Inside Britain’s worst blood baths with company whose job it is to clean them

A crime-scene cleaning company has revealed what it’s like to tackle some of the UK’s worst blood baths – and make £1.4m in the process.

Ben Giles, 43, based in Cardigan, Wales, set up his company, Ultima Cleaning, almost 20 years ago.

The company – started as a domestic cleaners – now works in the niche market of cleaning up crime scenes after police are done with their investigations.

Managing director Ben said: "I started the business as being a domestic cleaning service but nearly two decades ago I was asked by a friend to help clean up her house after her ex-husband had committed suicide in the loft.

"It was a difficult task to clean up but from there we realised there was a gap in the market for this type of cleaning service.

"We now have a huge clientele who need our services on a daily basis.

"It’s often just left to the family to clean up the house once those who have died or injured have been removed, which given the sensitive circumstances, could be an impossible task."

After switching his business focus to crime scene clean outs, Ben contacted local police forces, funeral homes, morgues, solicitors and undertakers to offer their services.

The cleaners call outs range each day, from homes where bodies have decomposed, scenes involving fatal accidents, aeroplanes, police vans and jail cells.

He says business has never been busier for him and his 70 employees, with a network of over 900.

Ben said: "We always make sure we leave the crime scene sparkling clean before leaving.

"We have seen some awful sites but we are always professional and no task is too great.

"We’ve cleaned home full of faeces and bloodied showers, baths and beds, nothing shocks us anymore."

Ben recalls one of his first jobs when a local solicitor asked him to clean up a house in which a man had died in London.

He said: "The deceased man’s dog had eaten part of his face and leg, he was found already decomposing.

"He was a big guy, so his body fat had seeped through his floor boards before the body had moved."

The company rapidly grew with increasing jobs coming their way but they were sporadic and all over the country.

Ben decided that he didn’t want to spend all of his time in hotels and designed his own accredited training program to teach other cleaners how to clean crime scenes.

The programme is called the National Academy of Crime Scene Cleaners which Ben has developed into Ultima Environmental.

With a network of 900 sub-contractors, they are now nationally recognised and recommended by leading government agencies.

Ben said: "We just train them to do the job themselves, helping them learn the trade.

"As a result of this we have a great network of cleaning companies like ours that can take up the work.

"We now have a two hour call out time for any job, anywhere in the UK and have trained roughly 900 people trained."

Ben says that after nearly two decades of cleaning properties that he is still intrigued by what’s happened to the individuals involved.

Ben said: "Part of you wants to find out what happened, but the other part doesn’t want to either.

"The scenes are always different and it’s best not becoming attached by knowing the details.

"We’re turning over roughly £1.4million, and still growing."

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