Most facilities managers meet TUPE for the first time halfway through changing cleaning contractor, usually when someone asks a question nobody has an answer to. By then the start date is fixed, the notice has been served, and the timetable has already run out.
It does not need to be complicated. But it does need to start earlier than people expect, and the single most common mistake is treating it as paperwork for the contractors to sort out between themselves.
This guide covers when TUPE applies to a cleaning contract, what the outgoing and incoming contractors each have to do, the deadline that sets your whole timetable, and what a client should insist on.
What TUPE is, in one paragraph
TUPE is the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006. It protects employees when the business or service they work in changes hands, so that they are not simply dismissed because a contract moved.
For cleaning, the relevant mechanism is a service provision change — and cleaning is the textbook example. ACAS specifically identifies cleaning as a service where a change of provider falls under TUPE.
When does it apply to a cleaning contract?
A service provision change happens in three situations, and most buildings will meet at least one of them eventually:
- You outsource cleaning for the first time — the work moves from your own staff to a contractor
- You change contractor — the work moves from one provider to another
- You bring cleaning back in-house — the work moves from a contractor back to you
In all three, the test is whether the activities carried out after the change remain fundamentally or essentially the same as before. If you are replacing daily office cleaning with daily office cleaning, they are. Restructuring the service so substantially that it is a different job is where the question gets harder, and that is a point for your own advisers rather than for either contractor.
Where TUPE applies, the cleaners mainly assigned to your contract transfer automatically to the new contractor, on their existing pay, terms and length of service. Nobody has to agree to it; it happens by operation of law.
The incoming contractor cannot simply reduce their terms because it has taken over the contract. That matters commercially: it limits how much of a saving a new provider can realistically deliver on labour, which is the largest cost in any cleaning contract.
The 28-day rule that sets your timetable
This is the deadline everything else hangs off.
The outgoing contractor must give the incoming contractor employee liability information at least 28 days before the transfer date. The information has to be accurate as at a date no more than 14 days before it is sent, and any later changes must be notified in writing.
Employee liability information covers:
- The identity and age of each transferring employee
- Their written terms and conditions — pay, hours, location, notice, start date
- Disciplinary and grievance records from the last two years
- Any claims brought by the employee in the last two years
- Any collective agreements in place
Two practical consequences for a client.
Your start date cannot be sooner than 28 days after the information is provided, realistically later. If you award a contract on the 20th and want the new provider in on the 1st, the timetable has already failed. Build the 28 days in before you set the date, not after.
Twenty-eight days is a legal minimum, not good practice. It is often too late to price and plan a handover properly. If you are tendering, ask for anonymised staffing information early in the process — headcount, hours, broad pay bands — then full employee liability information once the appointment is settled. A contractor bidding blind is either guessing or pricing in risk, and both end up costing you.
Consultation, and what it costs to skip
Both the outgoing and incoming employers have a duty to inform, and where measures are proposed, consult the affected employees' representatives.
Failure to inform and consult can carry compensation of up to 13 weeks' gross pay per employee. On a contract with ten cleaners that is not a technicality.
As the client you are not the employer and the duty is not yours. But you are the one who loses if it goes wrong — through a disrupted handover, a tribunal claim between contractors that drags you in as a witness, or a cleaning team that arrives on day one having been told nothing.
What a client should actually do
Check your existing contract first. It should oblige the outgoing contractor to provide staffing information at the end of the term. If it does not, you are relying on their goodwill at exactly the moment they have least reason to be helpful. If you are signing a new contract, put that clause in.
Set the timetable backwards from the start date. Notice period, contract award, employee liability information, 28 days, mobilisation. Work out the real date before you commit to one.
Ask both contractors who is doing what. Outgoing: provide the information, inform their staff. Incoming: consult on any proposed measures, confirm terms on transfer. If either is vague about it, that tells you something.
Allocate the risk in the contract. Responsibility for employee liabilities, consultation failures and inaccurate information should be written down rather than argued about later.
Do not expect large savings on labour. If a bid comes in dramatically below the others on a TUPE contract, ask how. The transferring staff keep their terms, so the saving has to come from somewhere else — fewer hours, different scope, or an assumption that will not survive contact with the building.
Where TUPE comes up most
Schools and academy trusts, where cleaning teams are often long-serving and the handover has to fit the term calendar. We covered the wider picture in our guide to school cleaning services.
Managed buildings and estates, where a managing agent changes contractor across several sites at once and the transferring group spans all of them.
Offices retendering at lease events, where the cleaning contract is reviewed because something else triggered it.
What to ask a new contractor
Beyond the TUPE position itself, the handover is a good moment to check what you are actually getting:
- Insurance certificates up front, not on request
- Working-at-height competence and RAMS where any of the work is above ground level — covered in our guide to what to check before hiring a contractor for work at height
- Whether periodic work is included or quoted separately — windows, commercial gutter cleaning, façades
- What record you get after each visit
A change of contractor is the one moment when you can reset the specification. Most clients move the same contract to a different name and wonder why the service is the same.
Frequently asked questions
Does TUPE apply when changing cleaning contractor? Usually yes. Changing provider is normally a service provision change under TUPE 2006, provided the cleaning activities remain fundamentally the same. Cleaners mainly assigned to the contract transfer automatically to the new contractor on their existing pay, terms and length of service.
How long before the transfer must employee liability information be provided? At least 28 days before the transfer date. The information must be accurate as at a date no more than 14 days before it is sent, and later changes must be notified in writing. In practice, ask for anonymised staffing information earlier in the tender so bids can be priced properly.
Can a new cleaning contractor change the staff's pay or hours? Not simply because the contract has transferred. Transferring employees keep their existing terms and continuity of service. This is why large labour savings are rarely available on a TUPE contract, and why a very low bid is worth questioning.
What happens if the outgoing contractor does not provide the information? The incoming contractor can bring a claim against them for failing to supply accurate employee liability information in time. As the client you are not a party to that, but a dispute between your old and new contractors during mobilisation is not a good position to be in — which is why the obligation belongs in your contract.
Who has to consult the employees? Both employers — outgoing and incoming — have duties to inform and, where measures are proposed, consult representatives of the affected staff. Failure can carry compensation of up to 13 weeks' gross pay per employee.
Taking over a cleaning contract across London, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent
FG Cleaning has worked with facilities managers, managing agents and building owners since 2003, from a base in Enfield. We have taken over contracts where staff transferred and contracts where they did not, and the difference between a smooth mobilisation and a difficult one is almost always how early the conversation started.
If you are reviewing a cleaning contract, we are happy to talk through the practicalities before you commit to a timetable — including where the real dates fall and what information to ask your current provider for.
Our services include building and communal cleaning and window cleaning, across Hertfordshire, London, Essex and Kent.
Or call 0800 612 9349.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. TUPE outcomes depend on the facts of each contract — take your own advice where the position is unclear.