The parking here runs to 11pm, and that single fact changes more about a Hackney Central booking than anything else on this page. Our own zone C, covering Kingsland High Street, Dalston Lane and Ridley Road, stops at 6.30pm and does not run on a Sunday. The Hackney Central zone keeps going almost five hours longer. Check the time before picking a slot, because an evening job here is workable in a way an evening job at our end of Dalston is not. The price list does not change for the postcode: a two bedroom move-out is £243 and the cooker sits inside it at ordinary grease levels.
Ten minutes east, and a completely different high street
Hackney Central is a short run along Dalston Lane, and it is the civic end of the borough rather than the market end. The town hall, the Hackney Empire and the Narrow Way running through the middle of it, with flats above nearly every shopfront on both sides. One stop separates Dalston Kingsland from Hackney Central on the Mildmay line, which is why this is the corner of the round reachable at the shortest notice and why a cleaner without a van is here inside a quarter of an hour.
Flats over shops, and the staircase between them
The streets off the Narrow Way are commercial at ground level with two or three flats above, reached through one door squeezed between two shopfronts and up a staircase that turns twice. Those are quick check-outs because the flats are small. Loading is the slow half. We put them either side of the middle of the day and keep off Saturday afternoons entirely where the job needs the van close, since the shopping end fills from late morning. Everything goes up in loads, so the £77 single oven that takes two hours in a ground floor kitchen wants a longer slot on a second floor flat with no lift.
Keys, agents and the same-day handback
Half our check-outs here run on a key collected from a letting agent up the road and dropped back the same afternoon. Tell us which office. We also need the name the key is held under, because a desk will not release it otherwise. Where the agent shuts at five, the clean gets booked in the morning so the key goes back the same day and nobody spends a Saturday chasing anybody. It is a small piece of admin that decides whether a deposit conversation starts on the Monday or the following Friday.
What gets booked here
Move-outs, by a distance. The tenancies over the shops turn over fast and the agents want a flat finished the morning after the keys come back, so the banded move-out price is what most callers ring about. Ovens come second, then carpets, then a steady handful of weekly houses on the streets running north towards Clapton. Scale is the item marked down most often on the check-out reports we see back from this area, which is the water rather than the tenants, and the descaling time is already inside the band.
Every figure, unchanged by the postcode
Studio £156, one bedroom £207, two bedrooms £243, three £339 and four £425 with the cooker inside at ordinary grease. Carpets by the room: £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £61 a through lounge, £41 a flight, and rugs £35 or £51 either side of 2m². A single oven is £77, a double £110, a 90cm range £114 and a two oven AGA £143, with hobs at £23 and extractors at £28. Weekly housework is £22 per cleaner per hour, fortnightly £24, ironing £12 out of the same hours. Team deep cleans run £186 to £498. One off work has a £67 floor under it and hourly work does not.
Ring even if you are further out than the town hall. The van comes back through Dalston at the end of the day and there is usually room left in the run. What the rest of the round books is on the areas page, every figure is on the prices page, and 020 8077 6967 is answered from 8am to 8pm daily.
Questions we get asked
Do you charge more to come to Hackney Central?
No. It is the same list as Dalston with nothing for travel and no call out fee. A two bedroom move-out is £243 in both, a bedroom carpet is £36 in both, and crossing between zones changes the parking rules and nothing else.
How late can you work in Hackney Central?
Cleaners are out until 8pm every day at the ordinary rate. The local parking zone runs to 11pm rather than 6.30pm like ours, so an evening job needs a paid bay and you hear what that costs before anybody sets off.
Can you clean a flat above a shop on the Narrow Way?
Regularly. The staircases turn twice and there is nowhere to stop the van, so those jobs get booked away from the busy middle of the day and the kit goes up in loads. It lengthens the slot rather than the price.
Can you work around a letting agent’s key?
Yes, and most check-outs here do. Give us the office and the name the key is held under, since the desk will not hand it over otherwise. If the agent shuts at five we book the morning so the key goes back the same day.
Rather talk? Ring 020 8077 6967, seven days.