Chair of Asset Skills Cleaning Board makes national news

Last week Asset Skills showed TV viewers the important difference skilled cleaning can make to people's lives, when two of its Board members took centre stage on Channel 4 News.

During the programme, Chief Executive Richard Beamish and Chair of the Cleaning Board Lloyd Ansermoz, (who is also Sales Director at In Depth Cleaning Services) were interviewed about the importance of proper training for cleaners when they revealed that the industry is looking to recruit prison inmates for its training schemes.

And to ensure that viewers took the message seriously, Richard stressed early on just how important it is for cleaners to be properly trained, saying:

"Mix the wrong chemicals or mix chemicals in the wrong proportions and you end up with a cleaning substance that actually encourages the growth of harmful bacteria instead of reducing it or eliminating it."

The Channel 4 News report focused on a scheme at Birmingham Prison through which Lloyd trains inmates in professional cleaning skills. It asked: "How would you feel if you had a cleaner who was a convicted burglar?" before going on to explain that a shortage of skilled cleaners had forced Lloyd to train prisoners still serving their sentences to help plug the gap, saying:

"The scheme is run by Lloyd Ansermoz, a company boss who also chairs the Asset Skills Cleaning Board. Asset Skills is a sector skills council - a government organisation tasked with ensuring there are enough skilled workers in the cleaning industry.

"How would you feel if you had a cleaner who trained for the job while in jail?"

The report then cut to one of the convicts who's hoping that training to be a cleaner will help turn his life around. Russell Rainbow is only 28 but he's already spent much of his adult life in prison, having served 12 prison terms. He is currently serving a 10 month sentence for criminal damage, theft and carrying an offensive weapon, but this time he's taken up a training course to become a skilled cleaner. Said Russell:

"I've never come to jail and done something like this before because no-one wants to give a convict a job.   Things have changed though. This is all new to me and it's a lot better because they're giving us a chance now and that's throwing us back into circulation."

The story was then taken up by Lloyd, Sales Director at In Depth Cleaning Services, who said:

"It costs us something like between £1,300 and £1,800 to skill a cleaner up to what these guys are doing already so if we can grab them as they come out and put them into the right role then it's something that's going to be of benefit to our business and to the prisoners.

When asked whether employing an ex-offender was an issue for him, he replied:

"It depends on where we put that ex-offender. We're not going to put an ex-offender who's been into a bank and caused problems, in a bank, but we might employ him on a railway station or in premises where we've weighed up the risk."

The programme makers explained that the training covers highly specialised biohazard cleaning and one that it's essential to get right and illustrated the point with a cleaner in full PPE cleaning gunk from a cell wall, which also has grafitti on it.

"The training also benefits the prison," they explained. "Cells are sometimes covered in body fluid by protesting cleaners. Getting it professionally cleaned by inmates saves the prison money."

Carl Hardwick, Deputy Governor, Birmingham Prison was keen to sing the scheme's praises, saying: "Businesses are realising that actually we have a good resource held within prisons and people who want to be trained who look to the future and actually want to be employed again."

Apparently none of the Birmingham prisoners have ever been offered a cleaning job on their release but Russell hopes he'll be among the first.

When asked whether he thought he'd ever end up in prison again he replied:

"I don't want to. That's why I'm taking this chance now while I've got it. I've got three kids of my own that I want to take care of and support properly. So this is the way I'll be doing it properly. I'll take this chance. Even if it is cleaning I'll do it. I want to do it."

21st February 2008