Cleaners should be qualified, says poll

In a survey run by blog site www.cleanleanhealthcare.org, an overwhelming 79 per cent thought cleaning professionals should be qualified.

The results echo the thoughts of the outgoing chair of the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals (AHCP), Denise Foster. Foster has previously said cleaners for the NHS should have professional qualifications if cleanliness standards are to be raised.

James Blackhurst, managing director of Jigsaw Cleaning who ran the survey, said: "The question of whether cleaning professionals should hold a relevant qualification is widely debated in the healthcare industry and, as we predicted, the vast majority of respondents called for cleaners to be qualified.

"Cleaning in healthcare is a complex, specialist operation and a professional qualification would go a long way towards raising cleanliness standards and ultimately reducing the risk of infection outbreaks in hospitals. Now we must look at how we can move forward and work with healthcare providers to push for the national certification of cleaners in the industry.”

The Department of Health has recently released figures which show that NHS spending on cleaning last year was up £40.7m to £937.9m.

A new specification on cleaning in hospitals was published last year by the Department of Health, National Patient Safety Agency and the British Standards Institution.