FRANCHISE owners are helping customers clean up after lockdown as their team returns to work.

Siblings Emma Lea and Dez Ward, who took over Molly Maid York and Harrogate from their parents in 2010, have seen a spike in online searches for cleaners in recent weeks.

They have been actively planning their return for some time after closing down their professional cleaning operation during the lockdown period.

The rise in online searches gave them the extra boost to get back to servicing the community.

“The response from our customers has been phenomenal and our employees are glad to be back working," said Emma, whose franchise employs 35 staff.

“It was a really tough decision to stop providing our home cleaning services, especially to our older and vulnerable customers.

“Most can’t properly clean their home themselves so it’s an issue of health and safety.

"But it is also about the health and safety of our employees too.”

While the business was never required to stop operating during the shutdown, Molly Maid decided it was the right thing to do to ensure employers and customers were safe.

Emma added: “If we couldn’t safely bring our employees back to work and safely our cleaning services to customers, then we would not be able to resume cleaning.”

The company has introduced several changes as part of its HomeSafe procedures to ensure that they can safely provide their services.

These include daily health checks of their fully-employed teams following NHS guidelines, implementing social distancing measures between teams, customers and within customers home along with the use of a sanitising cleaner that was proven to be effective against all enveloped viruses including all coronavirus.

“It has taken a bit of time to work through these new procedures,” said Dez.

“But we started thinking of these things from the first week in April.

"It’s important that local businesses like ours help our community get back on its feet.”

Emma added: “We’re happy to be back helping, servicing and doing our part to rebuild our community."

The duo attribute their success so far to their passion for customer service.

The national company has also been selected by the Ministry of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for taking the lead in developing safe back to work processes for their employee