Cleanline Commercial Cleaning 05 8 min read Guide
Insurance, police checks and award compliance, explained
What to check before anyone gets keys to your building. Public liability, police checks, and why award-compliant wages protect you, not just the cleaner.
Short answer: Check three things before anyone gets keys to your building. Current public liability insurance. Police checks on the staff who will hold after-hours access. A price that can truly pay award wages. The third check is the one almost nobody does, and it is the one that protects you most.
Check one: public liability insurance
Do not take "fully insured" as an answer. Ask for the certificate of currency. That is the one-page record the insurer issues to prove a policy is active. Check three things on it: the named entity matches the company on your quote, the policy covers commercial cleaning work, and the expiry date has not passed. If a cleaner stalls or sends an old certificate, that tells you what you need to know.
Check two: police checks for after-hours staff
Commercial cleaning mostly happens when your building is empty. The people doing it hold your keys, your alarm codes and your after-hours trust. One office manager described terminating a cleaning contract on the spot after the cleaners finished a clean just before Christmas, then left the main front door ajar and the building alarms off. The letter cited untrustworthiness, not cleaning quality.
So ask directly: are the cleaners who will access my site police-checked, and are they your employees or someone else's? Subcontracting chains blur both answers. You want named, checked people, not whoever was available that night.
Check three: can the price pay legal wages?
This is the check that separates buyers who get burned from buyers who do not. Cleaning wages are set by an award, so the minimum legal cost of a cleaning hour is public arithmetic. A quote that cannot be reconciled with award labour costs is not a bargain. It is a plan, and the plan is either fewer hours than you were promised or a cleaner paid below the law.
The usual trick is sham contracting. Plainly: the company calls its cleaners "independent contractors" so it can skip award rates, superannuation and penalty rates. The cleaners still work like employees. The Fair Work Ombudsman prosecutes this in cleaning constantly. A surprise night inspection of cleaners at the MCG ended in a $132,217 penalty against ISS Facility Services Australia. In another case, five migrant cleaners in Sydney were underpaid more than $125,000 through sham contracting.
$132,217
penalty against ISS after a night inspection at the MCG
Fair Work Ombudsman
$125,000+
underpaid to five Sydney cleaners via sham contracting
Fair Work Ombudsman
84%
of cleaning employment records inaccurate or not kept
Senate inquiry, Law Council submission
The pattern behind the cheapest quote in the pile, in the regulator's own numbers.
Here is why it is your problem and not just the cleaner's. The Cleaning Accountability Framework puts it bluntly: property owners fuel the race to the bottom by awarding contracts to the lowest bid without checking whether the price can cover award-compliant labour. If underpaid workers are cleaning your building, the reputational and supply chain exposure sits with your name on the door. And practically, underpaid cleaners leave, so your clean is done by a rotating cast of strangers with keys.
Red flag
A quote well under everyone else's, "fully insured" with no certificate offered, and
cleaners engaged as ABN contractors through a subcontracting chain. That price is
made possible by cut hours or cut wages, and either way it is happening inside your
building.
Good sign
A certificate of currency sent the same day you ask. Police-checked and insured staff,
named before they get keys. A price the company can walk you through line by
line against award labour costs.
Ask these three questions before handing over keys
- Send me your certificate of currency. Check the entity name and the expiry date yourself.
- Who exactly will access my site after hours, are they police-checked, and are they your employees?
- Walk me through how this price covers award wages for the hours quoted.
Cleanline staff are police-checked, insured employees, and every quote is built from a site visit so the hours and the wages behind the price are real. If you want the certificate of currency before the walkthrough, ask. It will be in your inbox the same day.
Common questions
What insurance should a commercial cleaner have?
Current public liability insurance, held in the name of the company you are contracting with. Ask for the certificate of currency. Check the entity name matches the quote and the expiry date has not passed. A real operator sends it the same day without fuss.
What is sham contracting?
It is dressing up an employee as an independent contractor to dodge award wages, superannuation and penalty rates. The cleaner does employee work but carries contractor costs. It is illegal, the Fair Work Ombudsman prosecutes it, and it is common in cleaning because it makes a quote look cheap.
Why does award compliance matter to me as the client?
Because the maths lands in your building. A quote too cheap to cover award wages has only two ways to work: cut the hours, or underpay the cleaner. One means a worse clean, the other means an exploited worker on your site and a supply chain question you may have to answer.
Do Cleanline cleaners have police checks?
Yes. Every Cleanline cleaner is police-checked and insured before they touch a key. That has been the standard since our founders started the company in 2018, because after-hours access to your building is a trust decision first and a cleaning decision second.