Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
Your industry news - first
The original and best - for over 20 years!
We strongly recommend viewing Cleanzine full size in your web browser. Click our masthead above to visit our website version.
Welcome to the
Cleanzine - the original Cleaning & Hygiene industry e-news
Read by industry professionals in 148 countries worldwide!
It was more than 10 years ago that I represented the Association of Building Cleaning Direct Service Providers (ABCD) at Cleaning Industry National Training Organisation meetings. The main issue at the time was how to persuade the industry to contribute the money required by Government, to enable us to be considered as one of the new Sector Skills Councils - and thus receive a share from a huge pot of funding for the training and education of those in the industry.
It soon became clear that we would miss the target, so we looked at finding another, similar industry with which we could pool resources. Eventually the foundations were laid for what was to become Asset Skills, 'The employer-led skills body for facilities management, housing, property, planning, cleaning & parking'. It soon joined other bodies such as the ABCD and the Cleaning & Support Services Association in the industry's ever-growing 'umbrella' organisation - the British Cleaning Council.
Local authority cleaning has changed considerably over recent years with some authorities contracting out work that had previously been carried out in-house. Further changes enabled those responsible for in-house cleaning departments to run them as businesses, which allowed them to bid against private contractors as well as other local authority teams for local government cleaning contracts. Thus, the roles of the two main industry bodies responsible for cleaning, blurred.
It had been rumoured that important changes were being considered by major industry players and it was announced this week that Asset Skills and the CSSA are discussing merger plans. I am not the only one thinking that things are coming full circle - with fewer of the divisions for which the industry has been mocked, holding us back - as you will see when you read about the proposed merger below...
Please get in touch either by emailing me or posting a comment on our Facebook page. www.facebook.com/Cleanzine
Yours,
25th April 2013