The British Cleaning Council and members write monthly columns for both Cleaning and Maintenance and Tomorrow’s Cleaning. You can read recent columns below.
To read the columns as they originally appeared, please visit https://cleaningmag.com/columnists and https://www.tomorrowscleaning.com/back-issues
Public toilets are essential infrastructure the country can no longer ignore
By David Garcia, Chair of the British Cleaning Council (BCC). (This column first appeared in Tomorrow’s Cleaning).
A recent report has provided further evidence why the campaign by BCC member the British Toilet Association (BTA) for a drastic improvement in public toilet provision needs to succeed.
According to analysis by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), the number of public toilets in England has fallen by 14 per cent in just a decade, leaving some 
communities facing what campaigners have described as ‘toilet deserts’.
The figures are stark: England now has just one public toilet for every 15,000 people, far behind provision levels in Scotland and Wales.
Across the UK, we have witnessed the gradual disappearance of public conveniences from high streets, parks, transport hubs and community spaces. Their absence has very real consequences for public health, social inclusion and local economies.
I believe clean, accessible public toilets are not a luxury or optional extra. They are essential public infrastructure.
That is why I want to highlight the vital work being carried out by the BTA, which campaigns to improve toilet provision and hygiene standards across the UK.
Since launching in 1999, the BTA has worked tirelessly as a not-for-profit organisation promoting high standards in all ‘away from home’ toilet facilities.
The challenge facing the UK is considerable. The BTA estimates that nearly half of all public toilets across the country have been lost since 2011, largely as a result of local authority funding cuts.
As a result, older people, disabled individuals, families with young children and those managing health conditions increasingly find themselves planning journeys around toilet availability, or avoiding trips altogether.
Public toilets are fundamental to dignity, confidence and equality. In a modern society, nobody should feel unable to leave home because they fear they will not be able to find a safe and hygienic toilet.
As well as potentially damaging health, inadequate provision also discourages people from visiting town centres and contributes to declining high streets.
Quite simply, people are less likely to visit, shop or socialise in places where they cannot access clean, safe and well-maintained facilities.
If we want thriving town centres and vibrant communities, we must provide the infrastructure people need to spend time safely and comfortably in public spaces.
The cleaning and hygiene sector understands that well-maintained facilities do much more than fulfil a practical need.
They support public health, encourage social participation, strengthen local economies and help communities thrive. They are one of the clearest indicators of how much we value public wellbeing and dignity.
The problem is not just a lack of funding. One of the biggest challenges remains the fact that local authorities currently have no statutory duty to provide public toilets. As a result, provision is inconsistent and often vulnerable when budgets tighten.
The BTA has been campaigning hard for the Government to set down a legal statutory ‘duty’ for local councils to develop a toilet strategy. There are signs the Government is beginning to listen.
In 2024/2025, BTA representatives met the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) Alex Norris MP who was very receptive, only for him to move to a different role.
Fortunately, his successor, the Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE has also promised to meet the BTA.
Meanwhile, the Government’s Pride in Place initiative, announced in late 2025, could represent an important turning point. The £5 billion programme aimed at regenerating neighbourhoods and improving public spaces offers councils an opportunity to invest in upgraded or newly developed toilet facilities.
It seems BTA is closer than ever to finally winning its battle to convince the Government that public toilets are an essential public service deserving long-term investment and commitment.
Fair work and forced labour
By Callum MacLeod, MD, Stamp Out Slavery, ( (This column first appeared in Cleaning and Maintenance Online).
It’s rare for the two main political parties to come together for a common purpose and rarer still when that purpose is related to the rights of the individual. 
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA) probably enjoyed broad political support because it was one of those rare examples where the law steps in to protect individuals from exploitation, protect businesses from unfair competition based on that exploitation and deliver the mechanisms to identify and prosecute people involved in serious organised crime. No losers and no one disadvantaged except the people making millions on the misery of others.
That’s not strictly true of the implementation of Labour’s Fair Work Agency (FWA) which rolled into operation on 7 April 2026. There are similarities; the FWA is primarily concerned with exploitation and violation of workers but goes further. There are new powers, for example, which allow the FWA to bring a claim to an Employment Tribunal if the employee decides not to. This is legislation entirely in tune with Labour’s history of strengthening rights for workers with any number of statutes, examples from the many including the Minimum Wage Act 1998, Employment Relations Act 1999 and Employment Act 2002. The Agency is not lightning from a blue sky.
But it wasn’t Labour’s idea.
The Conservatives commissioned Matthew Taylor to write his Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices in 2017 and had their Good Work Plan reforms ready to roll out into legislation from 2018, the 2020 turmoil preventing it going ahead. Labour picked up the ball and have installed Matthew Taylor at the head of this agency which combines and replaces most of the other enforcement agencies.
The FWA is an entity dedicated to the identification and prosecution of companies who exploit their labour. Facilities management is an industry which is labour intensive and which is often perceived as low margin, and therefore higher risk.
Among others, Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), Unseen and the TUC have repeatedly drawn wider attention to abuses identified within cleaning and while it would reasonably be argued from those of us within the FM industry that such abuses are not widespread, it can hardly be denied that they’re particularly unusual.
The first order of the FWA will be demonstrating, for the purpose of budget and political capital, their increased efficiency as a result of departmental integration. FM companies, as well as similar high risk sectors, are certain to attract particular interest in this first year of operation.
It’s impossible for the FWA, even with a budget 25 per cent greater than the previous agencies combined, to inspect more than a few thousand businesses from the around 5.5 million in the UK so the odds are, even in our unquestionably target sector, that comparatively few businesses will be inspected.
The odds have substantially increased, though; and so have the powers and the penalties. The FWA is nowhere near as effective as it could have been if it had, as Professors Ruth Dukes and David Whyte point out in the Fair Work Agency Briefing, incorporated the HSE and unions into overall reporting mechanisms. The failure to do so leaves gaps although that is not to say that these could not be addressed in future legislation. The agency has been created and evidence of success will strengthen calls for expansion.
For FM, then, there’s an unequivocal message. The rules have changed and the oversight has increased. If your processes aren’t robust, you’re not definitely going to be inspected. But the chances of your being inspected have definitely increased and the consequences of failing an inspection have become much heavier. Labour enforcement isn’t peripheral, if it ever was. It’s central and operational.