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Industry News C&
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Final speaker confirmed for BCC Conference
The final speaker for the British Cleaning Conference, taking place on 5 October at London’s CBI Centre, has now been confirmed. Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton Bicycle’s Ltd, will be speaking about the advantages of manufactur- ing domestically and the benefits of sourcing prod- ucts from British-based com- panies during challenging economic times.
The company, which turns out 100 precision-crafted bicycles a day from its facto- ry in Kew, west London, sources all its materials and manpower domestically. It sells bikes in 27 overseas markets, as well as servicing the needs of the 200,000 dedicated Brompton cus- tomers already on the road. Mark Woodhead, chair- man of the British Cleaning Council, said: “We are delighted that Mr. Butler- Adams has agreed to speak at the Cleaning Conference. Brompton is the last major manufacturer making bikes in London and the company is a true British success story. I am sure the delegates on the day will be very keen to hear his advice on the advantages to be derived from choosing British manu- facturing, as there is a wealth of knowledge that can be transferred between our industries.”
Butler-Adams, whose background is in engineer- ing, took over as managing director of Brompton's in 2008. He has overseen the expansion of the business by 25% a year as it constantly refines and augments its product. It currently exports approximately 70% of its bikes to international mar- kets, and is well-placed to continue to grow as a key player in the urban cycling renaissance.
Limited tickets remain available for the BCC Conference: visit
www.britishcleaningcoun-
cil.org/cleaningconference.ht ml for further details.
Germ-free celebration
Bring together 5000 Girl Guides and 3000 bottles of Handisan and what do you get? A happy, clean camp- site!
Thousands of Girl Guides turned up at Harewood House, Leeds on Saturday 31 July for a week of camping, activities and challenges in the Girlguiding Centenary Celebration. A major priority was cleanliness and primary hygiene.
Arrow Solutions supplied the Guides with Handisan, an EN tested, alcohol skin sanitiser. Killing 99.999% of bacteria including MRSA, Salmonella and E-Coli, the gel contains skin condition- ers and moisturisers to pre- vent the hands drying out. To ensure everybody partici- pated and used Handisan regulary, Arrow Solutions also supplied easy to read signage to increase visual awareness and encourage the girls to sanitise their hands.
www.arrowchem.com Staged enrolment scheme poses challenges
The automatic enrolment scheme, a new legislation which makes it compulsory for employers to enrol eli- gible workers into a quali- fying workplace pension scheme, is due to come into force from 1 October 2012. Under these meas- ures, employers will have to enrol workers into a qualifying workplace pen- sion arrangement and choose the qualifying scheme they adopt to dis- charge the newly arising duty and will have to make a minimum 3% con- tribution towards a defined contribution scheme.
Employers will also have an ongoing duty to maintain qualifying pension provision for workers who are already members of qualifying schemes or become a mem- ber of such schemes. The Cleaning and Support Services Association’s mem- bers employ over 275,000 people, and many of these workers do not currently have a workplace pension provi- sion in place. Both the employees and their mem- bers will be acutely affected by the planned introduction of the automatic enrolment. CSSA members have expressed the following con- cerns that the phasing of the introduction of automatic enrolment, guided by compa- ny size, will have a damaging competitive effect on those that are required to enroll their workers in the scheme’s early stages:
• With the margins for cleaning companies often being very small - sometimes no greater than 5% - the introduction of a 3% employ- er contribution to pensions would have a severe impact on the profitability of the early implementers.
• Businesses operating in the cleaning industry often enjoy a competitive market- place, regardless of their size. For example, a business with 100 cleaning staff can realisti- cally bid for the same con- tract against a competitor with 10,000 cleaners. But once automatic enrolment has commenced, smaller businesses will have a direct
competitive advantage, as they will have a window to bid for work without the additional costs of automatic enrolment. This risks creating unfair distortions.
• The size of the workforce of a cleaning business can fluctuate significantly over a short period of time, and it has been known for work- forces to grow and shrink over the course of a few months as contracts change hands and cleaners TUPE in or out of the business. This would affect the month in which auto-enrolment would start. Cleaning businesses would welcome further guid- ance on how they should time their auto-enrolment, within the context of volatile employee numbers. Moreover, with a changing workforce, there will be large numbers of workers with micro-scale payments into pensions, and the portability of those pensions will be test- ed.
• The large number of dif- ferent categories and timings of auto-enrolment are very complex and are likely to cause confusion. The separa- tion of the under 50 employ- ee group by PAYE code is an example of this, in that some firms may have a two year cost advantage over their competitors as a result. The CSSA would like to make the following proposals to help improve the imple- mentation process of auto- matic enrolment:
• A single, universally appli- cable date for automatic enrolment - to remove the competitive distortions inher- ent in the phased approach. • If the phased approach remains in place then clear guidance on the correct start date for businesses with fluc- tuating workforce numbers should be provided.
• Clear rules on the porta- bility of pensions, so that workers who TUPE transfer between different employers, know how to take their pen- sions with them.
• Clear guidelines on what happens if an employee TUPE transfers from an auto- enrolled business to one that is not.
www.cleaningassoc.org
MITIE struts its stuff
Strut, the corporate wear fashion experience designed by MITIE’s client services business, brought the latest lines in workwear to its clients in a stunning catwalk show. Developed to highlight the importance uniforms can have in enhancing a company’s brand image, the show gave clients the opportunity to see the difference the right uniform can make.
As specialists in five-star front-of-house service, MITIE’s client services team know the impact that the right first impression can have. Working with suppliers TM Lewin, Fat Face, Burlington, Brook Taverner, and Simon Jersey, they proved facilities management can be both fun and fashion- able. This year’s event was held in Canary Wharf, where MITIE provides front-of-house, telephony, floor management, and porterage services to a number of clients.
www.mitie.com
IN THIS ISSUE
3
News 7
People 8
BCC News
C&M’s regular news update from the British Cleaning Council.
9
Golden Service Awards
A report on the Supervisor of the Year, awarded at the Golden Service Awards.
10
Contracts 11
BICSc Journal 12
Report: Fimap 13
Report: Exova 15
Feature: Graffiti removal/pressure washers 18
New Products
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