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Hospitals: Cleaning Services

Volume 486: debated on Tuesday 20 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much hospital trusts in England have spent on cleaning in each financial year since 1997-98. (248442)

The information is not available in the format requested.

The Department began the collection of cleaning spend data in 2000-01 from national health service trusts, through its Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC). The information available is shown in the following table.

Total expenditure on cleaning services (£ million)

2000-01

403

2001-02

418

2002-03

460

2003-04

493

2004-05

536

2005-06

616

2006-07

663

2007-08

720

These data have not been amended centrally and therefore its accuracy is the responsibility of the contributing NHS organisations.

The Department has a comprehensive programme of work in place to improve hospital cleanliness. Every hospital in England has already undertaken a deep clean, and the latest Healthcare Commission in-patient survey shows the NHS achieving its highest ever cleanliness rating with 93 per cent. of adults saying their ward was fairly clean or very clean. In the 2008 PEAT (Patient Environment Action Team) scores, over 98 per cent. of hospitals were rated Acceptable, Good or Excellent compared to 2000 when a third were rated as red.

A new national standard for monitoring cleanliness in health care environments is currently being developed with leading experts in the field of health care cleaning, and will be carried out under the auspices of the British Standards Institute.