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CSSA NEWS

Newsletter

Released on 20/10/2009

Author Andrew Large

Board Meeting

The CSSA Board met on 7^th October in London to review the strategy for the CSSA as a whole for the coming months.

Three key decisions were taken that will have an impact on what the CSSA does in future.

• With the forthcoming election, renewed effort needs to be made in the promotion of the importance of professional cleaning services and the benefits that they bring to the UK as a whole.
• A major recruitment campaign for new members is to be launched, on the back of a significant investment in the development of new services offering commercial benefits to members.
•  The CSSA will continue to develop closer links with other trade bodies to multiply our voice and our ability to influence Government and other stakeholders.

 Healthcare Meeting

The CSSA Healthcare Committee met on 14^th October and discussed the promotion of contract cleaning and improved hygiene in the NHS.

The two key topics discussed were pensions and the cleaning standards in hospitals.

CSSA members are working actively with the Department of Health and Treasury officials to find a way to mitigate the impact of public sector pension provision – which if left unresolved threatens to block further outsourcing in the NHS and other public sector markets.  We are hopeful that the development of the retention of employment model may provide a means of ensuring that outsourced cleaners retain access to the NHS pension scheme.

The second key issue is cleaning standards. The National Specifications for Cleanliness were last revised in 2007. However there remain some NHS Trusts that are using the 2003 or even 2001 versions of these standards. The CSSA has been lobbying the Care Quality Commission to ensure that it insists that as a condition for registration all hospitals must use the 2007 specifications. The CSSA continues to work closely with the CQC. Following the publication of the most recent report on NHS performance ratings, the CSSA will be approaching poorly performing Trusts to offer advice and guidance on hygiene issues.

More safeguards

The CSSA has been lobbying Government about the concerns of cleaning service providers regarding the introduction of the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

There are a number of factors that make the cleaning industry particularly sensitive to what is being proposed.

Cleaning companies operate on low margins (circa 4%) and generally pay wages at or close to the National Minimum. It is naïve to assume that the client will always pay. Successive increases in the National Minimum Wage have led to cuts in services as clients place an overall cap on their cleaning spend.

Cleaning companies also have rapid staff turnover. In some contracts the churn rate can be as high as 100%. What that means is that the costs of ISA registration become multiplied as cleaners leave and new ones are recruited.

There is also a more fundamental issue here, which is the ability of the ISA scheme to work effectively with a non-UK workforce. According to Asset Skills, between 35% and 40% of the cleaning workforce is from outside the UK. Many of them are short term migrants, or have been in the UK for a short period of time before starting work. In this case, the ISA process will give them a clean bill of health but it will not be able to look into their previous history in other countries. It is difficult to see how this could be done without creating a significant barrier to the employment of non-UK workers who may have contact with children or vulnerable adults. Frankly, much of the UK service sector would grind to a halt if the non-UK labour had to be removed.

So where do we go from here? Despite the protests of a number of high profile authors, the Government seems in no mood to change. As things stand, ISA will be progressively implemented in 2010.

However, there will be a General Election part way through the process. The Conservative Party has made it clear that they believe that the proposed ISA scheme goes too far and that its scope should be rolled back. The CSSA is in active contact with Conservative policy makers and we aim to ensure that they commit to reviewing and reforming the ISA scheme before its implementation can start.

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