Letting someone into a client's home on their own, often with a key, is a step many cleaning businesses want to check before taking on staff or sub-contractors. A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check gives a client, and the business taking someone on, a record of whether that person has unspent convictions.

What a basic check shows

A basic check lists unspent convictions and conditional cautions. It does not cover spent convictions, and it says nothing about anyone else in the person's household.

Cost and timing

A basic check costs £20 and usually comes back within 3 working days. This applies to work in England and Wales. A business working in Scotland or Northern Ireland follows a different scheme, with its own cost and timing.

Deciding whether to ask staff for a basic check is a separate question from the checks you must make before someone starts work, covered in Employed or Self-Employed and in the full run of first steps in Starting a Cleaning Business.

Checking before someone starts

Before a new cleaner begins work for you, you need to check that they're allowed to work in the UK. This holds whether they're coming in for a few hours a week or joining you full time, and it applies from the first day.

What the check protects you from

If someone works for you without the right to do so, and you haven't checked, you can face a civil penalty. GOV.UK sets this at up to £60,000 for each person found working illegally.

Carrying out the check before the start date is what matters here. A check done once someone has already started cleaning for you doesn't give you the same protection.

Taking on your first member of staff brings several registrations together at once, which the page on starting a cleaning business sets out in order.

Taking on your first member of staff changes what you have to register for. Before that point you might only have dealt with your own tax. Once someone else is on the payroll, you need to register as an employer and have the right insurance in place before they start work.

Registering with HMRC

You must register as an employer with HMRC before your first payday, so that PAYE, the system used to deduct tax and National Insurance from wages, is set up and ready to run. This applies from the moment you first pay someone, even if that is only a few hours a week. The timing matters because PAYE has to be in place by the time the first wage is paid.

Employers' liability insurance

Once you employ anyone, you need employers' liability insurance covering at least £5 million. This insurance pays out if a member of staff is injured or becomes ill because of their work for you. Going without it, or without enough cover, can bring a fine of £2,500 for each day you are not properly insured.

Your certificate of employers' liability insurance has to be on display where your staff can see it, or made available to them in a form they can view. A member of staff should be able to check the cover is there without having to ask you for it.

These two steps sit alongside the other registrations a growing cleaning business works through, covered in Starting a Cleaning Business and, once pay is being worked out, in Pay and Holiday for Cleaning Staff.

Most cleaning work leaves nothing behind for you to carry away. A client's rubbish stays with the client, and you take home only your own equipment and materials. Some bookings are different. An oven clean can leave grease and debris, a deep clean can leave old carpet or broken fittings, and if you take that waste with you, you have stepped into the rules on waste carriers.

When the rule applies to you

The rule turns on whose waste it is. If the waste was produced by someone else, and you carry it away to be disposed of or recycled, that counts as carrying waste other than your own. This applies in England.

A business that only ever leaves client waste where it found it, and never transports it elsewhere, does not need to think about this further. A business that regularly clears rubbish, old carpet or similar material from a property, and takes it away itself, does.

Tiers and fees

Registration as a waste carrier in England sits in tiers, with what you're asked to pay set by which tier your activity falls into. Which tier applies to a cleaning business depends on what's being carried and how often, and the current fees are set out on the registration page itself.

It's worth checking this before you agree to take waste away from a client's property. The sequence of registrations a cleaning business works through as it grows, including this one, is set out in order on Starting a Cleaning Business.