Public buildings, cleaned with the paperwork already done.
Council offices, libraries, leisure and community buildings, depots and public-facing service centres. Procurement asks for evidence before it asks for a price — so the insurance, method statements, COSHH sheets and employment practices are in the pack before the site visit, not chased afterwards.
Three things a public body needs to see in writing before it sees a price.
A public sector buyer is accountable for the choice in a way a private one is not. These are the three things we put in front of you unasked.
The compliance pack comes first
£5 million public liability, HSE-compliant risk assessments and method statements written for the building, COSHH data sheets for every product we bring in, and our employment and vetting practices set out plainly. All of it is supplied with the proposal so your evaluation has something to evaluate.
Employed staff, and a record of every visit
Our own employees rather than agency staff. Cleaners are our employees, inducted on your site, checking in and out with GPS-verified timestamps. When a councillor, a manager or an auditor asks whether the building was cleaned on Tuesday, there is a record rather than an argument.
A relief team, and supervisors who visit
Public buildings are open to the public every day, so a missed visit is visible immediately. Absence is covered by relief cleaners we employ for that purpose, and full-time mobile supervisors audit against the specification in person.
The specification, written for a building the public walks through.
A public building has a front that everybody uses and a back that staff use. The specification treats them differently, and it is written down so it can be audited against.
Public-facing areas and staff space
- Entrances, foyers, reception and waiting areas presented before opening
- Public washrooms cleaned, sanitised and restocked — usually more than once a day on daytime contracts
- Counters, screens, self-service points and seating wiped down
- Staff offices, desks and meeting rooms
- Kitchens and rest rooms
- Bins emptied, recycling separated, liners replaced
- Touch points — handles, push plates, rails, lift buttons
- Floors vacuumed or mopped throughout, entrance matting attended to
The reset
- Internal glass, partitions and notice-board glazing
- Skirting, ledges, sills and public seating detailed
- Fridge, microwave and appliance interiors in staff kitchens
- Lift interiors, stairwells and back corridors
- Washroom fittings descaled and floor edges detailed
Scheduled into the year
- Carpet and upholstery extraction cleaning
- Hard floor machine cleaning, stripping and sealing
- Deep clean of kitchens and washrooms
- High level — light fittings, vents, ledges above reach
- External windows, signage and entrance canopies
- Post-works cleans after refurbishment or relocation
Periodic items sit inside the contract on a calendar or are booked when needed, on the same invoice. See every commercial service →
Around opening hours, and sometimes through them.
A council office and a library keep different hours from each other, and both keep different hours from a depot. The pattern follows the building.
Early morning
Before the doors open — public areas, washrooms and entrances first, so the building is right for the first visitor.
Before openingEvening
After closing, with the full floor available. The most common pattern for offices and service centres.
After closingDaytime presence
A cleaner on site through opening hours for buildings with public footfall — washrooms and public areas kept right through the day, not only at either end of it.
Part-day or full-dayDepots and 24-hour sites
Scheduled around shift patterns and vehicle movements, worked when the site is quietest.
Agreed around the rotaAccess, alarm codes and keyholding are arranged during mobilisation and held under our procedures.
A library, a depot and a council chamber are three different jobs.
Public sector cleaning is a category, not a specification. These are the buildings it usually means.
Council and civic offices
Staff floors plus a public front — reception, customer service points and meeting rooms used by the public. Daytime washroom cover is often the deciding factor.
Libraries and community buildings
High footfall, long opening hours and lettings in the evening. Cleaned around the timetable rather than against it.
Leisure centres and sports halls
Changing rooms and wet areas that set the standard for everything else. Sporting facility cleaning →
Depots and operational sites
Mess rooms, offices and welfare facilities on sites that run early and late, scheduled around vehicle movements.
Schools, colleges and academies
Term-time schedules and holiday deep cleans, with staff who understand a site with children. School cleaning →
Health and care buildings
Clinics, surgeries and community health sites cleaned to your infection control policy. Healthcare cleaning →
Public sector is one of twelve sectors. See all twelve or go back to commercial cleaning as a whole.
Consumables, waste and windows should not be three more suppliers.
Buildings rarely need only cleaning. Two parts of the business exist so that the rest does not become four more contracts, four more invoices and four more people to chase.
