COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Update

Seven steps to protect yourself, your staff and your customers during coronavirus.

1. Complete a COVID-19 risk assessment. Share it with all your staff. If you have fewer than 5 workers, or are self-employed, you don’t have to write anything down as part of your risk assessment. Find out how to do a risk assessment.
2. Clean more often. Increase how often you clean surfaces, especially those that are being touched a lot. Ask your staff and your customers to use hand sanitiser and wash their hands frequently.
3. Ask your customers to wear face coverings where required to do so by law. That is especially important if your customers are likely to be around people they do not normally meet. Some exemptions apply. Check when to wear one, exemptions, and how to make your own.
4. Make sure everyone is social distancing. Make it easy for everyone to do so by putting up signs or introducing a one-way system that your staff and customers can follow.
5. Increase ventilation by keeping doors and windows open where possible and running ventilation systems at all times.
6. Take part in NHS Test and Trace by keeping a record of all your staff and contractors for 21 days. From 18 September, this will be enforced in law. Some exemptions apply. Check ‘Maintaining records of staff, customers and visitors to support NHS Test and Trace’ for details.
7. Turn people with coronavirus symptoms away. If a staff member (or someone in their household) or a customer has a persistent cough, a high temperature or has lost their sense of taste or smell, they should be isolating. By law from 28 September employers must not require someone who is being required to self-isolate to come to work.

Five more things to be aware of if your business provides services in other people’s homes:

• Explain safety measures to your customer before entering their home. Make sure that members of the household know they should maintain social distancing from you.
• Avoid crowded areas. Identify busy locations in the house such as hallways and avoid moving through them where possible.
• Limit contact with customers. Bring your own food and drink and take breaks outside where possible. Avoid sharing items such as pens or tools.
• When working in a household with people at higher risk, take extra measures to avoid contact, such as working in a separate room from them.
• Communicate and train. Make sure all staff and customers are kept up to date with how safety measures are being used.

We’ve set important rules for customers and cleaners

• Cleaners must book time off & not attend cleans if anybody in their home is unwell, self-isolating or shielding
• Customers must skip cleans or pause their account if anybody in their home is unwell, self-isolating or shielding
• Customers must not stay in the property while their cleaner is working.
• Customers must skip cleans or pause their account if social distancing isn’t possible

We’ve provided cleaners with detailed cleaning guidance

• We’ve sent detailed cleaning and safety guidelines to all cleaners. They’re based on the latest guidelines from Public Health England, National Institutes of Health, CDC, and the NHS
• Surfaces should be cleaned using regular products, then disinfected using a product that ‘kills 99.9% of germs’
• Special attention should be paid to ‘high-touch’ areas, such as; door and cupboard handles, light switches, TV remotes, tables, countertops
• Warm water (not hot or cold) should be used when cleaning surfaces and mopping floors, to maximise the effectiveness of cleaning products