After builders cleaning in Barnet

Barnet is a borough of flats and semis. At the 2021 Census 47.4% of households lived in flats, with 36.6% of all households in purpose-built blocks, and 27.5% in semi-detached houses; terraces made up 14.9% and detached houses 10.1%.

The semis cluster in places like Edgware, where more than half of the homes were built between 1919 and 1939, and the usual job there is a loft conversion or a rear extension. Dust from a loft comes down the stairs, and dust from an extension spreads through the ground floor. The crew starts on the top landing, works down to the kitchen and goes over ledges and skirting more than once, because fine plaster dust keeps settling after the first wipe. A 4-bed semi after that kind of work usually takes 3 cleaners for 4 hours: £392 all in.

Flats bring logistics: a lift to protect, a managing agent who wants the crew booked in, a car park the crew cannot use without a permit. Tell the office the block's rules when you book.

In Hampstead Garden Suburb 60% of the homes with a recorded build date went up between 1900 and 1918. Original joinery and old glass get mild products, and paint flecks come off old panes only where they lift without marking the glass.

Where a house fronts a TfL red route, TfL issues the skip, scaffold and hoarding licences. From 1 April 2026 it charges £243 for a skip for two weeks, £502 for a scaffold for four weeks and £576 for a hoarding, and it licenses a red route skip only where loading straight into a vehicle is impracticable. Stopping a works vehicle on red lines needs a TfL dispensation, £48 a day (£38 in a red route bay), applied for six working days ahead.

On council roads Barnet will not grant a parking dispensation for building works. It suspends a bay instead, at £69.63 per bay per day plus a £171.39 administration fee.

The cleaning crew is cheaper to park. Residents inside a controlled parking zone can buy one-day virtual visitor permits at £2.60 each, in multiples of four, or scratch cards at £3.11, up to 200 a year. We ask for a free space or a visitor permit; paid parking is passed on at cost. On bank holidays Barnet does not enforce resident bays or CPZs, though yellow lines and loading bays still count.

Barnet has 16 conservation areas, among them Hampstead Garden Suburb, Golders Green, Finchley Church End, Mill Hill, Monken Hadley and Totteridge. Thirteen Article 4 directions cover ten of them, the oldest for Mill Hill (1970) and Hampstead Garden Suburb (1971), the newest for Finchley Church End (2011), so many routine outside changes need planning permission. In Hampstead Garden Suburb the Trust's consent is needed as well for external changes and loft or garage conversions, with a fee for each application. A borough-wide direction in force from 29 May 2016 adds that turning a family house into a small HMO needs permission.

On the day this means sash windows, timber floors and tiled halls in a lot of houses. On old boards the crew vacuums before it mops, so grit is lifted instead of dragged. Around the Edwardian parades of Finchley Church End, many flats sit above shops, with narrow stairs and shared front doors; getting plaster dust out of a home like that is slow work on the stairs.