Rooms and units let by the night, close enough to the office that one pair can turn them round in a round.

Two things are let on this side of the schedule. A serviced room is a lockable room in a shared house, with a kitchen and bathroom shared on a rota of cleans. A self-contained unit has its own kitchen and bathroom behind its own door, usually off a shared hall. Both sit on the same changeover sheet and both are turned round by the same five arcs.

What is in a unit when the key is released

A sealed linen set per bed, a towel set per guest, and a kitchen with a hob, a fridge, a kettle and a toaster. A drying rack lives in the unit; an iron and board are brought up on request rather than left to gather dust. The router sits in the hall cupboard with the network name written on the arrival card, not on a sticker on the door.

The arrival card is the one piece of paper that matters. It carries the unit reference, the borough collection day for the bins, the controlled-parking streets nearby and the hours they run, and a number that reaches the person holding that key rather than a general desk.

To a guest Departure by 10:00, arrival from 15:00

Those two hours are the edges of the changeover rather than a house preference. Between them the room is stripped, cleaned, re-linened, walked through on the inspection sheet and only then signed off for a key. Arriving earlier is fine; bags wait in the hall while the room is still inside its inspection, because a room that is being inspected is not a room you can be shown into.

An arrival after 21:00 is arranged by message with whoever holds the key, so that somebody is actually there. Between 23:00 and 07:00 the request is for quiet: these are residential streets and the neighbours are not guests.

A linen change inside a longer stay

On a stay of seven nights or more a linen change can be booked. It runs as a short changeover — strip and linen only, planned at forty-five minutes — and it goes on the sheet as its own line with its own start time. It is not squeezed into the hour before a full turnaround somewhere else, which is how linen changes go wrong.

Extending a stay

An extension is checked against the nights sheet before anything is confirmed, because the night you want may already be on another sheet. If it is free, the extension is confirmed by message and the changeover is moved off that date. If it is not free, a different unit is offered where one is open rather than the answer being a flat no. Nothing is held on a verbal yes: the message is the record.

Leaving

Leave the beds made. The pair counts linen sets as they come off, and a stripped bed turns a count into guesswork. Put the key where the arrival card says, not through a letterbox it was not issued through. If something broke, write it on the card and leave it on the counter: a note found during the strip is logged against the right changeover, while a message sent two days later is logged against nothing.

The meter is read and photographed during the inspection, and that reading closes the stay. If you would like the reading, ask for it before you go and it will be sent with the unit reference on it.