Cleaner has asked for a pay rise

Currently on £12/hr. 

The London Living Wage is £11.05. 

 

She's mediocre at best, but nice and trustworthy. 

What would you pay?

Fair, Guy - but she has optimised her route really well so she does 3 on our road 8-12/12.15 to 3.30 and 4-7. I don't doubt she's as organised on the other days. 

If she had any sense she would not ask for a pay rise she would inform you her rate has gone up - if not a ridiculous sum, 99% of employers will pay it rather than undergo hassle of finding a new one.

Think I'm paying £17 an hour in the country but she's cleaned for my family for years and will pop in and let the dog out and bits if there's nobody home.  Even gets paid holiday.

I'm giving a rise, to be clear.   This is just a gauging exercise.  She's been on £12 per hour for years (practically all of our mates were on £10/hr at that stage, and we paid her through lockdown etc.).  Just try to gauge what's fair for London.  Looking like £15 (I was thinking £14).

Keep the hourly rate the same but leave 50 quid cash out each week with a wink 

Obviously it's not your job to check she tells HMRC but you should advise her to as you wink 

it doesn't matter - it's £4/week, £200/year.  I am not seeking a "what price do I think I can pay" price, it's a "what is the appropriate/fair rate for a cleaner in London".

36 quid to clean your house 

Surely you'd pay double to avoid the hassle of doing it yourself? 

What happens if your cleaner thinks 'fook this' I'm off to work in Pret?

 

Paying their cleaner £12 an hour. What a disgrace. And you put her in a position where she has to ask for a pay rise? Shame on you. Seriously. Pay her £18 an hour.

Actually I pay £19/hour, just got confused there. Still wondering. So far she has lived well on it, on a month long hol at the moment, but she is going to need more in the winter for sure.

Agree with 3-ducks

Solicitors can easily pay £20 an hour, so pay it, knowing it's little to you, and could make the world of difference to her Also give her £100 on her birthday and at Xmas with a nice card (not a cheapo one)

A good cleaner is worth £20 an hour

Those things aren't incompatible, Dux. You up the rate because of the cost of living crisis, but ensure it outpaces market to ensure they know good work is valued.

15 quid an hour is pretty much the baseline in London now I think. Most cleaners will struggle to do more than 30 paid hours a week with travel etc unless they are working very long hours. We pay 17.50 for ours, but she has to travel a bit to get to us and I don't think she has any other jobs on our street. 

we do 15/hour and she does some childcare as well. Our cleaner is a great example of a tiger mother, came here penniless from the Balkans and one of her sons is now an accountant with a Big 4. 

What's it worth to you not to have to clean?

Quite a lot, I'm guessing.

Just be grateful there's someone who will come to your house at a mutually convenient time and clean your toilet for you.  

If you know she has to travel to clean for you specifically, why aren't you paying her travel costs? Why care about baseline, rather than decency and recognition that someone's doing something for you you hopefully value?

You could easily give her £20 an hour, and an additional £5 on top for travel costs, inconvenience and lost earnings from taking the job with you, so £25 an hour

With a few rare exceptions, cleaners end up taking the piss and doing less and less so in a way they build in pay rises that way. Unless you have the one in a hundred, treat them like a commodity, bin them and get another. Not sure why cleaners should be immune to market forces.

When she started she asked for £12p/h, we upped it to £14p/h earlier this year but we also pay her when she's away e.g. 3 week break over xmas and she's gone home to Poland for the whole of this month.  £14p/h seems to be the going rate around our part of SW London.

With a few rare exceptions, cleaners end up taking the piss and doing less and less so in a way they build in pay rises that way.

I've not found this to be the case if you get a cleaner who's actually good in the first place.  If you settle for a shit one, they'll probably only get shitter.

A friend is a practice nurse, diabetes and COPD clinics, family planning, baby vacs etc with 20 years experience. She is looking for a job in Blackburn where the going rate for those jobs is around £18p/h.

I'll let her know what she might be able to get scrubbing solicitors toilets.

I've said £15.50/hr.  She said thank you and that I was a lovely person.  Does she even know me.  I've asked my boss for a £45k pay rise to cover my increased cost-of-living costs.

Octoman - can recommend a Karcher window cleaner. They are genuinely brilliant and you can buy all sorts of extending poles and holders so that you can wash the windows and then Karcher them clean - even upstairs windows - safely from ground level.

I know it sounds a bit sad, but I actually now enjoy the monthly clean of the windows - it’s satisfying, a bit like cutting the grass…

I pay the equivalent of 20 quid an hour… where I live. 
 

I do not understand how it’s so bloody cheap in London. Do you still have all the poor polish people doing the cleaning even after brexit? 

"Do you still have all the poor polish people doing the cleaning even after brexit? "

Our excellent cleaner was Polish. 

I would never employ an English cleaner. they're fcuking useless. 

"I've averaged out the 21 suggestions = £346.20 / 21 = £16.49 per hour."

You presumably counted £15 for me, but that didn't include London weighting. 

I would favour £17 for London rates. 

Therefore your average should be £348.20 / 21 = £16.58. 

Ours is £13 per hour, cash (direct; no agency), in Surrey. We give her £100 quid at Xmas and we paid her all the way through the lockdowns. Shes probably due a slight increase to be fair. 

We were paying £13 about 6 months ago went up to £17 she’s not the best we have had but is very reliable and local  that’s enough for me given how many were not. 

Reliable/loyal is worth much more than getting the very last speck of dust.

See how much you enjoy arguing with a cleaner over some trivial flaw vs how much you like coming home to a 99% clean house.

Seriously, my view on cleaners (and people like Deliveroo drivers):  if in doubt, overpay.  You can almost certainly afford it very easily.  They, on the other hand, really really need the money.  And for cleaners, the effective time commitment (esp in London) often includes quite a long journey at each side.

So: don't worry about "overpaying".  Be generous.