After builders cleaning in Greenwich

Royal Greenwich asks builders to keep drilling, sanding, scaffold work and partition walls to 8am to 6pm on weekdays and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays. No noisy work on Sundays or bank holidays.

Sanding is usually the last dusty job on a refurbishment. Book the crew for after it: fine dust keeps settling for a while once the sander stops, which is why the crew dusts the same rooms more than once before it leaves.

The council's code of practice for small building sites asks more of the builder. Out-of-hours work has to be justified to the Environmental Protection Team at least ten working days ahead, dusty spills are meant to be damped and cleaned up wet, and a site that keeps breaking the rules can be served a Section 60 notice under the Control of Pollution Act 1974. A builder who damps down while working leaves less plaster dust on top of the doors, and the clean takes fewer hours.

The borough's reuse and recycling centre is on Nathan Way in Thamesmead (SE28 0AF), and it is set up for householders. Hardcore, rubble and plasterboard are capped at five items a visit and one visit a month. DIY waste has its own allowance of four visits in four weeks, each with two 50-litre rubble bags or one fitted item such as a bath, and the householder has to bring it, not a tradesperson or contractor doing the work. Vans, pick-ups and hired vans are sent to the Veolia transfer station next door, which charges by weight and wants every visitor in a hard hat, high-visibility clothing and safety boots.

For small amounts of your own DIY waste, the council's bulky collection takes rubble, soil and tiles in sacks the size of a bin bag at £4.19 each (minimum £16.76, maximum five bags), or larger items at £13.82 each. It will not take paint, chemicals or business waste, so rubble from a builder's job is the builder's to clear. Businesses must use a licensed waste carrier, keep waste transfer notes and, from 31 March 2025, separate their recycling and food waste; anyone cleaning a fit-out before opening should check the builder has done that.

The cleaning crew does not take builders' waste, rubble or leftover materials away. Agree with your builder who clears the site and when, then book the clean for after that date.

The London Plan 2021 puts five opportunity areas wholly or partly in the borough: Greenwich Peninsula with 17,000 indicative homes, Charlton Riverside with 8,000, Woolwich with 5,000, Thamesmead and Abbey Wood with 8,000, shared with Bexley, and Deptford Creek/Greenwich Riverside with 5,500, shared with Lewisham. The borough's ten-year target for 2019/20 to 2028/29 is 28,240 homes. On the peninsula 87.0% of households live in flats, and in the Council Tax records for the middle of the peninsula 56% of homes with a recorded build date went up in 2015 or later.

The Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich, a 36-hectare former munitions site, is planned for over 5,000 homes with building until 2030. In Kidbrooke the 1,900 homes of the old Ferrier Estate have come down and 5,268 are replacing them in phases, 35% affordable, with completion due in 2031. In Thamesmead, where the Council Tax records for the Moorings show no homes older than 1973, the opportunity area it shares with Abbey Wood adds more.

A new-build flat has its own list: labels and stickers on the glazing, sealant smears round the bath, a film of dust inside every kitchen cupboard. A 2-bed flat with light dust usually takes 2 cleaners for 3 hours, £212 all in; a 3-bed house after a refurbishment takes 2 cleaners for 5 hours, £332. The pages on a dust clean after sanding and plastering and labels and paint flecks on new windows cover the two jobs that take longest, and what a builders clean costs lists every size.