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
We welcome young people with open arms
By David Garcia, Chair of the British Cleaning Council (BCC). (This column first appeared in Tomorrow’s Cleaning).
With both A-Level and GCSE results due to be published in August, this is a time of year when many young people will be considering their next steps into education, training or work.
Many of those who have left school, college and university this summer will still be trying to get their foot onto the first rung of the career ladder. 
All around the UK, young people are writing to prospective employers, sending in their CVs and applying for jobs, with their eyes set on embarking on a chosen career.
Unfortunately, it is tougher than it has been for many years for young people to get their first start.
There are more than one million young people currently not in education, employment or training (NEET) and the situation has been labelled as a nationwide crisis, and with good reason.
The jobs young people would once have relied upon to get a foot on the ladder are disappearing.
For young people struggling to find that first job, my message is simple. Come to work in the cleaning and hygiene industry. We need you.
The cleaning sector still struggles with recruitment and that is set to get worse as the workforce ages, so we welcome young applicants with open arms. We have a lot to offer ambitious young people.
The cleaning, hygiene and waste industry is one of the largest industries in the UK, worth £72bn and employing 1.51m people and there are endless career opportunities.
You do not always need formal qualifications to get started. Many roles can be entered at frontline level, with training available while working, so no experience is needed, only a positive attitude, reliability, willingness to learn and pride in doing a job well.
The industry can offer rapid career progression – for example, from frontline roles to supervisory and management – and there are job opportunities in varied roles and across many sectors.
Someone starting as a cleaning operative could move into team leadership, supervision, contract management, health and safety, training, specialist cleaning, pest management, facilities management, sales, marketing, customer service, operations or business ownership.
Young people can create a flexible career that fits around their lifestyle – such as working part-time during college or while caring for family. You can even start and grow your own cleaning business.
The industry offers recruits the scope to develop the skills, qualifications and industry credentials to increase their earning potential.
Helping attract young people to the sector was always part of the thinking behind the UK Cleaning Career Development Zone (https://ukcleaning.org.uk)
Now we have developed that further by launching two new UK CCDZ social media channels, on Instagram and Facebook, specifically to tell young people what cleaning sector careers could offer them.
Of course, the announcement that the Level 2 Cleaning Hygiene Operative apprenticeship is being defunded at the end of the month hampers our drive to recruit more new staff but nevertheless the cleaning and hygiene sector is doing a huge amount to engage with young people.
Both the Cleaning & Hygiene Suppliers Association (CHSA) and the Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners (WCEC) offer bursaries to support young people going to university, while the Cleaning & Support Services Association (CSSA) actively engages young people through its Clean Start initiative, which tours UK schools to showcase modern career paths in sector.
Our colleagues at the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc) have also focused on this area, through initiatives such as the Cleaning Industry Careers Guide which it launched on the Youth Employment UK website.
We hope young people heed our message that the cleaning industry is a fantastic place to launch your career.
Stronger Together: Why Collaboration is at the Heart of What We Do
By Emma Kiviniemi Wilson, Managing Director, Textile Services Association (TSA) ( (This column first appeared in Cleaning and Maintenance Online).
One thing that always stands out to us at the TSA is just how collaborative our industry is. Our members may be competitors, but when they come together, they are incredibly 
supportive, open and willing to help one another. It’s one of the things we are most impressed by, and it was very much on display throughout our two recent commercial laundry industry summits at the DoubleTree Hilton in Wokingham.
On the 21 April we hosted our annual Health and Safety Summit. The next day was our Sustainability summit. Two distinct topics, one underlying principle: none of us can achieve everything on our own, but together we can make a far greater impact.
Over 75 members attended the Health and Safety Summit, representing laundries right across the industry. From CPR training to fire risk and its very real consequences for insurance premiums, and the power of a survival story told in person, the day demonstrated that progress on safety culture isn’t driven by policy alone. It’s driven by people willing to share their hard-won experience. Hearing Mark Middleton from Belmont Laundry speak openly about losing two laundries to fire was exactly the kind of candid conversation that moves our sector forward and clearly took courage for him to tell it. Couple that with emerging AI tools that are changing how we assess and manage risk, and you begin to see what genuine cultural progress looks like.
The Sustainability Summit, attended by over 70 members, carried the same spirit. Decarbonising commercial laundries is complex work, there’s no single answer, and the path from ambition to implementation requires honest data, practical innovation, and a willingness to learn from one another. We were fortunate to have sustainability leader Mike Barry set the tone. His former role as sustainability director for M&S provided fascinating insight into both the subject and our sector’s role within it. The Dragons’ Den-style pitches from innovators brought in through Innovate UK were another highlight: real solutions, presented to real laundries with real challenges.
Across both days it was striking to see just how openly our members engage. Yes, some of them compete for the same contracts. But on questions of health and safety culture, or the industry’s path to net zero, they’re remarkably generous with their knowledge and experience. It’s a strength we should continue to celebrate and build on. Our role at the TSA is to keep creating opportunities for our members to come together, exchange ideas, learn from one another and turn collaboration into meaningful action.
These summits are not tick-box exercises. They are working sessions that hopefully lead to tangible change. We are already looking forward to what we build together next.
The TSA is the trade association for the textile care services industry. The TSA represents commercial laundry and textile rental businesses. Membership ranges from family-run operations through to large, multi-national companies. Visit www.tsa-uk.org for more information.