School Cleaning Contract Insurance and Safeguarding Rules

Most school cleaning contracts in the UK ask for the same core package: public liability of £5 million or £10 million, employers' liability of £10 million, and evidence that everyone working on site has been through the right level of DBS check. Larger academy trusts and local authority frameworks often add professional indemnity, fidelity guarantee (cover for theft by your own staff) and a specific requirement for cover on keys and property in your care. The limits are usually non-negotiable, and the school will want paperwork before anyone sets foot on site.

The harder part is safeguarding. A school is not an office block. Your cleaners may be working while after-school clubs are running, in corridors where pupils pass, or alone in a building with a caretaker and a few staff. Keeping Children Safe in Education, the statutory guidance from the Department for Education that all schools in England must follow, puts the onus on the school to be satisfied about who you are sending. In practice that duty is passed straight down to you in the contract, with written confirmation of checks, identity badges, induction and a clear reporting route for concerns.

This guide covers what education buyers ask for, why they ask for it, where cleaning policies can fall short (abuse exclusions and damage to the surfaces you are cleaning are the two big ones), and the evidence you should have ready before you submit. If you want the full picture of the cover itself, our page on contract cleaners insurance sets out each section in turn.

What insurance do school cleaning contracts actually require?

Requirements vary between a single primary school buying direct and a multi-academy trust running a framework across thirty sites. The pattern below is what we see most often in education tenders. Treat the limits as commonly requested rather than universal, and always read the specification rather than assuming.

Employers' liability is the one with legal teeth behind it. Under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 you must hold at least £5 million if you employ anyone, and the HSE can fine up to £2,500 for each day you trade without it. Education buyers routinely ask for £10 million anyway, which most insurers provide as standard on a cleaning policy. Our guide to the difference between public liability and employers' liability explains which one responds to which type of claim.

Why £10 million public liability is so common in education

Public liability covers your legal liability for injury to other people and damage to their property. The limit of indemnity is the most the insurer will pay for any one claim, including the legal costs of defending it in many wordings. Schools set the bar high because the people on site are children, and a serious injury claim involving a child can run for years with a care award at the end of it.

The everyday scenarios are mundane. A wet corridor floor with no signage and a Year 4 pupil running to assembly. A mop bucket left at the top of a stairwell. A cleaning trolley with a chemical bottle in reach in a primary school. A contractor's vacuum cable across a fire exit during a drill. None of these are exotic, and all of them have been the start of a liability claim somewhere.

If a tender specifies £10 million and your current policy is £2 million, do not submit and hope. Ask your broker to confirm whether the insurer will increase the limit and what the premium change looks like, or send us the specification through our contract cleaners insurance enquiry form and we will quote against the limits the school has set. Increasing a limit is usually straightforward, but it is not automatic and it is not always cheap for higher-hazard work. There is more detail on how buyers set these figures in our guide to public liability limits for cleaning contracts.

DBS checks: what level do school cleaners need?

This is where most contractors get caught out, because the right level of check depends on how the work is organised rather than on the job title.

The Disclosure and Barring Service offers basic, standard, enhanced and enhanced with a barred list check. For school work, the question is whether your cleaners are carrying out what the law calls regulated activity with children. Broadly, that turns on whether the work is unsupervised, involves contact with children, and happens frequently (the usual frequency tests are once a week or more, on four or more days in a 30 day period, or overnight). A cleaner working unsupervised in a school during the day while pupils are present will normally need an enhanced DBS check including the children's barred list. Where the work is genuinely outside school hours with no pupil contact, the school may conclude a different level applies, but that judgement belongs to the school, not to you.

Points worth getting straight before you bid:

• Ask the school which level it requires, in writing. Different trusts take different views on the same cleaning pattern. Put their answer in your tender file.
• Be clear about who holds the check. Schools often want written notification from you, as the employer, confirming that checks have been carried out and that nobody on site is barred.
• Expect identity verification on arrival. Many schools will check photo ID against your written list at the gate. Issue your team with branded ID badges.
• Update Service subscriptions help. They let a check be re-examined rather than re-run, which matters when you are mobilising a contract in a fortnight.
• Plan for cover staff. A relief cleaner sent at short notice without a check is the single most common contract breach. Build a checked relief pool before you start.

