Office cleaning and commercial cleaning in Great Britain: what a contract covers, what it costs, which premises duties it discharges, and who carries out the work

How commercial and office cleaning works

1. Write the specification before you go to market. List every area, what happens in it, what needs doing and how often. Separate the daily routine from the periodic schedule. A contractor can price that, and you can audit it. A request for a clean office produces quotes that cannot be compared and a standard that cannot be enforced.
2. Price the hours, then the rate. Almost all of a cleaning price is wages. The statutory floor is the National Living Wage at 12.71 pounds an hour for workers aged 21 and over, and many contractors pay the voluntary real Living Wage of 13.45 pounds, or 14.80 pounds in London. Ask every quote for the weekly hours and the rate separately, and the comparison becomes honest.
3. Decide what is periodic and put a frequency on it. Carpet and hard floor machine work, high level dusting, internal glass, kitchen appliance interiors, washroom descaling. Each needs a frequency and a price in the contract. A periodic task with no frequency is a task that will be argued about rather than delivered.
4. Treat ventilation and extract as compliance, not cleaning. Mechanical ventilation must be maintained in efficient working order, and grease in a kitchen extract system is a fire load. Both are cleaned to the BESA TR19 standards and both produce evidence: photographs at named positions, a verification method and a next due date. Keep that with the fire risk assessment.
5. Agree the audit and the way out. A scored monthly walk against the specification, signed by both sides, tied to a remedy period and then to a right to terminate. Then a notice period you can use, and a duty on the contractor to hand over employee liability information on exit so the next tender can be priced under TUPE.

Paperwork and evidence

Common questions

Is commercial cleaning a legal requirement?

The cleaning itself is not specified by law, but the outcome largely is: regulation 9 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 requires every workplace and its furniture and fittings to be kept sufficiently clean, and regulations 20 and 21 require clean sanitary conveniences and working washing facilities.

How much does commercial cleaning cost in the UK?

It is built from the wage floor upward. One GB contractor publishing openly lists 27 pounds an hour for a small weekly roster, 25 pounds for a medium one and from 20 pounds an hour above twenty one hours a week, with a 50 pound minimum block.

What is the difference between commercial and domestic cleaning?

Commercial cleaning is bought by a business against a written specification and frequency, with insurance, supervision, absence cover and an audit record. Domestic cleaning is bought by a householder by the hour.

Do cleaning staff transfer when I change contractor?

Usually yes. The operatives assigned to your site normally transfer to the incoming contractor on their existing terms under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006.

Who is responsible if the premises is not clean?

The occupier. You can contract the work out; the duty under the Workplace Regulations stays with you, which is why the specification and the audit record matter.

Licensed contractors by county