Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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When I wrote in last week’s leader about my support of both the London Living Wage and those contractors who pay their cleaners over and above the National Minimum Wage, I was aware that the Chancellor was likely to announce in yesterday’s budget a cut in working tax credits and I called for a fairer pay rate for everyone, so we as taxpayers would no longer have to subsidise firms that could well afford to pay their employees a higher hourly rate than they currently do. I had no idea though that there were plans to bring in a compulsory National Living Wage that before many years will reach £9.00 an hour… Or of the plans to increase the compulsory rate paid by quite as much, quite so soon!
The NMW for an adult not in training is currently £6.50 and it has reached that level having gone up in increments of less than 40p a time (but often as little as 10p – 15p) since it was introduced in 1999. A rise to £6.70 this coming October has been on the cards for some months, but employers will now have to increase this to £7.20 from April of next year – by far the biggest rise over a 12 month period ever.
I wonder, with cleaning budgets so tight, whether clients will be prepared to pay so much more for their cleaning services to cover the extra labour costs involved, or whether they’ll opt to reduce the services they receive, or even decide to do the cleaning themselves?
It’s going to be up to our industry to really sell the benefits of professional cleaning performed by enthusiastic people who are properly trained (as well as housed and fed!) and thus know what they’re doing and have the energy to do it.
Perhaps I can do my bit by sharing some of the horror stories you as contractors come across, when you have to ‘pick up the pieces’ of someone else’s mistakes. Do please get in touch if you have anything you’d like to share with those of my readers who employ cleaning contractors – or indeed if you’re a building owner or manager with news of how many problems, poorly executed cleaning can cause. I hear so many stories but as they’re told to me in confidence, I’m unable to use them, so if you can share, please do. It may well be the making of our industry in terms of improving public perception of cleaning as a profession!
Please get in touch either by emailing me or posting a comment on our Facebook page. www.facebook.com/Cleanzine
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Yours,
9th July 2015