The current edition of Keeping Children Safe in Education is published on gov.uk and is updated most years. Read the version in force for the school year you are bidding into, because the wording on contractors and supply staff has changed more than once.

Safeguarding expectations beyond the DBS certificate

A certificate is the start. Schools want evidence that safeguarding is built into how you run the contract, and tender scoring often reflects that.

Expect to be asked for a written safeguarding policy naming a person in your business who is responsible for it, confirmation that staff have completed safeguarding awareness training at an appropriate level, and a clear process for reporting a concern to the school's designated safeguarding lead. You will also be asked how you would handle an allegation against one of your own cleaners, which in England means referral to the local authority designated officer. Have an answer ready that does not involve investigating it yourself first.

Day to day rules usually include no photography or filming on site, mobile phones kept out of pupil areas, no lone contact with a pupil behind a closed door, staying within agreed areas of the building, and signing in and out every visit. Some trusts add a Prevent duty briefing. Add these to your induction pack and record attendance, because the first thing an auditor asks for is the signed register.

Chemicals deserve their own paragraph. Schools are strict about storage, and rightly so. Cleaning cupboards must be locked, products kept in original labelled containers, and risk assessments available on site. Our plain English guide to COSHH for cleaning businesses covers the assessments and data sheets you will be asked to produce.

Does public liability cover abuse allegations?

Many public liability wordings contain an abuse or molestation exclusion, which removes cover for claims arising from alleged abuse by your employees. That matters enormously in an education contract, where an allegation (even one that is ultimately unfounded) can bring a claim against your business as the employer.

Some insurers will offer an abuse extension or a separate sexual abuse liability section, often with its own limit, its own excess and conditions about recruitment checks and training. Availability depends on the insurer, the proportion of your turnover derived from schools, and the controls you can demonstrate. This is not a cover you should assume is sitting in your schedule because the policy was sold for cleaning work.

Before you mobilise a school contract, ask three questions of your broker. Does the policy exclude abuse? If so, can an extension be added, on what terms and at what limit? Does the school's contract require you to hold that cover, and at what figure? If you are moving into education work for the first time, tell your insurer. That disclosure sits squarely within the duty of fair presentation under the Insurance Act 2015, which our guide to fair presentation of risk explains in practical terms.

Damage to the school's own property and treatment risk

Standard public liability covers damage to third party property, but most wordings exclude or restrict damage to the actual item you were working on. That exclusion is usually called damage to property worked upon, or treatment risk. It is the clause that bites hardest in schools.

Think about what you are treating. A sports hall floor stripped and sealed with the wrong product, leaving it slippery and out of use until it is sanded and refinished. A newly laid safety floor in a nursery marked by an aggressive chemical. A science lab bench surface clouded by a solvent. A carpeted library area shrinking after a hot water extraction. In every case the school's loss is the surface you were paid to clean, and a basic policy may not respond.

Ask whether your policy includes a damage to property worked upon extension, what the limit is, and whether it is inner-limited below your main public liability figure. The detail is set out in our guide to treatment risks and the gap in standard public liability. If your school work includes periodic carpet deep cleans you may also want to read about carpet and upholstery cleaners insurance, and if you take on summer refurbishment sparkle cleans, our guide to builders clean insurance covers the site-based exposures.

Keys, alarm codes and out-of-hours access

Hold a school's keys and you hold responsibility for a large, expensive suite of locks. Lose one master key on a secondary site and the replacement bill can be substantial, because the whole suite may need re-coding. Public liability will not usually pay for that. A loss of keys extension, or a standalone loss of keys policy, is designed for exactly this.

Alarm responsibility goes alongside it. If your supervisor sets the intruder alarm wrongly and a laptop trolley is stolen overnight, the school will look to you. If your team triggers a false activation that brings out a keyholding response, there may be a charge. Both of these are worth checking against your policy and your contract. Our guides on keyholding risks and out-of-hours access and alarm codes go through the practical controls, most of which translate directly to a school site.

Sign-out logs, coded key safes, numbered fobs that do not carry the school name or address, and an immediate reporting rule for anything mislaid will all help you defend a claim and may be conditions of your cover.

Employers' liability, subcontractors and TUPE

If you take over an existing school cleaning contract, the incumbent's cleaners may transfer to you under TUPE. That changes your wage roll, your headcount and sometimes your claims profile, and insurers rate employers' liability largely on those figures. Tell your broker before the transfer date, not at renewal.

