After builders cleaning in Hammersmith and Fulham

Only skip companies can apply for a skip licence here. It costs £165 a fortnight, takes five working days to process, and the skip may not stand on a footway or a pedestrianised street. Scaffolding licences are sold to scaffolding firms only, at £660 a month for a house or a single shop front up to 15 metres, with a £1,000 deposit held against damage to the road; hoarding is charged the same way.

Rubble, offcuts and empty tins have to be out of the house before the crew arrives, and a full skip outside is the builder's to have collected.

A bay suspension is charged per five-metre space for each day: £48 a day for the first five days, then £74 a day up to day 31, and up to six bays for up to three days needs eight days' notice, weekends counted. Anyone can buy the all day trader permit for £30, which covers a shared-use bay near one address from 9am to 5pm on weekdays, or a resident can start a visitor session. We ask for a free space or a permit; paid parking is passed on at cost.

The council has 44 conservation areas covering about half the borough, with two more in the north under the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. Around Hammersmith Grove 83.2% of the homes with a recorded build date went up before 1900. In streets like these the crew works carefully round sash boxes full of grit, lime-plaster cornices, tiled hall floors and pine boards that a soaking mop would harm. West Kensington has the same age of stock, much of it as mansion flats.

Basement digs make more dust than any other job a terrace can have, and they need permission here. A borough-wide Article 4 direction has applied from 26 April 2018, so a basement anywhere outside the Old Oak and Park Royal area needs planning consent, and the draft local plan would limit new ones to half the depth of the house and half the depth of the garden. After a dig, dust climbs the stairwell to the top floor, and we price it as heavy work: a 3-bed house usually takes 3 cleaners for 5 hours, £482 all in.

At the 2021 Census 75.3% of households lived in flats, 18.8% in terraced houses and only 5.8% in semis or detached houses. 36.4% rented privately, so a flat between tenants after a refurbishment gets the same builders clean as an owner's flat before they move back in.

A studio or 1-bed flat after a refurbishment usually takes 2 cleaners for 3 hours: £212 all in. A 3-bed house is 2 cleaners for 5 hours, £332. In a house that size each bathroom beyond the second adds about an hour and a half, because grout, glass and fittings take longest. Every figure is £30 per cleaner-hour plus £32 for equipment and detergents; the full price list covers carpets, sofas and outside windows. For a converted flat in Shepherds Bush (W12), tell us the floor and whether there is a lift.