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
Brushing up our cleaning standards will limit winter illnesses
By David Garcia, Chair of the British Cleaning Council. (This column first appeared in Tomorrow’s Cleaning).
A lot of people seem to be suffering from seasonal illnesses at the moment.
Colds and the latest strain of Covid are circulating and we have to be prepared for a possible upsurge in flu cases in the coming months.
Seasonal illnesses seem to surge every autumn and winter.
You only have to think back to last winter, when the NHS was showing the strain due to a tidal wave of winter illnesses, for a warning about what could happen in the next few 
months.
This is why a new initiative launched by the British Cleaning Council is more important and timely than ever.
We are calling for clear and effective cleaning standards to be introduced across workplaces and public spaces in the UK to build on the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Handwashing Standards released earlier this month.
The handwashing standards are a firm foundation for providing safe and healthy facilities, though if we really want to improve UK public health, save lives, protect the economy from billions of pounds lost every year in sickness absence and prevent thousands of school days being lost to sickness annually, we want to see the wide adoption of our newly-published guidance framework as well.
Higher standards of cleaning in workplaces and public spaces, combined with the handwashing measures recommended by the WHO, are the best way of reducing the spread of common infections such as flu and protecting against another pandemic.
The Strategic Framework For Achieving Cleanliness And Hygiene in Public Environments we have just launched builds on the WHO standards by providing a framework of systematic guidance on how to develop cleaning and hygiene policies for workplaces and public spaces aimed at preventing the spread of infectious disease.
It gives expert guidance on the issues and methods to be considered when designing a cleaning regime and can be adapted/tailored to specific environments in order to create a cleaner, safer, and healthier environment for everyone.
The aim is to enable managers across a range of environments, for example leisure, retail, hospitality and public transport facilities, to develop a policy for delivering targeted hygiene which is appropriate to the specific needs and challenges of the environment they are responsible for, and which includes both cleaning and the subsequent measurement of outcomes.
Enabling organisations to develop their own policies using the framework guidelines will potentially contribute to the creation of a resilient UK whilst reassuring the public regarding environmental cleanliness. A national standard must be considered as the bedrock for health and well-being.
The framework includes:
• the definition of hygiene and cleanliness
• assessing risks
• establishing cleaning and hygiene standards
• implementing cleaning and hygiene procedures
• continuously monitoring and improving the process.
Examples of areas covered include:
· The need to identify the sites and surfaces where the probability of contamination is highest and where there is the greatest risk of infection spread. This may include hands, high-touch surfaces such as door handles, light switches, and shared equipment, cleaning utensils, and surfaces where food is prepared or handled.
· The need to develop cleaning protocols, by creating detailed cleaning procedures for different areas and surfaces, including the frequency of cleaning, the types of cleaning products to use, and the proper techniques for application.
We are now planning a pilot project which will see the framework implemented in one or more schools.
It is hoped that the results of this trial will encourage the wide adoption of the framework in other workplace situations and public spaces.
For a free copy of the Strategic Framework For Achieving Cleanliness And Hygiene in Public Environments, please email the BCC via Compsec@britishcleaningcouncil.org
Commercial laundry industry helps the nation learn the lessons of the pandemic
By David Stevens, CEO of the Textile Services Association (TSA) (This column first appeared in Cleaning and Maintenance).
The Covid 19 pandemic was a wakeup call to the UK about the importance of ensuring standards of hygiene, not only in healthcare but also in many other sectors. The TSA fully 
supports the British Cleaning Council’s efforts to lobby the Government to make cleaning and hygiene a national priority. Indeed, we’ve been working on a number of our own campaigns in this area. And our experience of the pandemic shows the need to make sure the country learns the right lessons.
The recent publication of the TSA’s witness statement to the Government’s Covid enquiry demonstrated the potential of the commercial laundry industry for ensuring future public health crises are handled more effectively. In particular, this focused on the benefits of reusable PPE in high risk healthcare environments, how commercial laundries are capable of maintaining the standards of hygiene required in healthcare – and more importantly, how the opportunities to benefit from using reusable PPE were missed.
Following the end of phase one of the enquiry, the Government has begun reviewing the status of the UK’s systems for ensuring resilience during national emergencies. The TSA recognises the vital work the BCC is doing to assist the Government in developing and implementing best practice in a range of hygiene related matters. The TSA’s own work in this area reflects many of the same concerns, and the breadth of knowledge of both organisations means that their advice should be taken seriously.
The TSA has been working with Professor Katie Laird and her team at De Montfort University for over ten years on a series of research projects. These have the aim of developing a body of data and building methodologies to ensure that the required hygiene standards are maintained in a variety of critical sectors.
The latest result of this ongoing relationship was Prof Laird’s confirmation that most domestic washing machines are unable to reach the temperatures required to properly disinfect and remove harmful bacteria and pathogens. This could be a potential vector for infection control risks in hospitals and care homes. The findings also underline the importance of commercial laundry to healthcare, as they have both the equipment that is capable of safely disinfecting textiles, and procedures for ensuring that textile products are handled safely.
To help build up the knowledge base in the industry the TSA launched a training course which provides managers working in the healthcare, food care and pharmaceutical laundry sectors a deeper understanding of microorganisms and harmful pathogens. The first course was held in April 2025, and gave attendees a grounding in the science of microbiology as well as an understanding of the decontamination processes used in laundries.
These and other initiatives support the aims of the BCC, and the TSA recognises the importance of aligning our lobbying messages and encouraging a deeper collaboration between the two organisations. While the initial signs from the Government are positive, there is still much work to be done. For the TSA this includes continuing to support the research of Prof Laird, who is currently working to confirm the effectiveness of commercial laundry in delivering the highest standards of hygiene and disinfection, and developing methodologies that will allow the laundry industry to demonstrate that they are reaching these standards.
Ensuring that the country is in the best possible position to cope with whatever the future might throw at us is hugely important, and it’s vital that we learn the right lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. The BCC’s and TSA’s closer relationship can help ensure the UK gets where it needs to be.