No licence is required to start a cleaning business in the UK. That makes it one of the cheapest trades to enter and one of the easiest to get wrong, because the rules that bite are employment rules rather than permits. The single largest of them is TUPE, which can move another company’s staff onto your payroll the day you win a contract. What follows applies in England unless stated.
Cleaning has almost no barrier to entry. There is no registration, no inspection regime, no qualification and, for a domestic round, no premises. What there is instead is a business made almost entirely of labour, which means the risk sits in how people are engaged, checked and paid. Domestic and commercial cleaning are also two different businesses wearing the same name: one sells to households and can be run from a van, the other bids for contracts and inherits the staff who were already doing the work.
What is a cleaning business?
A cleaning business supplies labour, equipment and materials to clean premises it does not own, and in the UK it needs no licence, registration or qualification to trade. A cleaning service can be sold to households, to other businesses, or to both. The market divides on who the customer is. Domestic cleaning sells regular visits to households, usually paid per visit or by monthly subscription, with the relationship held directly with the householder. Commercial cleaning sells contracted hours to offices, schools, surgeries and industrial sites, usually won by tender and held on a term contract. The two have different cash cycles, different insurance needs and, critically, different employment law exposure.
How to open a cleaning business in the UK, step by step
There is no licence to apply for, so opening a cleaning service is a sequence of commercial and employment decisions rather than permissions. In short, what a new cleaning business needs before its first job:
- A decision on domestic or commercial work, which sets everything else
- A registered business, as a sole trader or a limited company
- Public liability insurance, plus employers’ liability once anyone is employed
- A COSHH assessment covering the cleaning products used
- Right to work checks on every employee, and DBS checks for schools and care settings
- Materials, equipment and a vehicle
Choose domestic or commercial before anything else
The choice determines the whole shape of the business. Domestic work is bought on trust and convenience, priced per visit, and scales by adding rounds. Commercial work is bought on price and compliance, priced per hour against a specification, and scales by winning contracts. A domestic operator can start alone with a car and a set of keys. A commercial operator bidding for a site that already has cleaners is usually taking on those cleaners as employees.
Decide how cleaners will be engaged
This is the defining decision in the sector. Cleaners can be employed, which brings PAYE, holiday pay, pension enrolment and employer National Insurance, or genuinely self-employed, which does not. Employment status in the UK is determined by the reality of the working arrangement rather than by what the contract calls it, so an operator who sets the hours, supplies the materials and directs the work is likely to have employees whatever the paperwork says. Getting this wrong creates liability for unpaid tax, unpaid holiday and minimum wage shortfalls at the same time.
Register the business and sort the tax position
A sole trader registers for Self Assessment with HMRC. A private company limited by shares is incorporated at Companies House, with directors carrying statutory duties under the Companies Act 2006 and now verifying their identity. A PAYE scheme is needed before the first payday if anyone is employed. Cleaning services are standard-rated, so VAT registration is required once taxable turnover passes £90,000, which matters more here than in most trades because adding 20% to a domestic price is difficult to pass on to householders.
Arrange insurance and the practical protections
A cleaning service is unusual in that the business holds keys to premises it is not responsible for and works unsupervised inside them. The cover that matters:
- Employers’ liability insurance : a legal requirement once anyone is employed
- Public liability insurance : not a legal requirement, but a condition of most commercial contracts and many domestic customers
- Cover for keys, damage and treatment risk : the specific exposures of working inside someone else’s property
- Motor insurance for business use : ordinary commuting cover does not extend to a cleaning round
Cover the health and safety duties
Cleaning chemicals are hazardous substances, so the COSHH regime applies: assessing the products used, controlling exposure and training staff to use them safely. Duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 apply as they do in any workplace, and lone working in customers’ premises is a risk that has to be assessed rather than assumed away. An operator that removes waste from a client’s premises as part of the service may also need to register as a waste carrier.
Check right to work, and check again after a transfer
Right to work checks apply to every person employed, and the civil penalty for employing someone without the right to work is charged per worker. A cleaning business is disproportionately exposed, because staff frequently arrive by TUPE transfer rather than by recruitment, and an employer inherits the liability along with the people. Work in schools, healthcare and care settings brings DBS requirements on top.
Price the work and win the first customers
A domestic cleaning service is usually priced per visit and quoted after seeing the property. Commercial pricing is built from hours against a specification, with the wage floor, employer National Insurance, holiday accrual and pension sitting underneath every quoted hour. Because labour is most of the cost, a contract priced before the April wage uprating can become unprofitable in the same financial year unless the contract allows for it.
Types of cleaning business
- Domestic round : regular household cleans, lowest entry cost, no premises, and the format most franchised in the UK, accounting for much of the personal services franchises recruiting in the UK
- Commercial contract cleaning : offices, schools and industrial sites on term contracts, higher turnover per customer and the format where TUPE applies, sold to the same buyers as the business services franchises recruiting in the UK
- End of tenancy and one-off deep cleans : higher value per job, no recurring income, and demand tied to the lettings market
- Specialist cleaning service : windows, carpets, jet washing, oven cleaning or biohazard work, where equipment cost is higher and competition thinner
- Management franchise : the owner builds and manages a team rather than cleaning, which is how most UK cleaning franchises are structured
How much does it cost to start a cleaning business in the UK?
