Cleaning work brings the body into contact with floors, chemicals, equipment and other people, more often than most office roles do, and each of those brings its own risk. HSE groups these into a handful of recurring categories, the same ones that come up across homes, offices and commercial premises.

Slips, trips and falls

Wet floors, trailing cables, loose rugs and cluttered stairways are among the most common causes of injury in cleaning work. A floor left wet while it dries, or a cable run across a walkway, is enough to cause a fall.

Contact with cleaning chemicals

Many cleaning products irritate the skin, eyes or lungs, and some cause a reaction when mixed with another product. Repeated contact over time can lead to dermatitis or breathing problems, even where a single exposure seemed minor.

Manual handling

Moving furniture, carrying buckets, pulling a vacuum cleaner up stairs or wringing out a mop all put strain on the back, shoulders and wrists. Awkward postures held for long periods add to the strain even where nothing is particularly heavy.

Working at height

Reaching light fittings, high shelves or windows means stepping onto something, and a fall from even a modest height can cause serious injury. The equipment used for this work, and how it is chosen, is covered on its own page for window cleaning and ladders.

Electrical equipment

Vacuum cleaners, polishers and other powered equipment carry a risk of electric shock where a cable or plug is damaged, or where equipment is used near water.

Contact with waste and bodily fluids

Cleaning bins, toilets and other waste brings a risk of contact with sharp objects or bodily fluids, which can carry infection.

Working alone

A good deal of cleaning work is done by one person in a building with nobody else present, which changes how quickly help can reach someone if something goes wrong.

Each of these risks has its own set of duties attached to it, from the substances a business handles to the records it has to keep. Those duties are set out on their own pages, including checks and registrations and employed or self-employed for the staff carrying out the work.

Many of the things a cleaning business uses every week, from bleach and descaler to oven cleaner and some carpet treatments, are substances that can harm someone if they are breathed in, splashed on skin or mixed with the wrong chemical. The rules on substances hazardous to health are known as COSHH, and they set out what an employer has to do about that risk.

What counts as a hazardous substance

COSHH covers more than the products marked with a warning symbol. It takes in cleaning chemicals, disinfectants, descalers, and dust produced by some cleaning tasks, as well as anything a cleaner might mix or dilute during a booking. If a product's label carries a hazard warning, or the safety data sheet from the manufacturer names a risk, COSHH applies to it.

The employer's duty: plan, manage, monitor

COSHH puts the duty on the employer, not on the individual cleaner, to work out which substances are in use and what harm they could cause before anyone is sent out with them. That means planning: checking the safety data sheet for each product, choosing a safer alternative where one does the same task, and deciding how it will be stored, diluted and disposed of.

It also means managing the task itself. That covers training staff in how to use a product safely, giving them the right gloves, masks or eye protection where the assessment calls for it, and making sure products are labelled and never decanted into unmarked bottles.

The duty does not end once the task is set up. An employer has to monitor how the controls are working in practice, for example by checking that staff are still using protective equipment correctly and that nothing has changed about the products in use or the spaces they are used in.

Writing it down

Where a cleaning business uses several hazardous products across different clients' homes or premises, setting the COSHH assessment out in writing makes it easier to review when a product changes or a new booking brings a new type of task, such as moving from routine cleaning to an oven clean.

Health and safety law asks every employer to look at the risks in the work before it starts, whatever the size of the business. For a cleaning business that means thinking through the chemicals used, the floors, stairs and ladders involved, and the state of the property being cleaned, before anyone goes in to do the clean.

When the assessment has to be written down

Once a business reaches five employees, the risk assessment has to be set out in writing, with the significant findings recorded. Below that number, the law under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSE) still asks you to assess the risks, but you are not required to keep a written record of it. HSE's duties here apply across Great Britain.

Writing it down, even where it isn't required, gives you something to go back to and update as the work changes, such as a new client's property, a new chemical, or a change to how a team gets in and out of a building.

Working alone

A lot of cleaning work happens with one person in a house or office and nobody else around. The duty to manage that risk sits with the business, and it covers anyone carrying out the work for you, including a self-employed cleaner you've taken on for a particular project. Treating someone as self-employed for tax purposes doesn't remove your responsibility for their safety while they're working on your behalf.

In practice, that means thinking through what happens if someone has an accident, feels unwell, or can't reach anyone while working alone in a client's home or office, and having a way for them to check in or raise the alarm.

Cleaning puts weight through your back, arms and shoulders more often than most work. Buckets of water, vacuum cleaners, bags of waste and furniture pushed aside to clean behind it all count as manual handling, which is any task involving lifting, carrying, pushing or pulling. Where a task like this carries a risk of injury, it needs looking at before someone gets hurt.

Manual handling

Start by asking whether a lift or carry can be avoided, such as by using a trolley. Where it can't be avoided, look at the weight, the distance it travels, how often it's repeated and the posture it puts someone in. Training in lifting technique helps, but it doesn't replace changing the task itself where that's possible.

Reporting an injury

Some injuries that happen during work have to be reported under the rules on reporting workplace injuries, known as RIDDOR.

A specified injury, such as a broken bone, has to be reported within 10 days of the accident.

An injury that keeps someone off their normal duties for more than seven consecutive days has to be reported within 15 days of the accident.