FEATURE The year ahead
Staff shortages are the key issue our industry faces, says Jim Melvin, Chairman of the British Cleaning Council (BCC).
As we look ahead to the next 12 months, one of the most significant issues our industry faces is the continuing severe staff shortages.
At £55bn per annum, our professional industry is one of the UK’s largest, but it’s facing a recruitment crisis, the likes of which all of us as colleagues have
rarely seen. Research suggests there are thousands of vacant posts across the industry and this situation is not going to self-right itself.
Cleaning staff in healthcare, hospitality, and other parts of the sector have been put at risk of burnout because of increased workloads due to Coronavirus pandemic protocols, adopted to keep buildings hygienically clean and protect the public, combined with these staff shortages.
I fear the staff shortages could also leave some sector businesses in the most severe position.
If there is another wave, or indeed a new pandemic with infection rates at the kind of level we saw last winter, it would put a huge continued strain on the sector, hampering the nation’s ability to fight the virus. It’s not too far a stretch to see the public being put a risk. We have to hope that doesn’t happen.
I will remain very worried about this continuing issue unless we receive the Government help we have spent months calling for. We have lobbied hard for the kind of help other industries have received but have been disappointed and frustrated by the lack of response. We simply don’t believe that the scale of this issue has been recognised at the highest level.
We believed that the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the UK Cleaning and Hygiene Industry would also help achieve this and our other strategic aims, but progress has been slower than we expected.
We are still very determined to achieve our key strategic objectives and ensure that Government listens to the industry, so we are rethinking our approach and hoping to work together with our members and the industry as a whole on lobbying, to ensure the sector’s voice is heard. That requires a universal approach and it may take longer as a result.
Continuing to highlight the staffing crisis the sector faces, ensuring we are heard by Government, and encouraging the APPG to make urgent progress on key issues will be key priorities for the next 12 months. We have started to progress this and will meet as an APPG to agree timeframes.
We have been delighted by the progress on developing an industrywide accredited and Apprenticeship Levy-funded training programme and apprenticeship, and have reason to hope that it will be launched this year.
The vast majority in the sector are agreed that there’s an overwhelming need for the Cleaning Hygiene Operative scheme, which will ensure that significant amounts of Apprenticeship Levy funding can be used to develop the skills of the sector’s superb professional staff.
It will also create a full career path for the industry, thereby helping to attract the new entrants we need as well as banishing the completely unfounded and frankly false idea that the work of staff is low or unskilled or that we simply employ ‘cheap foreign labour’.
Proposals for the apprenticeship are currently being updated following consultation and they should go before approving body The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) in the second half of the year.
If they are approved, we’ll then be in a position to discuss a long-term strategy for the industry which surely has to be based around science, technology, innovation, sustainability and a clear career path, and which requires the collective support of the sector.
www.britishcleaningcouncil.org 6 | TOMORROW’S CLEANING PRODUCTS & SERVICES GUIDE 2022
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