Evening Standard/London

Shocked passers-by saw a young girl who they thought was a victim of “child labour” when they spotted her cleaning a London branch of estate agents Foxtons late at night.

The girl, believed to be 10 or 11, was seen wiping down tables and emptying bins at 10.30pm at the Foxtons’ Hampstead branch, north London, where homes sell for millions of pounds.

Marcus Butler, 38, had been walking past the office in Heath Street with his friends when he spotted the lone figure in the office.

He and his group stopped to watch for a few minutes, expecting to at least see an adult was supervising, but the young girl was seemingly working alone.

Butler, a garden designer, from Hackney, said: “We were walking around Hampstead looking at the amazing houses and thought we’d look into the window to see the ridiculous prices and there was this little girl.

“It’s just not right, it’s effectively child labour. She looked around 10 or 11 years old and were saying to each other that she should be at home in bed like everyone else her age.

“Estate agents are earning a lot of money at the moment and, well, to see this, it just didn’t feel right.”

A spokeswoman for Foxtons said the girl was there with her mother.

She added: “We have been in contact with the cleaning firm, a reputable company, and they have explained the lady’s childcare let her down and she took her daughter along.

“We are confident that they are going to deal with this going forward. It’s obviously something we are not happy with and they are not happy with, but these things happen and they will deal with it.”