No official UK average start-up cost exists, and there is no disclosure filing to consult, because the UK has none. Cleaning is nonetheless the sector where a franchisor publishes the most usable figures on its own site.
| Item | Published figure |
|---|---|
| Licence to trade | None. No registration, no inspection regime and no qualification requirement |
| Franchised domestic cleaning | Molly Maid UK: initial investment £23,975 plus £12,000 working capital earmarked for first-year marketing, with one week of training. The franchisor states that 50% of the initial fee is reinvested in marketing |
| Independent start-up | Not published: no official UK average. The unavoidable costs are insurance, materials, equipment and a vehicle |
| Staff | National Living Wage £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 for those aged 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20 year olds, plus employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 a year per employee, less the £10,500 Employment Allowance |
| VAT | Cleaning services are standard-rated at 20%. Registration required once taxable turnover passes £90,000 |
| Funding | Start Up Loans lends up to £25,000 per applicant at a fixed 7.5% over one to five years, unsecured, capped at £100,000 per business |
Business rates rarely feature. A domestic round run from home is not normally separately rated, and an operator taking a small unit for storage would fall outside the retail, hospitality and leisure categories, so the standard non-RHL multipliers apply rather than the lower RHL ones used by shops and gyms.
Good to know
Winning a commercial cleaning contract often means inheriting the staff. Acas lists office cleaning among the contracts where a service provider change typically arises, alongside catering, security and waste collection. TUPE applies where there is an organised grouping of employees carrying out the work for that client, the client stays the same, and the work stays mainly the same. Three points follow that catch new operators out. There is no minimum size for the grouping: it can be a single employee. The employer cannot choose which staff transfer, since everyone assigned to the contract moves automatically. And the outgoing employer must supply employee liability information before the transfer. TUPE does not apply to a one-off job or a short-term task, and it may not apply where a contract is broken up between several providers, which Acas calls fragmentation. For a new cleaning business this reframes a tender: the bid is not only for the work, it is for a payroll set by somebody else’s contracts.
Cleaning franchise opportunities in the UK
Franchising in the UK is governed by general contract law, which leaves the franchise agreement carrying the weight a disclosure filing carries elsewhere. There is no franchise statute, no register and no statutory pre-contract disclosure requirement, and the British Franchise Association’s Code of Ethics binds its voluntary members rather than the market. Cleaning is one of the deepest franchised sectors here, and unusually it is one where a major brand publishes its entry figures openly.
- Molly Maid : domestic cleaning, operating in the UK for over 40 years from a support office in Maidenhead. Its own UK franchise site gives an initial investment of £23,975 plus £12,000 of working capital directed at first-year marketing, one week of training, and a five-step recruitment process
- Other UK networks : Bright & Beautiful, Dublcheck, Betterclean and Poppies all recruit in the UK across domestic and commercial cleaning. Terms should be read on each franchisor’s own pages rather than on a directory listing
Editor’s tip
Molly Maid’s UK site also publishes an earnings progression: break-even potential in year one on average sales of £73,453, 8% to 10% net profit in year two on £163,378, and 15% to 18% in year three on £287,101, described as based on the actual performance of recent franchise owners. Those are franchisor-provided figures. They are not audited, no regulator verifies them, and the UK has no disclosure filing against which to check them. They describe businesses that already exist rather than the one being sold. The hard terms on the same page, the investment, the working capital and the training, are the part that will appear in the agreement.
The practical difficulties operators report
- Wage rises against fixed-price contracts : the wage floor moves every April, while a commercial contract may be priced for a year or more, so the margin is squeezed from underneath
- The VAT threshold : crossing £90,000 adds 20% to prices that domestic customers compare against cash-in-hand competitors
- Employment status challenges : treating cleaners as self-employed when the arrangement says otherwise creates retrospective liability for tax, holiday pay and minimum wage together
- TUPE on both sides : staff transfer in when a contract is won and out when it is lost, so the workforce is not entirely the operator’s to plan
- Turnover of staff : the work is part-time, unsocial and low-paid relative to the wider labour market, and recruitment is a permanent activity rather than a start-up task
The bottom line
Cleaning is the cheapest business in this series to start and the one most exposed to employment law. Nothing has to be licensed, registered or inspected, and a domestic round can begin with insurance, materials and a vehicle. What decides whether it works is how cleaners are engaged, how contracts are priced against a wage floor that moves every April, and whether the operator understands that winning a commercial contract can mean inheriting someone else’s staff on someone else’s terms. The published franchise route starts at £23,975 plus working capital, which sits at the affordable end of the UK franchise directory. The independent route has no published figure, because there is almost nothing that has to be bought.
Frequently asked questions about starting a cleaning business in the UK
No. There is no licence, registration or qualification requirement to open a cleaning business in the UK. Obligations still apply: employers’ liability insurance once anyone is employed, COSHH duties for cleaning chemicals, right to work checks for every recruit, DBS checks for work in schools and care settings, and waste carrier registration where waste is removed from a client’s premises.
Often, yes. Acas describes a service provision change, where a client moves a contract from one provider to another, using office cleaning as its example. Where an organised group of employees is assigned to the contract and the activities continue essentially unchanged, those employees transfer to the incoming contractor on their existing terms. It applies equally when a contract is lost. Whether it applies to a particular tender should be established before bidding, not after.
Molly Maid publishes an initial investment of £23,975 plus £12,000 of working capital on its own UK franchise site. No official UK average exists across the sector. Figures found for international brands are frequently American: Molly Maid’s US disclosure document puts the total investment there at roughly US$144,000 to US$204,000, which reflects a different market and has no application in the UK.
