Specialist Services
Schools, medical facilities and care homes require special consideration in order to meet the particular issues that are largely absent from other businesses and institutions.
Commercial Cleaning, we offer additional services that are tailored to those facilities needs and our planning focuses to a greater extent upon the users of the facilities, be they staff, students, residents or visitors.
Our staff receive CRB clearance as standard (enhanced checks are available on request) and are specifically briefed as to their responsibilities in these more sensitive environments and of our clients (and thus our) expectations. In addition the levels of supervision that we maintain over our staff in all aspects of our work are increased to further ensure the highest standards or work and care are provided.
In addition to the security aspects of our work for schools, hospitals and care homes, we also appreciate that the impact of our work may be greater than in other commercial fields. We are careful to liaise with local management of the facilities to ensure that whenever possible we avoid our services clashing with significant events in their facilities days and we are flexible in our working to allow for unexpected or one-off events.
Care Home, Hospice and Hospital Cleaning Services
Sovereign Contract Services offer comprehensive cleaning services to both local authority and private residential homes. We apply the highest consideration to the circumstances applicable to such residences, thus health & safety and residents' comfort is of key importance as should be expected in any building used by the elderly, children and those suffering illness.
All those employed by Sovereign Contract Services are aware that Care Homes and Hospices are the residents' homes and should be treated as such, thus noise and disruption must be kept to a minimum and that our ease of work is of lesser consideration than the safety and convenience of residents and staff.
Given recent scares, high standards of cleaning in such facilities are not only important but essential. Our high levels of staff training and supervision are further enhanced and all contamination protocols are implemented and maintained.
Our staff are uniformed and carry photo identity passes to make it easy for your staff to check that they should be present and we have 24 hour coverage of our contact telephone numbers to allow additional confirmation if staff believe this to be necessary.
Sovereign Contract Services are fully conversant with general Health and Safety and COSHH requirements and have on call experts in these fields for the finer detail to ensure that nothing is overlooked.
Schools Cleaning & Refurbishment
The cleaning of school premises brings with it its own particular challenges.
- Health and Safety is of prime importance thus we employ Health and Safety specialists to ensure that regulatory requirements are fully complied with.
- In the school environment the conduct of our workforce is vital, given the vulnerabilities of children using the school premises, only employees that have been fully CRB vetted (and we are happy to undergo Code 66 checks) are assigned to school projects.
- In consideration of the hard use that fixtures and fittings in schools come under, special attention is given to the techniques and equipment that are employed.
- At Sovereign Contract Services we understand the positive effect the school environment can have on children and the tight budget constraints imposed on schools, we therefore seek to offer the best solutions at the most competitive costs.
- We will undertake to carry out cleaning functions at times that present minimal obstruction to the school day, thus cleaning is carried out during evenings and week-ends (we can accommodate the school year in our cleaning schedule so that daily cleans are not carried out when children are on holiday thus assisting the budget). Where necessary larger cleaning functions, such as cutting back wooden floors and deep cleans of science labs and kitchens can be carried out during holidays.
Most of the services that we can offer schools, hospitals, care homes and hospices are the same as those for other commercial premises (subject to the issues raised above), thus for a full list of the cleaning that we offer simply follow the link Commercial Cleaning or click on the Commercial Cleaning tab at the head of the page.
Stop Press - One or two schools have advised us of problems when outsourcing their cleaning functions due to issues concerning staff pension rights and admitted body status (ABS). We have now formulated a scheme whereby the staff remain employed by the school but we undertake full management of cleaning functions on your behalf. The school therefore benefits from our experience, training, daily management, recruitment and planning; all of which can reduce costs and improve standards, whilst only paying a management fee agreed upon prior to contract. We can offer three levels of service:
- Full - As mentioned above we take on full management of the staff including training, recruitment, organisation, day-to-day management etc. allowing you to benefit from a semi-outsourced arrangement.
- Management - We manage the staff on a day-to-day basis, implementing training and work schedules.
- Consultative - We provide you with our experience and knowledge by way of consultative meetings, we will prepare a report of failing areas, reasons for failures and recommendations for improvements. We can also offer on-going advice and report on progress, however you retain full management of the staff.
If you envisage such problems with outsourcing please contact us on 0845 226 7954 to discuss this semi-outsourced arrangement, or of course we would be happy to discuss a full outsourcing arrangement if your HR advisors advise that this would be possible/preferable.
For a full description of all our services, click here