What tasks are typically included in a periodic cleaning plan?

Common tasks include toilet and washroom deep cleans, carpet extraction, hard floor scrubbing and sealing, high-level dusting of vents, lights and ledges, internal glass cleaning, hall and sports hall floor machine scrubs, and site-specific specialist work such as science labs, kitchens or soft-play sanitisation.

How are periodic cleaning tasks prioritised across a holiday?

Tasks are flagged as essential, recommended or optional based on typical priority for the school type. Essential tasks (like washroom deep cleans and classroom carpet extraction) should be prioritised first if the holiday window is tight, with recommended and optional tasks fitted in as time allows.

Does periodic cleaning differ between nursery/primary and secondary/college sites?

Yes. Secondary and college sites typically need specialist tasks like science lab deep cleans, food tech kitchen equipment cleaning and workshop cleans, while nursery and primary sites need tasks like soft-play sanitisation, toy cleaning and sleep-room deep cleans. The planner filters its task library by school type.

Can a periodic cleaning plan be adjusted after it's generated?

Yes. Once the plan is generated you can adjust or lock individual task hours before viewing your final report, so the plan can be tailored to reflect your actual site conditions and holiday constraints.

Free School Cleaning Planning Tool

Periodic Cleaning Planner

Plan your school’s periodic cleaning for the whole year: hours for each holiday, a proper floor-care plan, whether your team can fit it in, and job cards for every clean.

Free to use•Takes around 5 minutes•No sign-up required

What you'll get

An annual programme across your school holidays
Hours from your actual floor areas
Strip and seal, scrub and recoat, and carpet plan
Job cards with checklists and sign-off

Developed by ICS Cleaning from over 30 years of running cleaning contracts. Free guidance to support your decisions; it does not replace a site survey.

What is periodic cleaning?

Periodic cleaning is deeper, less frequent work that sits outside routine daily and weekly cleaning, such as carpet extraction, hard floor scrubbing and sealing, high-level dusting, glass cleaning and specialist tasks. It's typically delivered during school holidays, when access isn't limited to before or after the school day.

This planner helps site managers and estates teams turn a holiday window into a realistic, prioritised task list with indicative hours: a structured starting point to confirm on site, not a guaranteed programme of work.

Your school

Start from your cleaning specification, your estimate, or just your school type and floor area.

Find your school

Enter your school's postcode to find its type, pupil numbers and floor area from official records. We'll ask before filling anything in, and you can still change it afterwards.

School details from the Department for Education's Get Information About Schools register. Floor areas are gross figures from Display Energy Certificates and exclude buildings under 250 m². Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

School type

Gross internal floor area (m²)

Term-time cleaning hours a week (optional)Don't know? Use the Cleaning Hours Estimator

When you clean

Tick the holidays you use for periodic cleaning. Summer, Easter and the February and October half terms are the usual pattern.

working days

Strip and reseal hard floorsDone in the summer. Floors not stripped get a scrub and recoat instead, and every sealed floor is scrubbed and recoated at Easter.

Also extract carpets at Easter

Your holiday teamUsed to check whether each holiday's work fits the days available.

operatives× hours a day= 28 hours a day

Choose your school type and floor area to see your periodic programme here.

What should a school periodic cleaning plan include?

A periodic plan draws from the categories this tool already supports. Not every school needs every task, and the planner filters its task library by your school type:

Washroom deep cleaning

Floor care (carpets, hard floors)

Internal glass and windows

High-level cleaning

Halls and sports halls

Specialist areas (labs, workshops, kitchens)

Nursery/primary-specific tasks

Secondary/college specialist rooms

How do you plan cleaning across school holidays?

Holiday planning works best as a simple sequence: start from your available time, identify the priority tasks for your site type, factor in realistic task durations, and only then allocate the available hours across the task list.

Available timePriority tasksSite typeTask durationAvailable hoursPractical allocation

How much time should be allowed for a school deep clean?

It depends on the number and type of areas involved. For example a toilet deep clean typically allows around 1.25 hours per toilet, while a hall floor machine scrub can take around 3 hours per hall. These are ICS planning assumptions embedded in this planner's task library, not universal industry standards, and the planner allocates indicative hours per task based on your site profile and available holiday window.

Limitations: The indicative hours are a planning guide, not a guaranteed programme. Real hours depend on floor types, building access, condition and equipment. Task prioritisation should be confirmed on site, especially where holiday windows are tight.

How a plan is calculated once generated

This plan is calculated deterministically from your selected tasks, your site's area counts and your total available hours.

Each task in the planning library has an ICS time allowance for its unit, for example per toilet, per classroom or per m², scaled by the counts you provide.
Where a count isn't supplied, the planner falls back to a documented default rather than leaving the task uncosted, and discloses when a fallback was used.
If your available hours are lower than the calculated requirement, non-essential tasks are reduced first and flagged, while essential tasks are protected. The resulting confidence score and risk flag reflect how much rebalancing was needed.
These are ICS planning assumptions built from operational cleaning experience, not universal industry standards.

About ICS Cleaning

ICS Cleaning has delivered contract cleaning across Yorkshire & Lincolnshire for over 30 years, with education cleaning as a core specialism. Our operational experience planning and delivering school holiday and periodic cleaning programmes informs the task library and time allowances this planner is built around.

School Cleaning Services How We Operate Accreditations

Related guidance

Free School Cleaning Tender Assistant

How to Write a School Cleaning Tender in 2026

School Deep Cleaning: The Summer Holiday Guide

Periodic Deep Cleaning in Schools

How School Cleaning Schedules Are Built

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Frequently asked questions

Periodic cleaning is the deeper, less frequent work that routine daily and weekly cleaning doesn't cover, such as carpet extraction, hard floor scrubbing and sealing, high-level dusting, glass and window cleaning, and specialist tasks like science lab or kitchen extraction cleaning. It's typically delivered during school holidays when access isn't limited to before/after the school day.

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