Kent County Council governs most of the county of Kent in England. It is the upper tier of elected local government and has 81 elected councillors. Below the council are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils.
About the partnership
Kent County Council is made up of three regions – West Kent, Mid Kent and East Kent. When we first won the contract in 2016, we were awarded West Kent as part of a multi public services contract with a third party. Due to delivering a great service across West Kent, in 2020 we were awarded East Kent and have recently won a competitive tender to directly look after the whole of Kent.
We provide daily cleaning, washroom services, window cleaning and periodic works to 286 buildings across Kent. We also carry out different ad-hoc works, including but not limited to flat clearances, car park sweeping, jet washing, waste removal, graffiti removal and body fluid spillage cleans.
The Churchill team looks after a mixture of property types, such as offices, libraries, family centres, headquarter buildings, UASC children’s homes, social services buildings and sexual health clinics. These properties are located in both heavily populated towns and remote rural locations. Each site has bespoke cleaning arrangements ranging from one out of hours cleaner for one hour a day to multiple cleaners and full day time presence for large complex buildings.
Improving service delivery
As we won the individual regions, our team quickly got to work to enhance service quality and ensure a smooth transition.
We started with a restructure of the management teams across the regions and assigned an experienced contract lead, Luke Baldwin, who put forward effective plans to improve service delivery. We defined a clear cleaning specification which was agreed with the client and briefed to our teams across all sites to ensure a consistent level of service at all times. To prevent any health and safety breaches, we ensured we had clear processes and contingency plans in place and that these were communicated to all relevant stakeholders.
We ensured a robust staffing model which enabled us to quickly respond to any issues and complete reactive quoted work in a timely manner. All our cleaning operatives are directly employed by Churchill and recruited from the local community, and our managers are local to the areas they look after. This robust approach has significantly improved the response to missed cleans and the number of cleaning complaints has reduced instantly across each region as we took over, improving the perception of the cleaning service across the County.
We’ve instigated consistency in auditing by making sure all audits across all buildings are conducted against one agreed specification. Each building is audited monthly by a local account manager. We consistently achieve high audit scores which is testament to our motivated teams maintaining high standards of work. We’ve also implemented Mo:dus, our digital platform, which enables independent audits to be carried out across some of our sites via QR codes whilst using a smart device.
We hold regular governance meetings with the council’s local and senior management teams on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis to review performance and assess opportunities for operational improvements and cost efficiencies.
Empowered team that likes to give back
In total, 229 Churchill colleagues work on the Kent County Council contract – 217 cleaning operatives, nine managers and three mobile cleaners.
We ensure that our teams receive regular training to empower them to provide a high level of service to the client. Every team member completes our comprehensive induction programme which complies with industry standards. Following on from this, we deliver monthly toolbox talks to ensure competence.
The team is regularly recognised by the client and put forward for our internal Shining Stars award programme. Going above and beyond is always celebrated with a number of promotions within the team. Bradley Pearce, who joined us as a Junior Manager, was promoted twice whilst working on the contract and is now Key Account Manager responsible for 14 core buildings and day to day running of the management team consisting of nine managers and three mobile cleaners.
We regularly participate in social value initiatives to give back to the local community. Charities supported by our team include Charity for Kids, Out of the Blue and Homeless Care. Furthermore, two of our managers dedicate their time every week to run under-14s and veteran football teams for the local area.
Joanna Masterman, FM Soft Services Contract Manager
“In 2022, we disaggregated our FM contracts. We now have a dedicated KCC contract team for cleaning and this has enabled us to work closely in partnership with Churchill. The biggest impact of this change has been excellent processes, communication and response to issues. All of these things led to a trusted cleaning service partnership with the Authority. Our dedicated ‘one team’ mentality has meant that we could go further faster.”
A trusted partner that delivers
Having retained the contract three times in a row, over the years we have established ourselves as a trusted partner to Kent County Council. The client values our specialist expertise and comes to us first to discuss additional requirements. Our team works hard to ensure a consistent service across the buildings we look after. As we’ve taken on more regions, the number of cleaning complaints has reduced significantly.
By implementing our PVA sustainable cleaning range across the contract, in 2023 we have achieved a plastic waste saving of 24 metric tonnes for the whole of Kent in support of the client’s sustainability ambitions.
The cleaning team receives regular compliments on cleanliness of different sites from members of the public, as well as the client.
Looking ahead
We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership with Kent County Council to enhance our service delivery and ensure clean and welcoming spaces for users of the council’s services.
Upcoming service innovations include:
- The implementation of our MapTag solution across 14 council’s flagship buildings to provide complete transparency and real-time visibility of the completed cleaning works, which will result in better reporting for the client.
- Transferring all council’s buildings under our management to Metsä paper products. Metsä is our preferred provider of paper products and the first paper manufacturer to achieve the Platinum award for sustainability by EcoVadis, placing it in the top 1% of companies assessed.
- The launch of QR driven customer feedback systems to provide an easy and convenient way for the building users to rate our service and raise any issues.
