If you’re a looking for an exterior building cleaning company, you should first make sure that both, your organisation and the exterior building cleaning company always remain within the law. It should never be about which cleaning company is the cheapest but which cleaning company will provide the best and safest results. For this, you will need to pay attention to these regulations:
Wastewater Treatment Works
To ensure that an exterior building cleaning company operates correctly in an environmental perspective they will need to:
- Meet the appropriate level of treatment
- Be subject to the required monitoring and reporting
- Meet the specified numeric compliance limits
If the cleaning company and building owner allows a high amount of water to run into the street, both parties could receive a fine from the local water authorities, as this is an illegal activity.
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH)
It’s important for an organisation to prevent workers’ exposure to hazardous substances. For this reason, you will have to check if the cleaning services company is following the COSHH standards.
Working at Height Regulations (WAHR)
Organisations need to protect their employees from falls especially from height, when they are carrying out window cleaning. Considering that falls from height are one of the biggest causes of workplace injuries, according to the Health and Safety Executive sources, it’s important to ensure the cleaning services company is knowable of all the risks that are involved.
If window cleaning at height cannot be avoided, organisations must first consider the working environment and the equipment required to carry out their window cleaning services. This will include looking at whether there is an existing safe place to work e.g. cleaning from inside windows or from a balcony. If you cannot eliminate the risk of falling by working from a safe place, the commercial window cleaning company must ensure they are taking additional measures to minimise the falling distance and consequences of any fall. This can be done through using the correct type of fall arrest equipment.
In order to avoid legal problems in the future or even fines, we recommend investigating if the commercial cleaning company that you want to hire, respects the law, in terms of employees’ safety and professional equipment.
Understanding the above will eliminate costly fines and ensure the cleaning services results are 100% legally compliant.
Another final and important factor of exterior building cleaning law is whether the cleaning company have adequate insurance cover. Some smaller cleaning companies may buy cheap insurance where the policies don’t provide the right cover for the building being worked upon. It is always worth the time to verify the insurance cover of the commercial cleaning company you are thinking of using.
As members of the National Federation of Window Cleaners, Ryemead Group follows all these legal requirements. Contact us today to book a window cleaning service that respects the law by utilising best materials, equipment and techniques.
