Today, the Government’s £57 million hospital deep clean is due to come to an end. While most of the NHS Trusts will meet this deadline for the completion of the cleaning programmes, some will not. However the major concern in the cleaning industry now is about what will happen after the deep cleans are over.

Speaking following a CSSA review of the hospital deep cleans, Andrew Large – Director General of the CSSA said:

“The extra investment in hospital cleaning has generally made a noticeable improvement to standards of cleanliness, which strongly suggests that if more funds and time were available on a permanent basis, higher standards would be maintained. Without such a long term plan from the Government the deep clean risks being seen as a publicity stunt.

“Our major concern now is that there is a leadership vacuum in the NHS on cleaning issues. There are too many different NHS bodies with overlapping responsibilities, and this coupled with the autonomy enjoyed by individual NHS Trusts makes it too easy for responsibility for funding and managing cleaning to be fudged.

“I call on the Government to ensure that the benefits of the deep cleans are not lost, both by granting new long term ring fenced funding for cleaning across the NHS and by giving clear leadership to all NHS Trusts to ensure that cleaning is properly funded and managed.”