Why We Don’t Use Subcontractors (And What That Means for Your Business)

If you manage a restaurant, gym or multi-site retail operation in London, you’ve probably signed off on a cleaning contract without ever meeting the person who actually does the work. That’s standard in this industry. Cleaning is one of the most commonly subcontracted services in the UK, and one of the industries most frequently flagged for labour exploitation.

We built 3Cycle to be the opposite of that model. Here’s why, and what it changes for the businesses we work with.

The risk hiding inside “subcontracted”

When a cleaning company subcontracts the actual work, your business inherits risk you can’t see:

• No visibility into who’s on your premises. Subcontractors can rotate staff without your knowledge, which means different people, different vetting standards and different reliability from visit to visit.
• Compliance becomes someone else’s problem, until it’s yours. If a subcontractor’s labour practices don’t hold up, that exposure can reach the business that hired the original contractor, both reputationally and, in some cases, legally.
• No single point of accountability. When something goes wrong, whether it’s a missed visit, damage or a complaint, a subcontracted chain makes it harder to get a straight answer fast.

The cleaning industry has a well-documented problem with unregulated agency labour and, in the worst cases, modern slavery. It’s not a fringe concern. It’s common enough that “no subcontractors” is a meaningful claim, not a marketing line.

How 3Cycle is structured differently

• Every operative is directly employed by 3Cycle. Not agency staff, not a subcontracted crew, not a rotating pool. The person on your site today is on our payroll, not someone else’s.
• Every operative is DBS-checked and uniformed. You know who’s attending before they arrive, and you can verify it.
• Every operative is paid the London Living Wage. This isn’t a discretionary bonus tier. It’s the baseline. Fair pay and staff retention are directly linked: businesses that rely on high-turnover subcontracted labour tend to see inconsistent quality, because the person cleaning your windows keeps changing.
• £10m public liability insurance and full RAMS/COSHH compliance are held directly by 3Cycle, not passed down through a chain of subcontracted responsibility.

What this looks like operationally

For multi-site operators, this structure translates into a few concrete things:

• One team covers all of London inside the M25, not a patchwork of local subcontractors with inconsistent standards from site to site.
• GPS-logged attendance and photo evidence on every visit, reported directly to head office or individual site teams.
• Zero missed visits, with full accountability because there’s no subcontracted layer to lose track of scheduling.
• Flexible invoicing, site by site or consolidated, because you’re contracting with the company actually doing the work, not a broker.

Why this matters for ESG reporting too

If your business is tracking Scope 3 emissions or supplier ethics as part of its ESG commitments, a directly employed, zero-emission contractor is easier to report on with confidence than a subcontracted chain where labour practices and vehicle emissions aren’t fully visible. Zero-emission cargo bikes and EVs across the fleet remove diesel contractor vans from your supply chain entirely. That’s a straightforward, verifiable line in your reporting rather than an assumption.

The question worth asking any cleaning contractor

Whoever you use for window cleaning, jet washing or front-of-house maintenance, it’s worth asking directly: is the person on our site today employed by you, or subcontracted? If the honest answer is “we’re not entirely sure”, that’s the exposure sitting inside your supply chain right now.

See how 3Cycle works with multi-site operators →

3Cycle provides zero-emission commercial cleaning and maintenance across the M25, with directly employed, DBS-checked, uniformed staff and £10m public liability insurance.