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Empty school corridor at night lit by fluorescent strips, wet sheen on the linoleum, a silhouetted cleaner with a mop at the far end

Nightfall Contract Cleaning

Out-of-hours contract cleaning for schools and commercial sites across Derby. Forty-one cleaners nobody ever sees — and a log that proves they were there. Established 2008.

07:42 — building ready.

Book a night walkthrough

Shift log — one night, as recorded

  1. 21:45keys signed out
  2. 22:03alarm disarmed, Zone 1
  3. 22:17classrooms, Block A — desks, bins, floors
  4. 00:26washrooms restocked, both floors
  5. 01:58supervisor spot-check, logged
  6. 04:12alarm disarmed, Zone 2
  7. 04:31hall floor, rotary scrub
  8. 05:55keys returned, signed, alarm armed
  9. 07:42first member of staff arrives. Building ready.

22:17 — classrooms, Block A

Entries in the log — what we clean

Eight kinds of entry, every one scheduled around your building's day rather than through it. This is commercial cleaning in Derby written the way we log it — work, method, schedule — for anyone scanning against a specification.

  • 01

    Nightly office & workplace cleaning

    The crew arrives after your last person leaves and is gone before the first one returns — desks, floors, kitchens, touch-points, bins. Out of hours office cleaning in Derby that your staff never have to work around.

    22:00–06:00 · Mon–Fri

  • 02

    School & academy cleaning contracts

    Classrooms, halls, dining and washrooms brought back nightly through term, to a site-specific method statement — ready before the first teacher arrives.

    22:00–06:00 · term time

  • 03

    Industrial unit & warehouse cleaning

    Warehouse cleaning in Derby slotted into the gap between your last shift and your first delivery — offices, welfare areas, and the floors that take the forklifts.

    Scheduled between shifts

  • 04

    Washroom consumables & restocking

    Soap, paper and hygiene supplies counted and topped up on the same visit. Nobody in your building ever places that order or takes that call.

    Counted & restocked nightly

  • 05

    Periodic deep cleans & floor treatment

    Rotary scrubbing, strip-and-seal, carpet extraction, high-level dusting and sports hall floors — the heavy work, booked into the weeks the building stands empty.

    Holiday weeks · on the machines this August

  • 06

    Holiday & sickness cover crews

    A standing cover crew picks up any round the same evening a cleaner calls in sick. The building gets cleaned; you hear about it afterwards, if at all.

    Cover confirmed same evening

  • 07

    Staff transfer on contract change

    When a contract changes hands, the cleaners who know the building keep their jobs — a TUPE cleaning contract transfer handled in writing, with every retained cleaner re-inducted.

    TUPE · in writing

  • 08

    Keyholding & alarm response

    Keys held under a numbered log, alarm codes under written protocol, signed out and signed back every night. Keyholding is not a favour we do; it is the job.

    Signed out · signed back · nightly

A worker uses a rotary floor scrubber in a school hallway at night.
Hallway floor, rotary scrub — holiday-week floor works, Derby

04:12 — alarm disarmed, Zone 2

The school specialism, documented

Most school cleaning contractors in Derby can quote a rate per square metre. Fewer can tell you what happens on an INSET day, who re-inducts a cleaner after a TUPE transfer, or why the sports hall floor waits for the holidays. Here is that detail, in writing — the way it appears in our method statements for schools and multi academy trust cleaning across Derbyshire.

  • Enhanced DBS — every school cleaner
  • £10m public liability
  • £5m employer's liability
  • Est. 2008
An empty classroom with chairs stacked upside down on tables and a cleaning cart in the foreground under bright fluorescent lights.
05:30 — chairs up, cleaning cart ready, preparing for the morning

Every cleaner in a school building is enhanced-DBS checked — before their first shift, not after.

  • Enhanced DBS — every cleaner working in a school
  • Certificates held on file, available at audit
  • Safeguarding induction signed per site — DBS checked school cleaners, Derby-based

We work your term calendar, not a generic rota.

  • Term dates & INSET days built into the rota at mobilisation
  • Deep cleans & floor works scheduled into holiday weeks
  • Method statement written per building, not per contract

One contract can cover every site in the trust — with one person answerable for all of them.

  • Single-point contract across multi-academy trust sites
  • One escalation line, one monthly report, one invoice
  • Mobilisation plan issued before night one

Your existing cleaners keep their jobs when the contract moves to us.

  • TUPE transfer managed in writing
  • Retained staff re-inducted & re-uniformed
  • The people who know the building stay with it

The classroom is ready before the first teacher's car is in the car park.

  • Crew off site, alarm armed, keys countersigned
  • Ready before first staff arrival — logged nightly
  • No trolleys in corridors when children arrive

Protocol — nightly, every site

Keys, alarms, cover — how nothing goes wrong

You are trusting an outside company with alarm codes and an empty building. That trust is not handled with reassurance; it is handled with procedure. This is the procedure — the same laminated copy that hangs by the alarm panel on every site our commercial keyholding cleaners work across Derby.

Site protocol — laminated copy, by the alarm panel

  1. 01

    Keys signed out, by name

    Every set is numbered and logged out against a named cleaner at the start of the round. A key is either on a lanyard or on the board — there is no third place.

  2. 02

    Alarm codes held under written protocol

    Codes are issued per site, to named staff only, and changed whenever staffing changes. They are never written on anything that leaves the office.

