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The need for common sense
Winter illnesses highlight the need for common sense action on cleaning and hygiene, says British Cleaning Council (BCC) Chair, Delia Cannings.
I was delighted to see my colleague Jim Melvin’s letter about hand hygiene printed in The Times recently, because it helps keep the spotlight on the important issue of how improved hygiene can help protect the health of the public.
Jim, as many readers will know, is an esteemed former BCC Chair and current Master of BCC member The Worshipful
Company of Environmental Cleaners (WCEC). His letter called for the Government to lead a ‘targeted hygiene’ campaign to support the owners and operators of public spaces to implement measures to help the public practise simple and effective hand hygiene.
He argued that by helping to suppress the spread of disease, this would ‘reduce pressure on health services, maintain productivity and increase the public’s still fragile confidence in using public transport and public places’. There were examples of major events where these measures had been successfully implemented, he wrote, adding that there was a ‘moral imperative’ to quickly take ‘proven actions’.
This call seems more appropriate than ever right now as so many people seem to be sick. You hear coughing and sneezing in the street, in the supermarket, all over the place. Illnesses such as colds and flu are much more widespread in the winter and COVID is still a major worry, so you would think taking steps to stop the spread of these illnesses is just common sense. Yet so far, the Government does not seem to think so.
Last year, the BCC and 21 industry associations endorsed a campaign for the Government to adopt the recommendations in the Embedding Effective Hygiene for a Resilient UK report. While Jim’s letter put the focus solely on hand hygiene, the excellent and detailed report made 11 recommendations to put cleaning and hygiene at the heart of the national agenda and recognise the vital and frontline role of sector staff. The idea was to make the UK better
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prepared for a future pandemic and much more resilient to current common infections, such as flu.
Flu is a killer. Excess deaths in England associated with flu infections were on average 13,500 for the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic. As well as saving lives, the measures would cut admissions to hospitals and ease the winter pressures affecting the NHS.
I wrote last year to PM Rishi Sunak about this campaign and called on the Government to adopt the report in full. We recently received an extremely disappointing and frustrating reply from Health Minister Maria Caulfield MP, which described the UK’s pandemic response capabilities as ‘flexible and well-tested’ and said that the departments concerned were taking further steps to plan and prepare for a range of pandemic and emerging infectious disease scenarios and a further review was underway.
What this complacent letter did not do was engage with our important campaign and give it the serious thought it deserves. Instead, the Government just dismissed what we have to say. It is completely unacceptable for the Government to treat our industry, one of the biggest in the UK, this way.
Until the Government is prepared to take the kinds of steps our industry recommends, not only will the UK be vulnerable to a future pandemic but too many people will continue to lose their lives every year from common illnesses such as flu.
Please email your local MP asking them to back the report. Anyone from the sector can download a supporting letter from the BCC’s website to adapt and send to their MP. You can do that, and find out details of your MP, by visiting here.
Your support is vital. Thank you.
www.britishcleaningcouncil.org twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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