Bolton Win Cleaning Team of the Year Award at Manchester Cleaning Show

Bolton Council has been chosen has the ABCD Cleaning Team of the Year, emerging as winners from a very competitive field of runners.

The award, sponsored by ABCD and Denis Rawlins, is now in its second year, and the judges said Bolton showed ‘exceptional standards’ and were worthy winners.

The ceremony took place during the Manchester Cleaning Show and representatives from Bolton’s cleaning team were on hand to receive the award from sponsor James White.

There were awards also for Middlesbrough – Levick Court and Doncaster – Hill Top Primary

Bolton have merged catering and cleaning services to create a joint facilities service rather than risk losing cleaning, a non-statutory service. The outcome has seen processes used in catering  introduced into cleaning services, creating better communication and resources for the 240-direct staff that are often lone workers. Results are significant quality improvements in delivery, new contracts, more staff engagement, and a positive new culture.  The team were found to be very positive, keen to learn and extremely up beat.

The small team at Levick Court clean a residential home with residents that can be demanding and difficult. The facility is impeccably clean, and the team have amazing rapport with the residents, often seeming to be in the role of career as well as cleaning. This team go way beyond what would normally be expected.

Judges found there was a really great team at Hill Top Primary. The school looks very clean and the team are often praised for their flexibility and their ability to return a very clean school even under the most trying conditions, an example being last summer when the builders where in for most of the holiday period, yet the school opened up, after the summer holiday, looking fresh and in perfect cleanliness. As well as all staff being BICS certified, Hill Top was first Local Authority team to be ISSA CIMS accredited.

Elaine Bridge, from the senior management team at Bolton said: “Our cleaning team at Bolton Council are thrilled with this award and we are celebrating and sharing our success. It is especially valuable to recognise success and achievement during the challenges of austerity and when we need to transform and re-engineer traditional services. It is a combined effort which starts with our 250 direct cleaners who are the real heroes.”

James White, of award sponsors Denis Rawlins Ltd, said: “As, always this has been a humbling experience, I am always amazed by the people I meet and the stories they have to tell. Whilst there can only be one winner, all those recognised here are examples of the level of dedication and professionalism of ABCD members across the country. We should be proud of the work done by our member’s day in, day out, as they are, often unrecognized, the first line of defense for the health of our children.”

ABCD Ready for the Cleaning Show 2018

Why We Will be at The Cleaning Show
Patricia Wherton, Executive General Secretary

Local Authority and supplier members of the ABCD will be at the Manchester Cleaning Show on April 11th and 12th and you can come and meet us on the British Cleaning Council stand.

We’re taking advantage of the show to present our Cleaning Team of the Year Award, sponsored for the second year by Denis Rawlins Ltd, one of our supplier members. We’ve had some excellent entries to the competition, which was won last year by Rochdale Council for their innovative ways of dealing with increased business at the splendid Victorian Town Hall in the town.

The Cleaning Show this year also gives us the opportunity to have our Annual General Meeting at lunch time on April 12th, and to combine it with a visit to the exhibition so that members can come along and meet their current suppliers, and possibly some new ones as well.
The ABCD was established in 1989 in direct response to the introduction of Compulsive Competitive Tendering. How many readers are old enough and have been around long enough to remember that?

For the first time, local authorities had competition from the private sector in bidding to provide the cleaning services within their Council boundaries, and for local authority managers, this was a new and untested challenge which brought them together in deciding how to deal with it. Hence the ABCD was born.

In the almost thirty years since then, many more challenges have faced local authority cleaning services, and more recently these have come from several years for austerity measures following the 2008 financial crisis when many Councils contracted their services out in cost saving exercises as a strategy to deal with the squeeze on public spending. Also, the introduction of Academy status for schools, which has resulted in many deciding to either contract out or employ their own cleaning staff, and not use the services of the Councils any more has had an impact.

And yet the ABCD goes on. There are still enough local councils who have retained the business of cleaning to ensure that peer support for managers and provided through the ABCD remains an important feature, and enough suppliers who recognise that this inroad to direct service providers is a valuable relationship to have. We’re very grateful for their contribution.
So come along and meet us on April 11th and 12th in Manchester on the British Cleaning Council Stand.