  3. 03

    The building is worked to its method statement

    Every site has its own — rooms, order, standards, machines — so a cover cleaner works to the same specification as the regular crew.

  4. 04

    Supervisor spot-checks, logged

    Working supervisors check sites unannounced through the night and sign the same book the crew signs. A check only counts if it is written down.

  5. 05

    Sickness becomes cover, the same evening

    A standing cover crew is on call every night of the year. A sickness call at eight in the evening never becomes an uncleaned building at eight the next morning.

  6. 06

    05:55 — keys returned, signed, alarm armed

    The set goes back on the board and is countersigned in. The alarm is set, the door is checked, and the building is exactly as the day staff expect to find it.

  7. 07

    If anything goes wrong, we get the call. Not you.

    The escalation line rings the duty supervisor, then the owner. Your phone stays quiet; you read about it in the morning report instead.

Numbered keys on a lanyard resting on a hi-vis tabard beside an open signing-in book and a wall-mounted alarm panel
Numbered sets, the book, the panel — the whole system on one shelf

Staff register — the crew

The forty-one nobody sees

Nightfall is forty-one cleaners working while Derby sleeps — uniformed, checked, inducted on the buildings they clean. You will mostly never meet them. Their work is on your floors at eight o'clock every morning; that has to be introduction enough.

Three cleaners with trolleys and mops silhouetted at the far end of a long fluorescent-lit corridor, backs to camera
On the book
41 cleaners
Enhanced DBS
41 of 41
On the round since
2008
Cover crew
on call nightly

Many of the forty-one came to us through TUPE when contracts changed hands. They kept their jobs, their hours and their buildings — which means the person on your hall floor has usually cleaned it for years and does not need a map to find the store cupboard.

Every cleaner is inducted per site, uniformed, and trained on the machines they run. The rounds are led by working supervisors who clean alongside their crews and sign the same book — nobody supervises Nightfall from behind a desk.

Same people, same corridors, month after month. In this trade, that sentence is the whole argument.

Countersignatures

Signed off — what clients put in writing

Not floating praise — countersignatures. Each entry below is anchored to a role, a site type and a contract year, because that is how the people who buy contract cleaning actually vouch for it.

Empty school reception at first light with the visitor signing-in book open on the counter and grey-blue dawn sky through the doors
The book in reception — who was in, when, and what was done

Countersignature 01

"Six sites moved over one half-term. Not one opened late."

"We moved a trust contract away from a national contractor mid-year, which everyone advises against. Nightfall issued a mobilisation plan before night one, took the existing cleaners on under TUPE, and the first we heard of any problem was the report explaining how it had already been dealt with."

Signed — Estates lead, multi-academy trust, Derbyshire · six sites · year 2 of contract

Countersignature 02

"I have never once been rung at night. That is the whole job."

"The book in reception tells me who was in, when, and what was done. Keys are signed both ways, the alarm is set, and classrooms are ready before staff arrive. When one of the crew went off sick at short notice, the cover crew were in the same night — I found out afterwards, from the log."

Signed — Business manager, two-form-entry primary, Derby · year 3 of contract

Countersignature 03

"Snow across half of Derby by dawn — the building still opened clean."

"Our previous contractor was removed mid-contract after months of missed nights. Nightfall took the keys on a Thursday and worked that same night. Two winters on, including a snow morning when half the city didn't make it in, these offices have opened clean every working day."

Signed — Facilities manager, city-centre offices, Derby · year 2 of contract

Google — 4.3 / 5 across 47 reviews · recorded here once; the entries above are the argument

Coverage — the night-shift radius

Derby, between 22:00 and 07:00

Night-shift coverage of Derby and the surrounding area — schematic ≈ 25 MIN AT NIGHT DERBY ALLESTREE DUFFIELD BELPER OAKWOOD CHADDESDEN SPONDON BORROWASH ALVASTON CHELLASTON SINFIN LITTLEOVER MICKLEOVER MACKWORTH
The night-shift radius — schematic, not to scale

We are a Derby contractor, not a national brand with a Derby phone number. The crews work out of the city, and the radius is set by one honest question: can a crew reach you, do the job properly, and be off site before the building opens?

In practice that means Derby itself — Mickleover to Spondon, Allestree to Sinfin — and the places within about twenty-five minutes of the city at night: Duffield, Borrowash, out towards Belper. Schools, trust sites, offices, industrial units.

If your site sits outside that ring, we would rather say so than serve you badly. Night work punishes over-stretched travel, and a crew that cannot get back before opening is not a crew you can rely on.

Walkthroughs happen at your convenience, including out of hours — in the building as the crew would find it: alarms set, corridors dark. That visit usually decides it.

Book the night walkthrough
A works van parked alone in a dark school car park under an amber sodium streetlamp, Derby rooftops grey-blue at first light behind
06:04 — van away, last site armed and locked
A school entrance at first light, doors still locked, clean floors gleaming inside under one warm interior light against a cold blue dawn sky

07:42 — first member of staff arrives.

Building ready.

New contract enquiry — signing-in sheet

Book the walkthrough

Tell us about the building and what the current arrangement is getting wrong. We will walk the site with you — daytime, or on shift with the alarms set and the corridors dark — and put a specification and a written quotation in your hands within five working days of the walkthrough.

Walkthroughs available out of hours — see the building as the crew finds it

How we handle what you send us