Most cleaning companies lose on price for one of two reasons
They either price too high and get beaten, or price too low and win a contract that loses money every month. The second one is worse. A three-year contract priced 50p an hour too low on 200 hours a week costs you £15,600 before you notice.
Public sector buyers usually score price for 30% to 50% of the total. Get the number wrong and the best quality answers in the world won’t save the bid.
This guide walks you through how to build a cleaning tender price from the ground up, with real 2026 wage rates and a worked example you can copy.
Step 1: Work out the hours before you work out the price
Every cleaning price starts with hours. Read the specification line by line and list each area, how often it is cleaned, and how long it takes.
A school might need daily cleaning of 40 classrooms, toilets twice a day, and a deep clean in every school holiday. An office might need daily desks and kitchens but carpets shampooed only twice a year.
Visit the site if the council allows it. Walk-rounds catch things the specification misses: stairs with no lift, a kitchen bigger than the floor plan suggests, or a car park full of litter.
Watch for periodic work hidden in the specification, such as:
- Window cleaning (internal and external)
- Carpet shampooing and hard floor stripping and resealing
- Deep cleans during school holidays or office shutdowns
- High-level dusting and light fittings
These are often priced separately. Miss one and you’ll do it for free for three years.
Step 2: Build your true hourly labour cost
The wage rate is not your labour cost. Your cost is the wage plus everything the law says you must pay on top.
From 1 April 2026, the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. Many councils go further and ask for the Real Living Wage, currently £13.45 an hour, or £14.80 in London. Check the tender documents before you set your rate.
On top of the wage, you need to add:
- Holiday pay: Staff are entitled to 5.6 weeks a year. For hourly workers, this adds about 12.07% to your cost.
- Employer’s National Insurance: 15% on each worker’s earnings above £5,000 a year.
- Pension: At least 3% employer contribution on qualifying earnings for staff who are auto-enrolled.
- Sickness cover: Someone has to clean when a cleaner is off. Budget for cover hours.
National Insurance and pension depend on how much each person earns, so work them out per worker, not as a flat percentage.
Step 3: Add supervision, materials and overheads
Labour is the biggest cost, but it isn’t the only one. Your price also needs to cover:
- Supervision and management: site supervisors, area managers, quality audits
- Materials and consumables: chemicals, bin liners, and paper towels and soap if you supply them (check the specification, as some councils supply their own)
- Equipment: vacuums, scrubber driers, and their repair and replacement over the contract
- Uniforms and PPE
- Training and DBS checks, especially for schools
- Overheads: office costs, insurance, accounts, software
- Mobilisation: the one-off cost of starting a new contract, including recruitment, induction and equipment
Worked example: one cleaner, 25 hours a week, at the National Living Wage
Here is how a £12.71 wage becomes a charge-out rate of about £21 an hour. The percentages for supervision, materials, overheads and profit are examples only. Use your own figures.
| Cost | Per hour |
|---|---|
| Wage (National Living Wage) | £12.71 |
| Holiday pay (12.07%) | £1.53 |
| Employer’s National Insurance | £1.33 |
| Employer pension (3%) | £0.24 |
| Direct labour cost | £15.81 |
| Supervision (8%) | £1.26 |
| Materials and consumables (6%) | £0.95 |
| Overheads (10%) | £1.58 |
| Total cost | £19.60 |
| Profit (7%) | £1.37 |
| Charge-out rate | £20.97 |
If the council requires the Real Living Wage, the same sum starts at £13.45 and your charge-out rate rises with it. If you price as though it’s £12.71 and the contract requires £13.45, you lose 74p on every hour before any other costs.
Step 4: Check for TUPE before you price anything
If the contract is currently run by another company, the cleaners may transfer to you under TUPE. That means you take on their existing pay, holiday and pension terms, not yours.
A cleaner on £13.20 an hour with 30 days’ holiday costs more than your own staff on the legal minimum. Ask the council for the TUPE information, then price to the real staff list. If the information isn’t provided, send a clarification question before the deadline.
Step 5: Know how your price will be scored
Many councils score price with a simple formula: the lowest price gets full marks, and every other bid gets marks in proportion to it.
For example, with price worth 40 marks:
- Lowest bid: £100,000 a year scores 40
- Your bid: £110,000 a year scores 36.4 (100,000 ÷ 110,000 × 40)
That 3.6 mark gap can often be won back with stronger quality answers. That’s why cutting your price to the bone is not always the right move.
Pricing too low carries its own risk. Under the Procurement Act 2023, councils can question a price that looks abnormally low and reject it if you can’t explain how it adds up.
Step 6: Check the price review clause
Cleaning contracts often run for three to five years. The National Living Wage rises every April. If the contract has no clause allowing you to raise prices when wages go up, your margin shrinks every year.
Read the terms for any price review or indexation clause. If there isn’t one, build expected wage rises into your price from the start.
Common pricing mistakes that lose cleaning tenders
- Leaving cells blank in the pricing schedule, which can make the bid non-compliant
- Hours in the pricing schedule that don’t match the hours in your method statement
- Forgetting periodic cleans, consumables or mobilisation costs
- Pricing at the National Living Wage when the tender asks for the Real Living Wage
- Ignoring TUPE costs
- Simple arithmetic errors, which councils will not fix for you
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge per hour for commercial cleaning in 2026?
It depends on your wage rate, overheads and the site. Built from the National Living Wage of £12.71, most charge-out rates land somewhere around £20 to £23 an hour. In London, or on Real Living Wage contracts, expect higher.
Should I price by the hour or by the square metre?
Build your price from hours, because hours drive your costs. Then convert it to whatever format the council’s pricing schedule asks for.
Do councils always choose the cheapest cleaning tender?
No. Most use a price and quality split, such as 40% price and 60% quality. A well-written bid at a fair price often beats the cheapest one.
What happens if I underprice a cleaning contract?
You either lose money for the length of the contract or cut corners on hours. The second leads to complaints, failed audits and, often, an early end to the contract.
Get your price checked before you submit
SEbids helps cleaning and facilities management companies win UK public sector contracts. We check your hours, your labour costs and your pricing schedule against the tender, so you submit a price that wins and still makes money.
Book a consultation at sebids.co.uk, call 01438 909700, or email general@sebids.co.uk.