The British Cleaning Council and members write monthly columns for both Cleaning and Maintenance and Tomorrow’s Cleaning. You can read recent columns below.
To read the columns as they originally appeared, please visit https://cleaningmag.com/columnists and https://www.tomorrowscleaning.com/back-issues
An eventful and enjoyable first year in office
By Delia Cannings, Chair of the British Cleaning Council (BCC). (This column first appeared in Tomorrow’s Cleaning magazine).
My passion for this sector goes back 50 years. I was still at school when I first got involved with cleaning, I was as they called it back then, a ‘Chamber Maid’, cleaning hotel bedrooms at the weekends for pocket money to support my love of fashion and style. During this period, I developed an overwhelming desire to make a difference as I witnessed the dismissal by many of an occupation that was vital. The fire within me ignited and the crusade began, which ultimately led to my election last year as Chair of the BCC.
To be honest, I still pinch myself to see if it is real as the honour of being elected was, and still is, a truly humbling experience.
The most impressive achievement of the last year was, by far, the launch of the Level 2 Cleaning Hygiene Operative Apprenticeship on 1 January 2024, potentially unlocking millions of pounds in Apprenticeship Levy funds for sector firms to invest in their staff. This learning and development opportunity will help win wider recognition for the vital, skilled work of sector staff, bolstering recruitment, assisting with succession planning and supporting continuous professional development. Going forward, we need to encourage much more take up.
The apprenticeship is only one rung on the formal career ladder the industry needs. Working with our members, we are well underway with developing an exciting project which will address the lack of educational structure in terms of pathways for staff progression in the sector. Watch out for more news on this in the coming year.
The progression and achievements of our industry have been phenomenal, although we still have some battles to win. Cleaning professionals are environmental ninjas who protect the health and wealth of the nation providing safer spaces, therefore the battle for recognition is not over and together we will convince the Government of this fact.
As part of our campaign to make the industry’s voice heard and create a resilient UK, I wrote to the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer but the response from both was disappointing. Thank you to the more than 900 sector staff who have joined our campaign to write to their MP about these issues.
Over the past year, Jim Melvin has continued to do sterling work with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the sector. It was dissolved ahead of the General Election, and we are now considering how best to reconstitute it going forward.
Briefing guests at industry events is a key way of keeping the sector updated on important issues and I’ve enjoyed speaking at the Cleaning Matters and Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) conferences and this year’s Cleaning Show.
The BCC co-produces the Cleaning Shows, so I was thrilled that this year’s event was the biggest and best-attended Manchester show ever.
We launched the 2024 sector research report at the show, which showed that the cleaning, hygiene and waste sector is still in recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic. It valued the sector at nearly £60bn, maintaining it in the top ten biggest UK industries.
We are also working with the Clean Hospitals initiative, an international centre of excellence in public health working to increase patient safety and bring international attention to the need for an increased focus on hospital environmental hygiene.
Finally, I’ve also had the great pleasure and honour of representing the BCC at several glittering occasions run by BCC members.
As I enter the final period of my full-time career and second year as the Chair of the BCC, I look back with fond memories and great happiness. I must acknowledge and thank friends and colleagues made along the way for their support, guidance, ears and occasionally shoulders to lean on.
How Pasha the Pillowcase is helping achieve a sustainable future for linen
By David Stevens, CEO of the Textile Services Association. (This column first appeared in Cleaning and Maintenance online).
It’s been a few months since the Textile Services Association (TSA) introduced the mascot Pasha the Pillowcase to the world. Pasha has the mission of educating staff in the hospitality and laundry sectors about the importance of handling linen correctly as part of the drive for sustainability. With about 61 per cent of the industry’s annual stock of linen being lost each year, finding ways to reduce this will play a vital part in reaching Carbon Net Zero targets for both sectors.
Since we launched the Pasha video, it has been taken up by some of the largest hotel, leisure and laundry groups as a key part of staff training and has been getting great feedback as a useful way of illustrating the importance of this issue.
For example, Fernanda Lewis, executive housekeeper at London’s Goring Hotel and the UK Housekeepers Association’s (UKHA) London chair, (the UKHA is the professional association of UK housekeepers), told us she thought it was very innovative. “I’ve never seen a training video like it,” she said. “The TSA has managed to present the issue of sustainability and how it applies to the day to day work of hotel staff in a fun but understandable way.”
Meanwhile Pasha was such a hit at Aeroserve, the company specialising in providing laundry services for the healthcare and hospitality sectors, that they have begun using it in other ways to help spread the message of the need to look after linen. They now print out a picture of Pasha and stick it on every laundry box on its way back to customers, as a fun way to remind people of the correct way to handle textiles.
Bourne Leisure, one of the UK’s leading hotel and holiday companies, started to implement the video within its training procedures and carried out a case study to see how it helped to reduce the amount of linen loss.
The environmental and financial consequences of prematurely lost or damaged linen in the UK’s hotel industry are substantial. To replace the 12.5 million pieces of linen lost within the hotel industry with fresh linen would generate 39,000 tonnes of carbon and require the equivalent of 937 bathtubs of water to grow the cotton. Ensuring that the textiles have as long a working life as possible can have a significant impact on the sustainability of any business that relies on it, and has been one of the TSA’s strategic priorities for many years. The Pasha initiative is just one of the ways we have been working with our members and the industries they serve to help reduce loss of linen stock and the need for fresh material to replace it.
This is a critical issue in the hospitality sector. Solving it will have to be a collaborative process. Until now there’s been very little information about sustainability of linens available. There’s no easy overnight solution, but we think (and the feedback confirms) that the Pasha video is a great way to raise awareness of the problem and help to begin creating the knowledge and mindset needed to reduce unnecessary product loss.
We are continuing to introduce Pasha at UKHA meetings for the southeast and northwest regions, as well as at its hospitality round table meeting where more major hotel groups confirmed they are looking to begin implementing the videos as part of their training.
The Pasha videos can be found on the TSA’s website.
The TSA is the trade association for the textile care services industry. The TSA represents commercial laundry and textile rental businesses. Membership ranges from family-run operations through to large, multi-national companies. Visit www.tsa-uk.org for more information.