The 999 Cleaners company set up by former letting agent Peter Jones a year ago is looking to corner the market in cleaning "biohazards," which includes anything from the scenes of murders, suicides and serious car accidents to cleaning up homes where a dead body has lain undiscovered and clearing up premises used as cannabis factories.

He is sworn to secrecy on the details of what he does, but believes that it is an industry which is set to explode into a real money-spinner and it is that clinical focus which gets him through some of the traumatic scenes with which he comes into contact.

"We did a job a couple of months ago where a guy in Leyland had died but he had 15 years' worth of rubbish which had accumulated at his house," he explains.

"It took three people a fortnight to get through it all; we filled 14 builder's skips, and all the neighbours were helping out, making cups of tea and talking about this chap.

"You have to block it out, just focus on it black and white, and try not to get emotional.

Every scrap of material from cleaning clothes to sponges have to be disposed of with the utmost care and incinerated.

He learned the tricks of the trade with a US-based specialist cleaning company, Amedecon in Texas, and has since trained up a group of five people to work with him when the work comes his way. The boss says: "It is not really the kind of work where you can offer a two-for-one deal, so we take whatever comes along whether that is a deep clean of a commercial kitchen or cleaning a murder scene.

"The idea is to build up the business to the stage where I can maybe train people in this type of cleaning and then maybe look to franchise it out.

"With my logo and the name, 999 Cleaners, I think we have a good chance of going a long way."

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