Cleaning services: how to make the most of a bargain

Old timers in the contract cleaning industry have traditionally told commercial building owners that they are likely to spend, each year, an amount equivalent to around one‐twentieth of their construction costs on cleaning. If this was ever true, it is no more; if it was an analogy to boost the importance of what is generally a non‐considered industry, it was a perverse misrepresentation. In fact, contractors can today clean most new office buildings for an annual charge of no more than half of one per cent of the capital cost. Contracted‐out cleaning is one of the great unrecognised bargains of commercial life in the UK today.