Laundry
Laundry: the unseen hero of care home hygiene
Hannah Forbes, director of marketing and brand strategy at Forbes Professional, explores why laundry is such an important compliance frontier in social care, and how operators can keep their systems safe, compliant, and future-ready
Behind the scenes of every care home, rarely celebrated, is an often unnoticed heartbeat that helps to keep everything running safely: the laundry room. It might not be glamorous, but it is vital.
Every sheet, towel, and item of clothing that passes through that space plays a role in infection prevention, resident comfort, and overall compliance. And in a climate of increasingly tighter CQC inspections, expectations, and growing public scrutiny, care homes cannot afford to treat laundry as a back-office chore. It is central to both hygiene and reputation in an environment where the residents are extremely vulnerable.
The hidden risk beneath the linen Textiles are everywhere in a care home – bedding, towels, uniforms, personal clothing, incontinence items. Each one can become a vehicle for bacteria or viruses if not properly treated. When soiled items mix with clean ones, or when washing
cycles do not reach validated disinfection temperatures, pathogens can spread quickly through a vulnerable community. CQC inspectors pay close attention to
this. They ask the right questions: is the laundry process segregated correctly? Are thermal disinfection cycles being employed? Is the equipment appropriate for the risk profile of the residents? The answers to those questions have a direct impact on hygiene outcomes, inspection ratings, and resident safety. Yet many care homes still rely on
domestic washing machines. These are simply not designed for the demands of a professional care setting. They struggle to hold disinfection temperatures, lack pre-wash or sluice cycles, and are not built for the daily throughput required. They are also not compliant with WRAS Category 5 regulations – meaning they pose a potential risk to the mains water supply. The truth is that, given the regulatory pressures care homes face today, laundry is
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no longer a secondary concern. It sits at the heart of infection control and compliance.
WRAS Category 5: what it means and why it matters WRAS – the Water Regulations Advisory Scheme – is there to ensure that our national water supply remains protected from contamination. Within that framework, care home laundries fall into the highest risk category: Category 5. That is because soiled laundry can contain bodily fluids and other contaminants capable of polluting the mains if not properly isolated. To comply, laundry machines must
include specific safeguards. They need approved backflow prevention systems, such as a Type A air gap, to stop contaminated water from re-entering the supply. They must operate from a dedicated, isolated water feed, and they have to achieve validated thermal disinfection levels – either 65°C for 10 minutes, or 71°C for 3 minutes. While domestic machines simply do not
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