Medical Practice Cleaning in Portsmouth: What a Cleaner Covers and What It Costs

This guide is for practice managers at GP surgeries, dental practices and clinics in Portsmouth who are choosing a cleaning contractor, or wondering if the one they have is doing the right job. The prices come from the pricing model behind every quote we send. The rules come from the official documents, linked so you can check them.

What does a contract cleaner do in a medical practice?

A contract cleaner looks after the parts of the building that patients and staff walk through but where no treatment happens: reception, the waiting room, offices, corridors, stairs, washrooms and the staff kitchen. Treatment rooms, minor surgery rooms and dental surgeries are clinical areas, and they need a specialist clinical decontamination service or the practice's own process.

A typical non-clinical spec for a surgery looks like this:

• Reception: the desk, screens, card machine, phones and the patient check-in screen wiped every visit.
• Waiting room: chair arms and seats, door handles, push plates and light switches wiped, and the floor vacuumed or mopped.
• Patient and staff washrooms: toilets, basins, taps, hand dryers and floors cleaned, with soap and paper refilled.
• Corridors and stairs: floors, handrails and lift buttons.
• Offices and the staff kitchen: desks, worktops, the sink and the microwave, with bins emptied and relined.

Consulting rooms are where practices differ most. Some want the cleaner to do the desk, chairs and floor, with clinical staff cleaning the couch and clinical surfaces. Others keep the whole room clinical. Either can work. What fails is a grey area where each side thinks the other did it, so put the split in writing, room by room.

What do the rules say about cleaning a GP or dental practice?

GP and dental practices registered with the CQC must keep their premises clean and maintain standards of hygiene suited to how each part is used. That is Regulation 15 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. A government code of practice sets out how to meet it.

The code of practice on the prevention and control of infections applies to primary medical and dental care. For GP practices, it says there should be:

• a designated lead for cleaning and decontamination of the environment, who can be the same person as the infection control lead
• a cleaning policy that says how to clean every area, fixture and fitting, and which products to use
• a cleaning schedule covering communal areas, consultation rooms, treatment areas and any specialist rooms

For dental practices, the code points to HTM 01-05, the guidance on decontamination in dental practices, including instruments and equipment. None of this passes to your cleaning contractor. The practice stays the registered provider and stays responsible. What a contractor can do is fit into your schedule: a written spec that matches your cleaning policy, the products you've approved, and a record of every visit you can show when someone asks how cleaning is checked.

How often should a medical practice be cleaned?

Every day it opens, for the waiting room, reception and washrooms. An office can get by on two or three visits a week because the same few people use it. A waiting room has a different set of patients in it every day, many of them unwell, and the washrooms are used by all of them.

That doesn't mean every task every visit. Touchpoints, washrooms, bins and the waiting room floor go on the daily list. Skirting boards, high dusting, inside the staff fridge and window sills rotate through the week, so a short visit still covers the whole building over five days. The spec says which task happens on which day, so your cleaning lead can see it in one place.

What does medical cleaning in Portsmouth cost?

On our guide prices, a small surgery or dental practice cleaned five mornings or evenings a week costs about £1,326 a month, or £61 a visit, including travel and all products. A GP surgery around 4,000 sq ft is about £1,761 a month. Out-of-hours visits cost 11% more than daytime ones.

Here's how the price builds for three typical practices, all cleaned five times a week outside clinic hours:

The smallest practice needs about 1 hr 40 min a visit, but every visit is booked for at least 2 hours. That spare time goes on the rotating jobs. If budget is tight, three visits a week at £64 each comes to about £835 a month. In that case the practice team would need to cover the washrooms and waiting room on the other two days, so write down who does it.

These are guide prices, not a quote. The real figure comes from a walkthrough, because two practices of the same size can differ a lot: one has a single waiting room, another has three floors, a lift and a pharmacy counter.

Should the cleaner come before opening or after closing?

After closing suits most practices, because the cleaner deals with the day's mess before it sits overnight and the building is ready when the first patient arrives. Before opening suits practices with late evening surgeries, where an after-hours visit would start at nine at night. Both cost the same on our prices.

Either way, the cleaner works alone in a building that holds patient records and medicines. Before you agree, ask who holds the keys and alarm codes, how they're stored, and what happens if a cleaner leaves. Ask too how the cleaner knows which doors, cupboards and rooms are off limits. Those rules belong in the written spec, not in a conversation on the first night.

What should a practice manager check before signing?

Check that the contractor's spec can sit inside your own cleaning policy and schedule. A cheap quote that doesn't say which rooms it covers, or which products it uses, leaves your cleaning lead with gaps to fill. These six questions cover most of it:

1. Which rooms are in scope and which aren't, with consulting rooms spelt out task by task?
2. Which products will be used, and can you have the product list and safety data sheets to check against your policy?
3. How are cloths and mops for washrooms kept apart from those used in the kitchen and waiting room?
4. Is every cleaner DBS-checked before their first visit, and can you see the evidence?
5. Who covers when your usual cleaner is off, and how are you told?
6. What record of each visit do you get, and can you report a problem the same morning?

How we clean medical practices in Portsmouth

We clean the non-clinical areas of GP surgeries, dental practices and clinics across Portsmouth and South Hampshire: reception, waiting areas, offices, corridors and washrooms. We don't clean treatment or clinical rooms. Every healthcare cleaning contract starts with a free walkthrough, and within 48 hours the practice manager gets a written spec and a fixed price.

Visits run before the first appointment or after the practice closes. Every cleaner is DBS-checked before their first visit, and we aim to keep the same person on your site. Fragrance-free and allergen-aware products are available if you ask for them. Each visit is logged in the client portal with check-in and check-out times, and anything you report goes straight to a manager. When the practice changes, with new hours or a new consulting room, we update the spec.