Cleaning Risk Assessment: What You Need & How to Write One
A risk assessment is one of the most commonly requested documents cleaning companies are asked for — by clients, letting agents, facilities managers and health & safety inspectors. This guide covers what a proper cleaning risk assessment needs to include and how to produce one for every task your team carries out.
Why cleaning companies need a risk assessment
Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, every employer must assess the risks their staff face while working. For cleaning businesses, that means identifying hazards like slips, chemical exposure, manual handling, working at height and electrical equipment — then showing how you control them.
Clients increasingly ask to see a current risk assessment before awarding a contract, especially for commercial, healthcare and facilities cleaning work.
What a good cleaning risk assessment covers
- The specific task being assessed (e.g. window cleaning, kitchen deep clean, washroom sanitising)
- Hazards identified — chemicals, slips/trips, manual handling, working at height, electrical equipment
- Who might be harmed — staff, clients, members of the public
- The likelihood and severity of harm, and the resulting risk level
- Control measures already in place, and any further action needed
- The name of the assessor and the date it was carried out and is due for review
Different tasks need different assessments
A risk assessment for a domestic clean looks very different from one for a commercial kitchen deep clean or a high-level window clean. Generic, one-size-fits-all templates rarely hold up to scrutiny — assessments should reflect the actual task, environment and equipment involved.
Build task-specific assessments in minutes
Fovexa Compliance's Risk Assessment Builder is designed specifically for cleaning tasks — office, domestic, commercial and deep cleaning — with hazards and control measures already mapped to what your business actually does. Create a new assessment, adjust it for the job, and it's ready to store or share with a client.
Create a cleaning-specific risk assessment now
Build a risk assessment matched to your exact cleaning tasks in minutes — free to start, no card required.