1. Is the housekeeper employed by you, or introduced to me?
This is the most consequential question and it is rarely asked. An introduction agency finds you someone, takes a fee and steps back; the working relationship and everything attached to it then sits between you and that individual.
An employer pays wages, National Insurance, pension, holiday and sick pay, provides training, equipment and insurance, and carries the responsibility if something goes wrong. The two models look similar on a website and are entirely different in practice.
2. What happens when my housekeeper is ill?
Ask specifically whether cover is a named person, and whether that person will have seen your house before the day they are needed.
A deputy who first arrives on the morning of an illness is a stranger with a key and a guess. The honest answers here range from 'we send whoever is free' to 'your deputy has shadowed your house and works to the same written specification' — and the difference shows up in year one.
3. What level of DBS check do your staff hold?
A revealing question, because the answer is often wrong.
A Basic DBS check discloses unspent convictions and is available to anyone. An Enhanced check requires the role to be eligible regulated activity — a household including children or vulnerable adults, or duties extending beyond cleaning.
General domestic cleaning in a private home is usually not eligible for an Enhanced check. So a company claiming all staff are enhanced DBS checked is describing something the scheme does not generally permit, which tells you something about how carefully they handle everything else.
4. Do you carry public liability insurance, and may I see the certificate?
The second half of that question is the real one. A company that carries cover will send the certificate without hesitation. The request is entirely normal and the response is informative either way.
5. What happens if something gets broken?
Ask how breakages are reported, and by whom.
The answer you want is that the company tells you the same day, before you find it yourself. That only happens where staff know reporting carries no consequence. Where a housekeeper is frightened of the client or the employer, breakages get hidden — and finding a hidden one is what actually ends arrangements.
6. Who do I talk to if I am not happy?
If the answer is 'tell your housekeeper', expect never to do it. Most people will not criticise someone's work to their face in their own home, which means small dissatisfactions accumulate silently until the arrangement ends.
A named contact who is not the housekeeper is a small structural thing that prevents a great deal.
7. What is written down?
Ask whether you get a specification, and whether it records what is not to be touched as well as what is.
The painting that is never dusted, the desk that is never tidied — a household accumulates these preferences, and if they live only in one housekeeper's memory, they leave when that person does.
8. What do you do about the marble?
A specific question that works as a general test. If the house has stone, ask what they clean it with and what they would do about an etch mark.
A good answer mentions pH-neutral products, and distinguishes etching from staining. A vague answer, or an assurance that a general-purpose spray is fine, tells you what will happen to every other specified surface in the house.
Substitute your own version — the silk curtains, the antique rug, the lacquered brass. The point is to ask about one thing you actually care about and listen for whether the answer is specific.
A note on price
An hourly rate buys one person's time, with no cover, no training, no supervision and no recourse. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to buy, and for many households it is the right answer.
What it is not is the same service at a lower price. Knowing which you are buying is worth more than the comparison itself.
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