Best commercial cleaning company in Manchester: our pick, and how to check it

What makes the best commercial cleaning company for your site?

Fit. The best company for you is the one whose answers hold up against your premises, your hours and your access. A phone call tells you more about that than any league table.

Six questions do most of the work. Send them to every company in one email and write down what comes back. How quickly each one replies, and how plainly, is worth noting too.

1. Will you see the site before you give a price?
2. Are the areas, tasks, visit times and exclusions in writing?
3. What's the public liability figure?
4. How are the people who work on your site vetted?
5. What happens when something's missed?
6. What's the minimum term, and how much notice ends it?

Each gets its own section below. The grid further down puts them side by side.

Why should a site survey come before the price?

Because without one, the price is a guess. Floor area, opening hours, which door the team uses at 6am: someone has to look. Once they have, the specification and the price follow from what they saw.

Ask what the survey actually covers. A useful one pins down:

• What the premises are, roughly how big, and how many floors.
• Which areas need cleaning, and which don't.
• Which days and times suit the site, and any times to avoid.
• Whether staff or customers are around while the work happens.
• How the team gets in: keys, a fob or a keyholder, plus any alarm or sign-in.

Be wary of anyone who won't visit and quotes by email from a postcode and a headcount. It might be a fair ballpark. It isn't a price you can hold anyone to.

What should a written scope and schedule include?

Areas, tasks, how often. "Office cleaning, weekly" tells you next to nothing. "Reception: desk and door handles wiped, floor vacuumed, bins emptied, every weekday" tells you exactly what you're paying for, and exactly what to check when you walk in on Tuesday.

• Each area, and the tasks done in it.
• How often each task happens.
• The days and times of the visits, set against your opening hours.
• What isn't covered, and what it costs if you want it later.
• Who to contact when something needs to change.

The schedule should bend around your site, not the company's rota. An office has a quiet stretch before the first desk is taken and after the last one's left. A shop gets its quiet once the doors are shut. A unit that opens at midday and runs late has its mornings. Ask each company how it'd fit around yours.

Read the exclusions harder than the inclusions. Repairs, redecoration, grounds work and clearing waste usually sit outside a clean, and a pile of left-behind furniture is not a cleaning job. Ask each company for its own list. Ours is repairs and redecoration, grounds work, and clearing waste or left-behind items, and it's on the commercial page for anyone to read. For how often each area needs attention, there's a separate guide on office cleaning frequency.

What insurance figure should a commercial cleaner carry?

Ask for the public liability figure. Not "are you insured?", because everyone says yes. A number is something you can write down and put next to the next company's number.

• What's the public liability figure?
• Who's the insurer, and what dates does the cover run for?
• Does the name on the cover match the company on the proposal?
• Can they send it in writing?

Check your own minimum first. Your lease, your landlord or your biggest client may set a figure, and it's far easier to find that out before you sign than after.

Ivory carries £2m public liability. If your records need paperwork, say so when you request the survey and we'll tell you what we can supply.

How are commercial cleaning staff vetted?

Commercial cleans often happen when the building's empty, with a key or a code and nobody watching. So it's a fair thing to ask, and you should get a straight answer in writing.

• Are the people employed by the company, or subcontracted?
• How is each person vetted before they start on a site?
• Who holds the keys or codes, and what happens if a set goes missing?
• Who's your point of contact, and how fast do they reply?

If the site holds confidential papers, or the team works out of hours, say so up front. It changes the questions. And listen for specifics. "We only use trusted people" is a nice sentence that tells you nothing.

Ivory's operatives are vetted, and they arrive with their own equipment and eco products. You get one point of contact for the site. We'd still ask you to press for the detail of how, as you would with anyone. There's more in how to find a trustworthy cleaner.

What happens when a cleaning task is missed?

Sooner or later, something gets missed. A bin under a desk, the skirting in the corridor. What counts is what the company does when you tell them, so ask before you sign.

• How do you report it, and to whom?
• Do they come back and redo it?
• Is there a time limit on the fix?
• Is it written down anywhere?

You want a concrete remedy: a redo, a make-up visit, a credit. An apology isn't one. If the answer's vague, ask for it in writing and see how long that takes.

Ours is simple. Tell us what was missed and we come back and re-clean it. That's the re-clean guarantee. The commercial page doesn't set a time limit on it, so ask us for one when you request the survey, and make us put it in writing.

How long is the contract, and how much notice is there?

Get the minimum term and the notice period in writing, from everyone. A good answer is a number of weeks or months stated in the document, not something you dig out of the small print once you've asked three times.

• Is there a minimum term, and how long is it?
• How much notice does each side give?
• Can the schedule change if your hours or headcount do?
• How's the price looked at again if the scope changes?

Our commercial page doesn't state a contract length or a notice period, so we won't pretend it does. Ask us for both when you request the survey, and ask everyone else too. The full checklist is in what to put in a commercial cleaning contract.

How do you compare commercial cleaning companies side by side?

Put the answers in one grid. If a company can't fill a row, that tells you something. The third column is what Ivory can show for each question, and only what we can show.

A cheaper price on a thinner scope is a different job at a different price. And where a company goes quiet on a row, don't read the silence as a yes.

Where does Ivory fit?

If you want our pick, it's us. We'd put Ivory first on this list and we'll show you why. It's our own view, from a company with something to gain, so none of it should be taken on trust.

• Site survey first, then a specification and a price built around the premises. The price never comes before the visit.
• £2m public liability insurance.
• Vetted operatives, who bring their own equipment and eco products.
• A schedule agreed with you around the days and times that suit the site.
• One point of contact, and a reply within 30 minutes, between 8am and 10pm, seven days a week.
• A re-clean guarantee: tell us what was missed and we come back.
• 5.0 on Google.

That's why we say it. Nobody here does it better, in our honest opinion. But go and ask the others the same questions and see whose written answers you'd rather have in a drawer.

To start, request a site survey or call 0161 3939 247. WhatsApp works too. We cover Manchester city centre, Stockport and Altrincham, among other areas.