2007 UK Team Clean Challenge

The 2007 UK Team Clean Challenge had two strands – an open one among cleaning businesses – and a second one in prisons where offenders receive training in top rate facilities as part of their rehabilitation process.

The awards took place in Westminster in March. The event, where the joint winners MITIE Cleaning and Principle Cleaning Services were given their trophies, was attended by key players in the cleaning industry.

What happened next?

The UK's best cleaners represented Britain at the Euroskills competition in Holland in September 2008 with the chance of entering the World Skills challenge in 2011. This gave us the chance to find out how good we were compared to the competition in Europe and allowed cleaning operatives,managers and supervisors an international platform to profile their skills. The teams were coached for Europe by Mary Schramm from Merton College who has taken on the mantle of "UK Training Manager".

Confidence in Asset Skills to lead the UK and Europe on this competition is high. We have the backing of UK Skills, the organisation overseeing a number of skills competitions, and the skills bodies in six European countries including Holland, Finland, Poland, Turkey and Hungary.

This year we repeated the open contest in England also run one in Scotland. In parallel we also ran the competition in the prisons of England and Scotland and are in discussion to develop it in Wales. Not surprisingly the winners of the prisons' strand didn't progress to Euroskills but it was hoped the event will highlight to offenders that cleaning can be a worthwhile job to consider for the future.

There was no age limit to enter the UK competitions. However, the ethos of international competitions is very much around developing young people, and for this reason the teams must conform to age profiles which are 27 years for Euroskills and 23 years for World Skills.

Continued development and funding is needed to progress and we are always on the look out for venues to host the contest, judges and assessors.

What did the competition involve?

The events will be broadly based on the same system as before. Judges gave three hour assessments of the teams' practical responses to a set of scenarios.

Each team had a manager, supervisor and two cleaners and were marked against criteria specific to their particular job roles. Managers tackled issues like costing and risk assessment, monitoring the work of the team and providing feedback to the judges. Supervisors were assessed on team-leading, training and front line troubleshooting.

The skills and competencies required of each team were based on the national occupational standards (NOS) and industry qualifications like those offered by the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc).

It was open to entrants from all parts of the industry be it health care, local authority or contract cleaning.

EuroSkills 2008 – how did we do?

A team of 16 young people achieved eight gold medals at the first ever EuroSkills, a three day competition in skills ranging from cleaning to farriery – click here to read more.