What a cleaner must be paid by the hour depends on their age. GOV.UK sets the National Living Wage, the rate for the oldest working age band, and the National Minimum Wage, the set of lower rates for younger age bands. Both are reviewed and usually change on 1 April each year, so the rate that applied from 1 April 2026 will not necessarily be the rate that applies from 1 April 2027.

Checking which rate applies

Because the age bands and the rate for each one can move at the April change, the figure you used last year is not safe to carry forward without checking it again. GOV.UK publishes the current rate for every age band, and it is worth checking against the birthday a member of staff has had since the rate last changed, since moving into an older band can mean a different rate applies from that date.

Travel between clients

When a cleaner travels from one client's property to the next during the working day, that travelling time counts as working time for minimum wage purposes. Regulation 34 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 sets this out, and HMRC's manual page NMWM08400 explains how it applies to work carried out at different premises through the day, as cleaning usually is.

In practice, this means a member of staff's pay for the day has to average out to at least the correct hourly rate once the time spent travelling between properties is added to the time spent cleaning.

The journey from home is not working time

Travel from home to the first property of the day, and travel from the last property of the day back home, is ordinary commuting. It does not count as working time for minimum wage purposes, in the same way a commute to a fixed workplace would not.

Read the full guidance on travel time between clients.

Anyone who cleans for you as an employee or worker builds up paid holiday, separate from what you pay them for the hours they clean. Someone working for you as self-employed does not get this, and whether a cleaner counts as one or the other is covered on Employed or Self-Employed.

The 5.6-week entitlement

A worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, under GOV.UK's guidance on holiday entitlement. For someone working a standard five-day week, 5.6 weeks works out at 28 days. GOV.UK caps the statutory entitlement at 28 days.

Part-time hours

Not every member of staff works the same number of days each week. GOV.UK sets out a worked example for this: take the number of days a worker does in a week and multiply it by 5.6 to find their holiday in days. A cleaner working fewer days than a full week builds up a proportionate share of the 28-day cap.

Bank holidays

There is no separate legal right to paid leave on top for bank holidays. You can count bank holidays as part of the 5.6-week entitlement, and many employers do. Where that is how a contract is set up, a worker who takes a bank holiday off is using part of their normal holiday.

Once you take on your first member of staff, you have a duty to look at their pension, whatever hours they work and however small your round is. This is separate from the question of whether someone is employed by you or working for themselves, which is covered on the page about employed or self-employed status.

Who has to be enrolled

A worker is enrolled automatically into a workplace pension where they are aged between 22 and State Pension age and earn at least £10,000 a year from the cleaning work they do for you.

A worker outside that age range or below that earnings level is not enrolled automatically, but can still ask to join a scheme, and you have to put one in place for them if they do.

What you contribute

Where a worker is enrolled, you pay in at least 3% of their qualifying earnings. The worker makes up the rest of the total contribution, usually with some help from tax relief.

Pension duties sit alongside the other registrations you take on as you add staff, which are set out in order on the page about starting a cleaning business.