Vague Paperwork, Not Lazy Cleaners: Seven Questions to Settle Before You Sign a Cleaning Contract

Here's an unpopular opinion, offered by someone who supplies cleaning for a living: almost every complaint we hear about contract cleaners traces back to the paperwork. Not staff who don't care. Not cheap chemicals. Paperwork.

A contract that says "office cleaned weekly" and nothing else is not a contract. It's a hope. And when the hope meets a busy Tuesday, someone ends up disappointed — usually the client, sometimes the cleaner who was never told the kitchen was included.

If you're a business owner, office manager or café landlord weighing up a supplier, these are the seven questions I'd want answered in writing before signing anything.

1. What exactly is in scope, and how often?

"General cleaning" means nothing. Ask for a room-by-room, task-by-task schedule with frequencies attached. Desks wiped — daily or weekly? Bins emptied — every visit, or only the kitchen ones? Toilets — how many times per week, and does that include restocking?

A decent supplier will hand you a specification document without being asked twice. If you get a vague paragraph and a price, treat that as a preview of the service.

2. What's deliberately excluded?

This is the question that saves arguments. Exclusions are normal and reasonable — nobody expects a standard office contract to cover carpet shampooing or the inside of a commercial fridge. What matters is that the list is explicit.

Watch for exclusions buried in the terms: high-level dusting above two metres, internal glass, appliance interiors, biohazard or bodily fluid clean-up, waste removal off-site. If you need any of it, agree it now and get it priced.

3. What insurance and vetting do you carry?

Ask for certificates, not assurances. You want to see employers' liability (legally required in the UK, minimum £5 million), public liability, and confirmation that staff are directly employed or properly vetted if subcontracted.

Also ask about DBS checks for anyone holding keys or working alone in your premises. If the answer is fuzzy, that's your answer.

4. How do keys, alarms and access work?

Who holds a key? Is it signed in and out? What happens if a key is lost — is there a documented procedure and a rekeying policy? Who has the alarm code, and is it changed when staff leave?

For premises with customer-facing hours, agree the access window in writing. A cleaner arriving at 6pm when your café closes at 5:30 is a different service from one arriving at 7am.

5. What happens when your cleaner is on holiday?

Every supplier says "we'll cover it." Ask how. Is there a named regular cleaner with a named backup? Or does your site get whoever's free that week, working from a spec they've never read?

Ask about sickness cover too, and about Christmas and bank holidays — the period when standards most often slip. If the cover arrangements aren't documented, assume there aren't any.

6. Who buys the loo roll?

It sounds trivial until week three, when the hand soap runs out and everyone blames everyone else.

Get consumables written down: who supplies bin liners, hand soap, paper towels, toilet roll, dishwasher tablets, air freshener, and whether the cost is included in the monthly figure or rebilled with a markup. Ask for the markup percentage if it's the latter. Ask how stock levels are monitored and who reports when something's running low.

7. What does "deep clean" actually mean in writing?

This phrase is doing an enormous amount of unpaid labour in the industry. To one supplier it means wiping the skirting boards. To another it means a full periodic reset — limescale removal, appliance interiors, high-level dusting, grout scrubbing, machine scrubbing of hard floors.

Ask for the method, the chemicals, the equipment and the time allocated per area. Then ask for it in the schedule. If it isn't measurable, it isn't a deliverable.

Three extras worth adding

• A mobilisation or trial period. Two to four weeks at a reduced rate, after which either side can walk away. Good suppliers welcome this.
• A visible audit trail. Who checks the work, how often, and do you get a report or app log? A supplier with nothing to show you can't prove they turned up.
• Clear variation and termination terms. Notice periods, price review dates, and the process for adding a task mid-contract.

How to read the answers

You're not looking for perfection. You're looking for specificity. A supplier who says "we'll do the toilets three times a week and here's the sheet" is more trustworthy than one who promises "a thoroughly sparkling environment, tailored to your needs."

The cleaners themselves are rarely the problem. Give a good team an unclear brief and they'll still miss things — because nobody told them what mattered. Give them a proper spec and a fortnightly check-in, and most complaints simply never happen.

So before you sign, get the schedule, get the exclusions, get the consumables list, and get all of it in the contract. The conversation takes twenty minutes. It saves years of quiet irritation.