Consumables, waste and the outside of the building
Managed on the same schedule as the clean and billed on the same invoice, so usage is tracked against what the building actually gets through rather than a standing order that arrives whether you need it or not.
- Washroom supplies
- Sanitary units
- Waste & recycling
- Confidential waste
- External windows
- Signage cleaning
Staff, when the building needs more than cleaners
The same recruitment, vetting and HR that puts our cleaning teams in place, used to staff the other roles a site runs on — employed by us, covered by us when someone is off.
- Reception & front of house
- Caretaking
- Kitchen & catering
- Security
None of it is compulsory. Plenty of contracts are cleaning and nothing else — but if you are currently managing four suppliers for one building, raise it at the site visit.
Four steps, and a price that comes from the building rather than a rate card.
Anyone who quotes without seeing the site is guessing at your hours. This is what happens instead.
Site visit
We walk the building with you — the areas, the hours you need covered, the standard you are working to, and the things the last contractor kept getting wrong.
Written proposal
A specification and a price, with the tasks and frequencies set out plainly. Insurance certificates and compliance documents come with it, not on request later.
Mobilisation
Team assigned and inducted on site, access and alarms arranged, RAMS written for the building, consumables and equipment set up. A start date, not a vague fortnight.
Supervision
Mobile supervisors audit against the specification, your named contact stays the same, and the schedule flexes as the building changes.
Sheffield first, and staffed locally everywhere else.
We are registered and based in Sheffield and most of our contracts are here. Further afield, a contract is staffed with a team recruited near the building and supervised on a regional route — distance is a logistics question, not an obstacle.
Yorkshire
- Sheffield
- Barnsley
- Rotherham
- Doncaster
- Leeds
- Huddersfield
- Wakefield
- Bradford
- York
Derbyshire
- Chesterfield
- Derby
- Dronfield
- Buxton
Greater Manchester
- Manchester
- Stockport
- Oldham
- Salford
- Bolton
- Bury
- Wigan
Nottinghamshire
- Nottingham
- Mansfield
- Worksop
Lincolnshire
- Lincoln
- Scunthorpe
Somewhere between those towns? Ask — the honest answer depends on whether we can recruit a reliable team within sensible travel of your site. See every location we work in →
The questions public sector buyers ask.
Q.01What documentation can you supply for a procurement process?
£5 million public liability insurance certificates, HSE-compliant risk assessments and method statements written for your building, COSHH data sheets for every product, our employment and vetting practices, and our environmental approach. All of it comes with the proposal. If your process needs something specific, tell us at the site visit and it will be in the pack.
Q.02Do you respond to tenders and quotation requests?
Yes. Send the documents and we will respond against them. Where the process allows a site visit first, we would always rather see the building — a price written to a specification we have walked is a more reliable price.
Q.03How are cleaners vetted for public buildings?
Every cleaner is directly employed — recruited, reference-checked, inducted and managed by us — our own employees, not agency staff. They are inducted on your site and check in and out with GPS-verified timestamps. Where a building requires enhanced vetting, that is agreed at the proposal stage and built into mobilisation.
Q.04What happens if a cleaner is absent?
Relief staff cover it. We employ cleaners who hold no round of their own precisely so absence does not become your problem, and full-time mobile supervisors pick up anything the relief team cannot reach. It is the single most expensive decision in how we are structured.
Q.05Our current staff would transfer. How do you handle TUPE?
As part of mobilisation. Where existing cleaning staff transfer to us under TUPE, we handle the process and talk you through it at the proposal stage, so there is no gap between the last clean under the old contract and the first under ours.
Q.06Can you cover several buildings under one contract?
Yes — several buildings, one specification per building, one invoice, one named contact, and a supervisor route that covers them all. Multi-site contracts are usually where a relief team and mobile supervision matter most.
Q.07What is your environmental approach?
Refillable and recyclable cleaning solutions rather than single-use plastic, colour-coded equipment, COSHH data sheets for everything we bring in, and rounds routed to cut mileage between sites. If your organisation has a supplier policy, we write the specification to it.
Q.08Which areas do you cover?
Sheffield first, then Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire — 25 towns and cities. See the full list →
Something not covered? Email hello@nowthencleaners.co.uk or call 0114 212 7030 — the office is reachable seven days a week.
Send the documents, or show us the building. Either works.
Half an hour on site, a written specification, a price with the hours stated — and a start date rather than a vague fortnight.