Are You Paying Too Much for Cleaning?
Benchmarking your school’s cleaning operation allows you to look objectively at what is required, rather than what has always been done.
Find Out in Seconds with Our Free Cleaning Productivity Assessment
For schools under increasing financial and operational pressure, our free Cleaning Productivity Assessment Calculator provides a practical starting point for understanding whether your school’s cleaning provision is genuinely fit-for-purpose.
The results may surprise you
Recent assessments have identified between 400 and 800 excess hours per week for our clients.
Simply enter a few estimated figures below to get started in seconds and see what this could mean for your school.
Figures do not need to be exact in order to get started, we just need to know:
- Roughly how many square meters of space you have
- The number of cleaning hours you pay for each week
…we’ll then show you how much you could be overspending on cleaning.
The aim is not to simply reduce hours or costs
It’s to make sure cleaning is properly resourced, consistent, and good value for money.
Over time, staffing levels related to cleaning often reflect historical decisions, legacy contracts or well-intentioned attempts to make things work within tight budgets.
Without a thorough benchmark schools risk...
- Under-resourcing – where cleaning teams are expected to cover too much space in too little time, increasing risk, inconsistency and staff fatigue
- Over-resourcing – where hours are allocated inefficiently, putting unnecessary pressure on budgets
- Inconsistent standards – across different buildings or sites
- Limited visibility – for senior leaders over whether cleaning provision represents best value
- Secondary School(s)
- Primary School(s)
See How We've Helped Schools Like Yours
It’s not just about cleaning – we help schools save time, reduce costs and deliver sustainable outcomes across Food Service Operations, Food Procurement and Strategy & Design.
Find out more below…
Holy Cross Catholic High School
The Business Manager at Holy Cross had a previously poor experience working with a consultant, but recognised the value of independent expertise to support the tendering of the school’s catering service. The school wanted the tender process to be managed in line with procurement regulations while remaining closely involved throughout.
Following the original tender exercise in 2015, Litmus has since managed two further tenders and continues to provide ongoing catering monitoring and support.
The Lighthouse Schools Partnership
The Trust was initially formed by six schools and grew rapidly. Overtime, they inherited various catering and cleaning providers and contracts.
At one point, they had four outsourced catering providers plus an in-house provision across the Trust, each with varying operating models which had become complicated to manage.
LSP identified a clear need to understand if their commercial deals were competitive and also to explore whether it was feasible to streamline their operations by contracting a single catering provider.
LSP also had schools on different cleaning contracts, and some providers were performing poorly. They also wanted to consolidate the cleaning arrangements, understand all the options available and perhaps get to a point where they could run a competitive tender to appoint a single cleaning provider.
Star Academies
In 2020, Star Academies approached Litmus to provide a proposal and quotation to manage the tender for catering provision across 25 of its schools. The tender was divided into four Lots covering Lancashire, West Yorkshire, the Midlands and London. Litmus was subsequently appointed as the Trust’s partner to manage what was, at the time, an OJEU-compliant tender process.
In 2025, Litmus was again appointed as the Trust’s partner to manage the next catering tender, this time covering 30 of the Trust’s schools under the Procurement Act 2023.
Contact Us
We love to connect with business leaders that want to make a change. Contact our friendly team to request a no obligation chat about your current challenges and goals.