CSSA slams unions
August 1st 2008 The Cleaning & Support Services Association (CSSA) has strongly criticised the Trade Union movement for demanding that the Government bring all hospital cleaning back in house.
“There is considerable evidence that bringing hospital cleaning back in-house will reverse the progress that is being made in combating Healthcare Associated Infections,” said CSSA chief, Andrew Large.
Bringing hospital cleaning back in-house would also run counter to the conclusions of DeAnne Julius' report on public services, which stated unequivocally that:
‘The evidence shows that there are clear benefits, to both users and taxpayers, in subjecting incumbent service providers to competition.
The academic literature typically found the cost savings from competitive tendering to be between 10 per cent and 30 per cent (including when the in-house team won the bid) with no adverse effect, and sometimes an improvement, in service quality.'
The CSSA has commissioned its own research into hospital cleaning, which compares contracted out cleaning services with in-house services. From that research it is clear that overall hospitals are better cleaned by contractors. Specifically:
• 21.2% of contracted out Acute Trusts received "excellent" PEAT scores in 2008 while only 12.9% of in-house cleaned Acute Trusts achieved this level.
• Nearly two thirds of the non compliances with HCC Standard C21 in Acute Trusts occur in inhouse cleaned hospitals - even though only 53.8% of them are inhouse cleaned. In-house cleaned hospitals have a disproportionate number of non-compliances with the Government's own standards for cleanliness.
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