We ran a piece last week regarding an inquiry British MPs were about to undertake, examining the role cleaning & hygiene played during the pandemic and the challenges that had to be overcome by those involved in keeping us all safe. The aim of the inquiry: 'Embedding Effective Hygiene for a Resilient UK', is to see what lessons can be learnt and ultimately produce a report with policy recommendations, which will feed into the national UK Covid-19 Inquiry to help increase disease-resilience to current common infections and help inform the UK's response to any similar future public health emergency. What I hadn’t been aware of at the time was that we could watch the  sessions – which will take evidence from public health experts and many industry firms and associations - online, via Zoom. 

 

While you won’t be allowed to participate in the sessions, I can imagine they will likely prove invaluable for those running cleaning contracts, for who can honestly say that during the pandemic, everything about their operations, on every contract, went without a hitch? I used to be involved in the running of the UK’s Association of Building Cleaning Direct Service Providers and I learned so much from the regular sessions whereby members would meet up and discuss challenges they’d faced in particular situations, what they’d done to overcome these challenges, what had worked – and what hadn’t. Colleagues could question the thinking behind actions taken and come up with suggestions on how things could have been done differently, or describe how they’d faced an identical challenge but had enjoyed a better result because they’d followed a different course of action. OK, so discussions won’t be had online by guests at the upcoming Zoom sessions but the sessions will certainly provide opportunities for follow-ups and gear everyone up for the subsequent Industry roundtable event that’s being mooted – which I hope will be shared with our industry colleagues globally. 

 

A session has already been held involving a public health expert in hygiene promotion and a Director of Public Health who has led on the local implementation of public health measures. On 13th September the focus will be on contractors who delivered cleaning services at the time, alongside suppliers and manufacturers of the cleaning & hygiene products which were very much in demand during the pandemic, while the session on 20th September will involve owners and landlords of a variety of buildings. To watch the proceedings, email  [email protected] by 18:00 on the day before the session you wish to attend. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.