It’s always good to see a school maintaining the highest standards over successive years. And that’s exactly what has been achieved by the diligent housekeepers at Harrogate Ladies’ College. As you’ll see in the press release below, we declared the school’s housekeeping to be ‘excellent’ in our report – despite the challenging weather adding to the team’s burden last November when we arrived for our unannounced inspection visit. Congratulations to the all behind the success at Harrogate.

PRESS RELEASE

What’s better than a hat-trick? How about four! That’s what the housekeeping department at Harrogate Ladies’ College has achieved by landing its fourth prestigious Gold Award from the nationally-recognised Continuous Advancement Programme (CAP). Back in 2010, the school joined the CAP programme and secured a Bronze award for housekeeping. Eight years down the road, the establishment can celebrate a Silver award and now four CAP Golds to reward that excellence.

A CAP Gold award can only be achieved when a school commits to an unannounced visit by the CAP assessors. That gives housekeeping teams no notice of the inspectors’ arrival, removing any opportunity to prepare in advance. Instead, the team must always perform to the highest level, ready for that visit. At Harrogate Ladies’ College, that unannounced visit took place in November 2018, with the CAP inspectors scrutinising every aspect of the school’s housekeeping provision.

At the independent school, located a few minutes from the centre of one of Yorkshire’s most famous spa towns, the housekeeping task was exacerbated by November’s challenging wet weather, fallen leaves and plenty of mud: elements that were noted in the CAP Chief Assessor’s report, where he declared the housekeeping team’s performance as ‘impressive’.

The CAP Chief Assessor, Ian Jackson, also acknowledged the challenge presented by the scope of the college and its extensive campus. “With excellent levels of cleanliness exhibited across all areas, including the pre-school, prep school, the college for girls, boarding houses and sports building, it’s clear that the housekeeping team is up to the challenge,” he says. “The lovely combination of new and old buildings and newly refurbished works would demand commitment from any team, while the excellent sixth-form facility with its Hub, Studio and Boardroom showed evidence of being very well cared for indeed,” Jackson adds.

The CAP report also praised the strong relationships between the housekeepers and the School estates team and Boarding House staff, citing this as a core contributor to teamwork and the resulting levels of cleanliness, particularly in the school’s heavily-used boarding houses.

Harrogate Ladies’ College Principal, Sylvia Brett, praised the housekeeping team for another outstanding award win. “I would like to pass on my congratulations and thanks to everyone in the housekeeping team – this Gold Award is well deserved,” she says. “The team works tirelessly to ensure we can enjoy our wonderful premises day in, day out – their efforts are vital to the success of our school.”

ENDS