Life after NHS deep cleans
April 1st 2008 Barring a few Trusts which didn’t manage to complete before the year-end, the Government’s £57 million hospital deep clean is now complete.However the major concern in the cleaning industry now is about what will happen after the deep cleans are over, says CSSA director general, Andrew Large.
“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.”
By way of example, the different Government bodies with various responsibilities covering cleaning are: the Department of Health; Devolved administrations; NHS in England, Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland; National Patient Safety Agency; Strategic Health Authorities; Individual NHS Trusts; Healthcare Commission; Care Quality Commission; and the Health Protection Agency.
Large continued:“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.” t: 020 7920 9632 for details More articles from CSSA: | 
