Are these changes at work legal?

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I work at a university with all the crap finances that entails. As part of their current cost cutting they’ve made this announcement. Are these changes legal? The bit about sanitary bins in particular gave me pause but cleaning an office once per month doesn’t sound great either. Where it mentioned students using cleaning stations, they must mean the PhD students who have their own allocated desk or office. I’ve removed a bit of the preamble where they mention it’s further to the VC’s announcement:

In developing the changes to cleaning outlined below, we have considered the financial savings that can be made, the positive environmental impact of reducing our chemical and plastic usage, and the fact that we no longer need to provide the same level of cleaning provision as we did during Covid.

The changes will not impact student and customer-facing areas – these areas will continue with current cleaning arrangements.

Cleaning provision from 1 September
• Office cleaning – this is going from a weekly clean to a monthly clean and will not necessarily happen on a fixed day each month for every office.
• Cleaning stations – a cleaning station will be installed in each building so that staff and students can clean their own workstations in between the monthly cleaning visits, if they wish. In some buildings, this might be a bottle of non-hazardous multi-purpose cleaning product and a suitable cleaning cloth, in others it will be a cleaning station stand. We will be repurposing the existing Ecolab hand sanitiser stands for this, where appropriate.
• Under-desk bins – we would prefer everyone to remove their under-desk bin and use the local recycling and waste points in their buildings instead. Colleagues wishing to keep a small under-desk bin will need to empty it themselves as necessary. If you have a bin but no longer require it, please leave it outside your office door from 1 September and we’ll take it away for you. If you need a bin under your desk, for example if you have limited mobility and would struggle to reach a recycling point, please let our on-site cleaning team know so we can arrange a suitable solution.
• Designated eating areas – to ensure good maintenance and housekeeping of our buildings, we encourage everyone to eat away from their desks or at designated eating areas, where available. Please also be mindful of ways you can avoid unnecessary spills and avoid possible slip hazards such as using drinks containers with lids if walking through buildings.
• Sanitary bins – the number of sanitary bins in our toilet facilities will be reduced, with one in every other cubicle. We’ll use signage to highlight the cubicles in which bins are present. Some high footfall areas, such as those near lecture rooms for instance, may be an exception to this.

Thank you for helping us implement the above changes.

Legal yes, although doesn’t sound great!

Apart from the sanitary bins, the company I worked for before I retired made the same changes. We all moaned, especially about losing our individual bins, but within a few weeks we adapted and got on with it.

As for whether it is legal or not, I boubt whether the cleaning regime was part ofvthe contract you signed.

Oh, the mice or rats will have a field day! Monthly cleaning and relying on people eating in designated areas sounds rank.

My private sector employer did much the same ten years ago so honestly I think it's quite normal. You'll adapt.

I can’t remember the last time I had a bin under my desk - was probably a decade ago, if not longer. We had a similar note at the time. There’s no legality one way or another, it’s about changing processes to cut costs and presumably make people a bit more responsible in terms of keeping their work space clean?

I have only ever worked in once office where the office was cleaned in anyway. Bins wre banned in many as paper should be shredded and waste was only allowed in proper waste bins. Yes its legal.

I don’t have an individual bin anyway so that part doesn’t bother me. Having to stand in a busy bathroom and make it clear to students, colleagues or managers that I need to use the cubicle with a sanitary bin does. I also couldn’t imagine not cleaning a room in my house for a month and I’m not a germaphobe by any stretch of the imagination.

I should have mentioned, I work in an open plan office, I don’t have my own individual one.

Apart from sanitary bins all implemented many years ago. Also in HE.

I work at a university as well but not in UK. We have always had our offices cleaned every two weeks and that is basically just vacuuming. They are not allowed to move anything on the desks so they do not dust at all, I do it myself. We have bins under our desks, proper size for paper and a tiny one for garbage, we are required to empty both on our own. The bit about sanitary bins is weird, I agree.

I don't think it sounds that unusual for offices I've worked in. In my last one we didn't have cleaners at all. We had a robovac who went round every evening, spray and paper towels so people could clean their own desks as they chose. No bins, except in the kitchen, and one recycling station in each office.

I meant legal from a HSE perspective, not contractual.

Quite a few universities are in severe financial difficulties and have had to take far more drastic cost-cutting measures than this and many university staff have been made redundant.

I'd suck it up OP.

I think being asked to wipe your own desk and take waste paper to a designated bin probably comes under "other tasks reasonably requested by your line manager"

Currently there and doing that https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39drvxnpe1o

They don’t mention the 100 mutually agreed resignations or the 137 jobs that haven’t been filled since the recruitment freeze

As well as being super inconvenient, I'm struggling to see how alternate sanitary bins reduces costs anyway. Surely it's still one visit by cleaner/sanitary company employee and the same amount of waste removed regardless? I'd definitely challenge that one from the outset, but see how the others go before forming an opinion.

We’ve been doing this in my office since Covid. We hot desk and when someone uses my usual desk I have to clean it when I come in because people are gross! 🤢 sanitary bin reduction wouldn’t fly in my place with 80% women.

These sort of contracts are usually based on unit number, so reduce the units collected and reduce the overall cost.

My university also had cut on cleaners a while ago. It's been proven a false economy, as now you have academics (and generally people who are paid at a higher rate than a cleaner) , spending time on cleaning after themselves, time which is not being spent on research or admin. Plus, these people (and I include PhD students in this) are not particularly adept to cleaning, so invariably even more time is further wasted by all with emails and passive aggressive notes in the communal areas and kitchenettes. Next they'll have us unblocking toilets!! Grr!!

We had this issue in an office I worked in. Four cubicles in the women's toilets but only one of them had a bin and no indication on the doors which cubicle had it.

I phoned our facilities manager to raise this and was told it was because the sanitary bin company charged X amount for every bin emptied so they were trying to keep costs down. I complained, especially as some rooms in the building were used for training so lots of people visited who didn't know the bin arrangements. I then escalated to the CEO and within 5 days we had bins in all the cubicles.

Waste is charged per bin - 30 bins and only two towels?

This sounds like what we have at my (private sector) office. It works really well and people take responsibility really effectively. It's basically asking you to keep your own space(s) the way you'd want them kept. And it's a small price to pay to not be put on the potential redundancy list, if that's the other option.

Then the visits can be made less frequently? I think in the UK all women's cubicles have to have a bin anyway, so it's really not an area where companies should be pennypinching anyway

Most companies wouldn’t allow that, you can generally increase collections (at a cost), but you can’t decrease unless you’re willing to pay for the minimum amount of allowable collections.

It’s not that every cubicle has to have one, just every bathroom, so as long as there is one in a cubicle technically that is okay

Most of that has been the norm in the several public sector offices I've worked in over the last decade and a half.

The sanitary bins is the main issue - although it wouldn't occur to me as I've not needed one for around 10 years.