Safety procedure - cleaning external windows

To ensure that your staff follow prescribed safe systems of work, you should use a formal safety procedure. This document sets out how cleaning windows should be completed safely; for example, how the risks associated with working at height should be managed.

What to do?

If you’re having windows cleaned, you need to make sure that those involved are safe. However, you don’t need overly long or complex paperwork to achieve this. To ensure that you give your staff sufficient practical guidance on how you wish the work to be undertaken without going overboard, use our sample Safety Procedure - Cleaning External Windows.

Clear guidance

This procedure details a series of safe systems of work. It specifies the activities to be undertaken on a stage-by-stage basis. It also covers the precautions necessary to protect those involved in the work, including other contractors, members of the public and anyone else who may be affected.

Note. You may wish to add additional information/boxes to your form. However, we suggest that you don’t remove any of those that we’ve included. This is because our document follows industry standards and covers all the information that should be included in such a document.

Make it specific

To make it clear who should be supervising the work and who should be completing it, you should add the names in the appropriate boxes. You should make it clear to staff that if their names aren’t on the document, they shouldn’t complete the task. This should stop untrained and unauthorised staff from carrying out the work.