At the request of the Ministry of Health, the King's Fund set up a working party in 1964 to enquire into the advantages and disadvantages of using a central vacuum cleaning system in hospitals as opposed to individual cleaners. Hospitals which already had a central vacuumation system in operation were visited and relevant literature was studied. The report concludes that it is expensive to install central vacuumation systems, and these systems have only one major advantage : the dust is removed to a central point and only one or two bins require emptying.