AN “UNSCRUPULOUS” company has pocketed £10,000 from hard-up school cleaners’ pensions, the GMB union said today.

Kingdom Services Group, a cleaning contractor for Lyndon School in Solihull, has failed to deposit the money into workers’ pension funds despite deducting money from their pay cheques since 2018, the union said.

Staff made the discovery last week as part of routine checks while Kingdom Cleaning attempts to sell its contract on to a new firm, which it failed to inform about the missing funds.

GMB regional organiser David Warwick said: “Kingdom Services Group is utterly unscrupulous — they've been pilfering the futures of hard-working staff.

“They’re attempting to pass the contract to a new company and run off with the money.  

“Outsourcing opens up workers to ever-increasing exploitation, and it must be stopped.”

The Kingdom group did not reply for requests for comment but GMB confirmed it was in talks with the company to resolve the issue. 

Campaigners and MPs have long called for an end to outsourcing, with Labour’s Paula Barker telling the Star last month that keeping services in house “brings up living standards and fair pay.”

MPs tabled a parliamentary motion calling for cleaning on the London Underground to be brought back in house in January after an RMT study found nearly seven out of 10 of workers there admitted to struggling financially on their wages.

The ABM agency, which employs the cleaners on the London Underground, said its pay and benefits package “compares favourably to the average for the cleaning profession” in this country.