The TSA has been working extremely hard to represent the industry and keep members updated throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Here is just some of the useful information from David Stevens CEO, TSA about the work they have been doing. Keep an eye on Laundry & Cleaning Today’s website and the TSA’s website for the latest information.

LOBBYING & PUBLIC RELATIONS

Hospitality Grant

The TSA has had further great news this week that a total of six English laundries and one in Wales have now received hospitality status and in turn received the hospitality grant and/or the business rate relief. All Scottish laundries already have the status. We shall keep a register of all successful laundries including their councils to help us all appeal and lobby further. Additionally, on Monday a TSA Template Hospitality Grant Letter was sent which can be used to assist when you request Hospitality Status or as part of your appeal to your local authority if you get turned down. We are also in the process of writing another open letter which will be published later this week with an aim to highlight the specifics of your laundry businesses. UK Hospitality have also agreed to include us in their lobbying efforts.

Keep an eye out for the next open letter and keep lobbying for Hospitality Status as more and more laundries are being approved, I believe we are not far away from our message being heard across all councils.

Risks of home washing nurses and other uniforms

We continue to work with DMU, and we are definitely seeing some traction here. Katie Laird has continued to do various interviews and was asked to do a webinar with some concerned nurses on Monday.

Also, as some takeaway food chains start to plan their re-opening schedule there are definite opportunities to talk to them about staff uniforms and processing them.  This was published by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health in their reopening guidelines last week for all food takeaways. This is a good example of how the focus is changing to managed outsourced laundry services.

 “It is recommended as standard practice in food businesses that uniforms are laundered commercially.” This is a new COVID-19 guidance on reopening.”

Reusable gowns

This has been an extremely frustrating project to date. We first lobbied for this over four weeks ago and have spent hours on webinars with now over 15 different officials from 6 different government departments.  There seems to be a genuine desire to move away from the 460,000 single use gowns a day to reusable, but getting any consensus on how to do it seems challenging.  I have recalculated the figures on the numbers they have given us and they would save over £500 million a year, 70 million tonnes of clinical waste, help support the UK laundry industry and deliver a fantastic service to the care homes, nursing homes and primary care facilities who are currently experiencing daily shortages.

So far we have produced a detailed make up spec for the new washable gown (with support from the key healthcare providers) and a detailed project plan but have now been asked to produce a positioning paper to BEIS so they can present to senior government!

We are also informed that they now have plenty of scrubs as everyone has been making them and they now have an oversupply! We are getting information that quite a few laundries are now processing additional work for the healthcare sector and please keep us informed of this as it does support our lobbying efforts.

RE-PURPOSING A HOSPITALITY LAUNDRY TO PROCESS HEALTHCARE

Part of the project plan for processing the gowns is that we introduce a quality reference in relation to EN 14065/HTM 01-04 to enable a short-term solution which will enable hospitality laundries to support the demand to service reusable gowns. This has been scoped but until we get the green light on the project it is on hold.  However, we are still going to produce some guidance on processing healthcare products in a hospitality laundry.

OPERATING GUIDELINES BOOKLET/RAMP UP DOCUMENT

We are in the process of putting together a guidance document to assist you in the re-opening/or existing operation of your laundries.

FACE MASKS – SUPPLY ROUTE SUPPORT

Face masks have become a hot topic during the latest COVID-19 discussions, not only in the UK but globally. It is not a requirement but as it is becoming compulsory in other countries, we believe the UK may follow suit. It may prove to be a vital product for your laundry staff to help keep themselves and others safe, and the clean garments safe. We recommend that you carry out your own internal risk assessment to decide if masks are required and if so, which type would be most suitable.

WORKING PARTNERSHIPS

• We are working with UK Hospitality to produce a guidance document for hotels for best practice. It is vital hotels work together with their laundries during the re-opening phase.  UK Hospitality are keen to work closely with the TSA and we have now scheduled weekly calls to inform both parties.

BUSINESS PULSE SURVEY

We carried out a Pulse Survey a couple of weeks ago and we sent our second survey out on Monday. We have had a fantastic response so far covering 162 sites.

The results will guide our lobbying efforts further and give us something to build our PR on and therefore we intend to run it every two few weeks so we can get a trend.

WEBINAR FOR SMALL INDEPENDENT LAUNDRIES

Our South, Midland and North web conference calls last week were a great success with more than 65 attendees in total. Thank you for all of those who attended and for sharing your concerns and experiences with us all. The next forum is planned to be held in two weeks’ time. Contact the TSA if you would like to be involved.

CMA / SMALL LAUNDRY NETWORKING

During the ramp-up laundries may find it difficult to re-open to service small volumes and a small number of customers. During this time, you may seek to network and work together with other laundries to overcome this issue. However, there is an important legal aspect that you need to consider from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to ensure you stay compliant. Therefore, we have taken legal advice and are awaiting a guidance document from a lawyer which will provide clear high-level guidance of what is allowed and what is not from a legal viewpoint.