlled works without that consent can be an offence under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.
Historic England warns that overzealous cleaning with high-pressure jets can roughen and significantly damage historic masonry. Porous brick and stone are also vulnerable when they become wet and then freeze. Heritage frontages therefore need a method suited to the material, with a test area agreed before the main clean.
Coverage runs across Inner London, and you can check where in London we work .
Specialist cleaning pricing
No honest hourly rate exists for specialist work, because the hours are not what sets the price. Access does. Two warehouses with the same floor area price very differently if one has an eight metre ceiling and the other has four.
Five things move the number:
Main price driver
What equipment gets you to the work, and how long it takes to set up and take down.
Access changes the quote
Timing
In hours, overnight, at a weekend or on a shutdown day.
Access to the site matters
Material and condition
Delicate, historic or heavily soiled surfaces need slower methods.
Method follows the surface
Operational sensitivity
Live clinical, secure or public spaces need extra planning and often extra staff.
Planning protects the site
Frequency
Repeat visits price differently from a single job.
Frequency changes the rate
Quotes are given per job and shown plus VAT, since we are VAT registered. The figure comes from a free survey of your site, and that survey costs nothing whether you go ahead or not.
Direct accountability
Common questions
Clear answers to the questions London businesses ask before booking specialist cleaning work.
020 7870 3700Deep cleaning is one type of specialist work. It resets a site that ordinary cleaning can no longer bring back. The wider group covers anything needing access equipment, a written method or a regulated standard, which takes in work at height, jet washing and controlled environments too.
You do not. Specialist jobs can be booked on their own, whether or not somebody else holds your routine contract. Plenty of clients start with a single deep clean and add cleaning organised by sector later.
Rarely. Most specialist jobs run overnight, at weekends or on a shutdown day, and the survey sets that window before anything gets booked. Where a space genuinely has to close, you get the closure time in writing with the quote.
No. Cleaners are directly employed rather than hired through agencies or handed to another contractor. Vetting and site access rules are agreed with you before anyone is assigned.
Planned work usually runs one to four weeks from survey, depending on access and scheduling. Reactive jobs move faster, so ring us rather than emailing if the site needs attention this week.
Coverage is Inner London, taking in the City, Canary Wharf, the West End and the boroughs around them. Specialist teams travel across that whole area, so a job outside your usual borough is not a problem.
Free site survey. No obligation.
The cost of delay
Budgets tighten and specialist cleaning is the first line cut. It is also the most expensive thing to defer, because the failure mode is not untidiness. Routine cleaning that slips looks scruffy. Specialist work that slips turns a cleaning job into a replacement job. Carpet left two years past its extraction date gets replaced instead of cleaned. Masonry cleaned the wrong way once needs repointing. Dust left on high level steelwork stops being a cleaning question and becomes a fire loading one. None of that lands on a cleaning budget. It lands on a capital one.
Clean too late and replacement becomes the answer.
The wrong method can turn cleaning into repair work.
Leave it long enough and the risk changes completely.
