ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

From France Christian Bouzols reports on the recently-introduced cleaning services price index.

An ‘Index Propreté’ (cleaning services price index) has been officially instituted in France in October 2023. It is now published every quarter. According to the feedback received so far, it has been well received not only by cleaning companies, but also by their clients.

This index purports to track the evolution of cleaning company costs. It allows both suppliers and purchasers of cleaning services to revise or update cleaning contracts, with these changes being initiated by one or the other of the two parties.

Methodical

The index was developed methodically on the basis of a 1500-company sample and verified by the directorate for competition and fraud control and the national statistical institute (INSEE). It is now published on the index-propreté.fr site. Both cleaning companies and their clients can also register to automatically receive the latest value of the index.

At this time, the latest known value is the one published at the end of the third quarter of 2023 and was 108.6. This means that cleaning company costs have increased 8.6 per cent between the first quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023. The value of the index for the fourth quarter of 2023 was to be known, at the very earliest, at the end of the first quarter of 2024.

Good initial feedback

Following its first official publication in October 2023, the Index Propreté has been very well received by the sector and its clients. Having been hurt by a recent inflationary period which highlighted even more the need for such an index, many companies have integrated it in their new contracts or in their contract revision procedures.

They also appreciate the fact that this index has been created with a view to balance the market. Buyers have started to make use of it, as shown by the fact that several public procurement bodies have integrated it in their price revision clauses.

Practical tools

To help suppliers and purchasers in the use of this new index, the federation of cleaning companies (FEP) and other sector stakeholders have created several ancillary tools. It is thus possible for them to download complete price revision clauses from the Achat Propreté site (achat-proprete.com). In addition, FEP members can download several tools to help them establish the implications of price revisions, obtaining, for example, completed clauses, client information notes and other inputs. A legal representative, specialised in cleaning sector transactions, is also on hand to answer questions.