Management of your school building – from day nurseries to universities – same issues, different scale

From the air you breathe to the water you use and the food you cook - air and water hygiene can affect everyone in your building.

Swiftclean is a family-run company that has been helping nurseries, schools, academies, colleges and universities with their air and water hygiene compliance for over 40 years.

Originally formed to provide specialist compliance cleaning services for ventilation system hygiene, we are now one of the UK’s foremost providers of kitchen extract fire safety cleaning, legionella control services, fire damper testing, indoor air quality monitoring and ventilation system cleaning.
  
We’re based in the Southeast – near sunny Southend-on-Sea – but have on-site teams spread across the whole of the UK.

Our company’s highly skilled and enhanced DBS-checked technicians help school business managers comply with their legal obligations in protecting students, staff, and visitors in the critical areas of kitchen, air and water hygiene, making your buildings safer through our highly efficient, cost-effective and customer-focused services.  

Our technicians are well used to working out of school hours and during holidays so that the life of your school can continue unhindered, leaving you compliant and safe for everyone working, studying in, or visiting your premises.

We provide full post clean documentation of our services so that you can demonstrate the measures you have taken to comply with the law, should the worst happen.  This is critical in a context in which negligence, if proven, can lead to prosecution, stringent or limitless fines and even custodial sentences for responsible individuals.  

We are flexible in how we offer our services to you – and offer you the option of saving time and money by using more than one of our services. We’d be happy to discuss that with you further.

Your responsibilities
Legionella Management
Even if you’re a small day nursery or preschool, you still need to protect your children from Legionnaires’ Disease which can be found in water systems. As a Responsible Person, you must follow the requirements of ACoP L8 for the control of Legionella and have a water risk assessment. This is essential to protect those with an underlying health condition, as they are particularly vulnerable to Legionnaire’s Disease, a debilitating ‘flu-like, potentially fatal, illness caused by Legionella bacteria.

Kitchen extract fire safety cleaning
If you cook on your premises, you must also mitigate the risk of fire in your kitchen – this means your kitchen extract system should be cleaned regularly to meet the requirements of the BESA TR19® Grease specification.

No matter how healthy the menu, airborne fat oil and grease particles are a by-product of the cooking process. As grease-laden airstreams pass through the ductwork, the air cools, depositing grease on the inside surfaces of the entire extraction system. These grease deposits very quickly form a fire hazard.

TR19® Grease recommends that cleaning should be carried out by a member of the Vent Hygiene Elite (VHE) scheme. As a VHE member, Swiftclean is thoroughly vetted and regularly assessed to ensure our continued membership. 

Ventilation cleaning and Indoor Air Quality testing
Fresh, clean air is essential to maintaining good health and has also been shown to contribute to a good learning environment, helping to promote alertness and concentration. TR19®, the specification from which TR19® Grease was developed, lays down the intervals at which ventilation systems should be cleaned to help maintain good indoor air quality. 

Ventilation systems should be classified as high, medium or low, according to the usage of the property. In schools and colleges, most areas would be designated as medium, although a university research laboratory or clean room would be designated as high. TR19®has helpful tables that set out the intervals at which ventilation systems should be cleaned to achieve and maintain compliance. In a laboratory, you may have a local exhaust ventilation system, which will also need regular expert cleaning.

Your indoor air quality can be tested, to detect any concerning levels of indoor air pollutants such as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), dust particles, bacteria, or, in some parts of the UK, problems such as Radon gas. The results from this are usually immediately available, enabling you to take action promptly to address any issues.

We’re happy to advise you on all aspects of your building’s air and water hygiene compliance. Our Technical Sales Consultants are based throughout the UK so they can visit your building and discuss with you face-to-face any issues.

Contact us now.