The standards that apply
Three documents matter.
The NHS National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness 2025. NHS England published these in February 2025. They replaced the 2021 standards and apply to all healthcare organisations, with primary care bodies issuing their own versions of the charters and audit tools for general practice. The standards are a risk-based framework. Every cleanable area is given a functional risk category, cleaned to a frequency that matches it, and audited against a target score.
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 Code of Practice on the prevention and control of infections. CQC must take this into account when it registers and inspects a provider. It covers the wider aspects of infection prevention, including environmental cleanliness, and it is the document CQC quotes when a practice falls short.
HTM 01-05 for dental practices. This covers decontamination of instruments in primary care dental practices. It is the practice's own duty, not the cleaner's. The environmental cleaning of the surgery sits alongside it, and CQC's dental mythbuster on infection prevention makes clear that both are expected.
Functional risk categories and audit targets
The 2025 standards define six functional risk categories. NHS England describes using all six as good practice where practicable rather than a requirement, so a practice may adopt a subset such as FR2, FR4 and FR6. The category sets the audit target and the audit frequency.
| Category | Audit target | Audit frequency |
|---|---|---|
| FR1 | 98 per cent | Weekly |
| FR2 | 95 per cent | Monthly |
| FR3 | 90 per cent | Every two months |
| FR4 | 85 per cent | Every three months |
| FR5 | 80 per cent | Every six months |
| FR6 | 75 per cent | Every twelve months |
In a GP or dental practice the treatment room, minor operations room and dental surgery sit at the higher risk end. Consulting rooms, waiting areas and patient toilets sit in the middle. Administrative offices and staff rooms sit at FR6. The practice decides the category for each room, writes it down and reviews it annually. The cleaning contractor's schedule must then match those categories.
The audit result is shown as a star rating. Areas rated three stars or below must have an improvement plan with agreed timescales. Practices are expected to display a Commitment to Cleanliness Charter at the entrance showing what is cleaned, how often and by whom, with the star rating updated after each formal audit.
What CQC expects
CQC's GP mythbuster on infection prevention and control lists what an inspector checks. The practice needs a named IPC lead with the authority to change things, a written IPC policy that is current and available to all staff, and an audit programme that shows problems found and problems fixed.
On cleaning specifically, the mythbuster says cleaning contractors need schedules that specify frequencies for high-frequency touch items such as keyboards, telephones, door handles and light switches, with regular checks that the schedule is being followed. Clinical rooms must not have carpets. Curtains must be changed immediately if visibly soiled, and otherwise on a risk-assessed cycle. Clinical waste bins must have lids and foot pedals, be filled no more than three quarters, and be tied and labelled with the practice address and date.
For dental practices, CQC's mythbuster 38 sets the same core expectations. An IPC policy, an IPC lead, and an audit programme that draws on the Infection Prevention Society audit tool that HTM 01-05 recommends.
Colour coding
The national colour coding scheme was issued by the National Patient Safety Agency in 2007 and is carried into the 2025 standards. Red equipment is for washrooms, showers, toilets, basins and bathroom floors. Blue is for general areas including consulting rooms, offices, corridors and waiting areas. Green is for kitchens and food preparation. Yellow is for isolation areas, and in primary care for treatment and minor operations rooms.
Colour coding covers every item that touches a surface. Cloths, mops, buckets, aprons and gloves. The rule exists so that equipment used in a toilet never reaches a treatment room. A contractor who arrives with one bucket and one mop for the whole building cannot meet it.
What a compliant clean looks like
Treatment rooms and dental surgeries. Cleaned every day the room is used, with yellow equipment. Couches, chairs, worktops, sinks, taps, door handles, light switches and equipment housings wiped with a detergent then a disinfectant suitable for the surface. Floors damp mopped with fresh solution. Nothing stored on the floor. Clinical waste bins checked and not overfilled. The cleaner does not touch instruments, sterilisers or anything inside the decontamination area, which is the practice's own HTM 01-05 process.
Consulting rooms and waiting areas. Daily with blue equipment. Desks, keyboards, telephones, chairs and children's toys, if any, on the touch-point list. Waiting room chairs wiped, floors vacuumed or mopped, reading material and notices tidied.
Patient and staff toilets. Daily with red equipment. Toilet, basin, taps, flush, door handle and lock, dispensers refilled, floor mopped last. Sanitary waste collected by a registered carrier as offensive waste in the tiger bag stream that HTM 07-01 describes.
Offices and staff rooms. FR6 areas can be cleaned less often, but they still need a schedule and still appear in the audit.
Records. A signed daily schedule per room, a colour coding chart on the wall of the cleaning cupboard, COSHH assessments for every product, and a monthly supervisor inspection scored against the standard. The practice's IPC lead needs this file at inspection time.
Where practices go wrong
The common failures are simple. A cleaning schedule that names rooms but not frequencies. One colour of mop for the whole building. No record that anyone checked the cleaner's work. Cleaning products with no COSHH sheet on site. A charter on the wall that has not been updated since the last audit. None of these need a large budget to fix. They need a written specification and someone who inspects against it.
How Commercial Cleaning London delivers it
For GP surgeries, dental practices and private clinics across London, Commercial Cleaning London specifies to the standards above. Each contract starts with a written specification built around the practice's functional risk categories, so every room has a named frequency and a named colour. The contract commits the same operatives to every visit, inducted on the practice's IPC policy. A supervisor audits against the 2025 standards on the cycle the category requires and gives the practice manager the score for the charter. COSHH sheets, colour coding charts and signed schedules stay on site in a single file so the IPC lead has what CQC will ask for.