Using self-employed cleaners does not automatically remove the need for employers' liability cover. Where you provide the materials, set the hours and direct the work, insurers generally treat those people as labour-only subcontractors, and your employers' liability section needs to cover them. Bona fide subcontractors with their own policies are treated differently, and you should collect and diarise their certificates. The distinction is explained in our guide to labour-only subcontractors and your cleaning insurance. If a TUPE transfer has just pushed you over the threshold where you need cover for the first time, you can set out your headcount and wage roll on our employers' liability quote form.

Theft is the other staffing exposure schools care about. Classrooms are full of portable technology. Fidelity guarantee, sometimes called employee dishonesty cover, pays for loss caused by theft by your own people and is often a named requirement in trust contracts. See our guide to fidelity guarantee insurance for how the conditions and references requirements work.

Checklist: before you submit a school cleaning tender

1. Read the insurance clause in full and write down each required cover, limit and any wording requirement such as indemnity to principal or waiver of subrogation.
2. Check the named insured on your schedule matches the legal entity submitting the tender exactly. A trading name on the certificate and a limited company on the bid is a common reason for paperwork being rejected.
3. Confirm your public liability limit and ask your broker in writing whether it can be increased if the contract needs £10 million.
4. Ask whether abuse liability is excluded and whether an extension is available.
5. Check damage to property worked upon, its limit and its excess, against the surfaces listed in the specification.
6. Confirm loss of keys and fidelity guarantee limits against the contract requirement.
7. Get DBS levels confirmed in writing by the school and map every role, including relief and supervisory staff.
8. Assemble the safeguarding pack: policy, training records, reporting flowchart, ID badge process, mobile phone rule.
9. Prepare COSHH assessments and safety data sheets for every product you will take on site, plus your method statements for floor work.
10. Check working at height arrangements for high-level dusting, light fittings and glass. Our guide on working at height for window cleaners covers the questions insurers ask.
11. Gather certificates as PDFs: employers' liability certificate, public liability certificate, policy schedule, and a broker letter if the buyer wants confirmation on headed paper.
12. Diarise expiry dates so your evidence does not lapse mid-contract. Our renewal checklist helps.

What evidence will the school accept?

Buyers usually want a certificate of insurance showing the insurer, policy number, limit of indemnity and period of cover. Some accept a broker's letter confirming the same details, which is useful when a tender asks for a combination of limits that span more than one section. Where a contract starts after your renewal date, many buyers will accept a written undertaking that cover at the required level will be in place by the commencement date, supported by a broker confirmation.

Watch for clauses that ask you to maintain cover for a period after the contract ends. Professional indemnity is written on a claims made basis, meaning it responds to claims notified while the policy is live, so a run-off requirement has a real cost attached. If you advise trusts on cleaning regimes or hold a facilities management role, read our guide to professional indemnity for facilities management cleaning firms before you sign.

Finally, check the indemnity clause. Schools and trusts often ask you to indemnify them against losses arising from your work. Insurers will cover your legal liability, but a clause that makes you liable for things you would not otherwise be liable for at law may not be matched by your policy. Flag unusual wording with your broker rather than accepting it and hoping the two documents line up. Contracts with NHS bodies follow a similar pattern, and our guide to healthcare cleaning contract insurance shows how public sector clauses tend to be drafted.

Getting the right cover in place for school work

Education contracts are winnable for small and mid-sized cleaning companies, but only if the insurance and safeguarding evidence is ready before the deadline rather than scrambled together afterwards. Start with the specification, list the gaps, and sort them while you still have time to shop the risk properly.

Polished Insurance arranges cover for contract cleaning businesses across the UK, including firms working in schools, academies and nurseries. Our questionnaire only asks the questions that apply to cleaning work, so you are not wading through forms written for builders. Tell us the limits your tender demands and we will look at how to meet them. You can start a contract cleaners insurance quote online, compare the wider range of cleaning insurance covers, or read more in our section-by-section guide to contract cleaners insurance. If you also hold office and commercial work alongside school sites, our commercial cleaning insurance page is a useful comparison.

This guide is general information, not personal advice. Cover depends on the policy wording, the insurer's acceptance and your own circumstances, so speak to a broker about your specific contract before you commit.