Phoenix Journal · Ductwork
Your kitchen extraction system answers to several different rules at once, each with its own paperwork, deadline and named body. A single compliance dashboard pulls those strands into one view so nothing quietly lapses.
Duct & extraction compliance
A commercial kitchen carries several overlapping legal duties at once, and each one lives in a different folder, inbox or filing cabinet until the day an inspector, insurer or auditor asks to see it.
Grease cleaning, ventilation testing and fire safety are not one obligation but three, governed by separate standards and separate deadlines. When those records sit apart, the gaps between them are where compliance slips. A single compliance dashboard - one place that holds every certificate, date and threshold for your extraction system - turns a scramble into a glance. This piece makes the case for pulling it all together, and sets out what belongs on it.
Before you can consolidate anything, you need to know the full spread of duties attached to a kitchen extract system. They fall into three broad groups, and a good dashboard gives each its own line with a live status and a next-due date.
Each of these duties is reasonable on its own. The difficulty is that they run on different calendars, answer to different bodies and produce different paperwork. TR19® Grease is a BESA specification aimed at fire risk, updated in October 2023 when BESA split the old TR19 into TR19® Air, released in April 2024, and TR19® Grease for kitchen extraction. LEV testing answers to the Health and Safety Executive through COSHH and the HSG258 methodology. The fire risk assessment sits under fire safety legislation and your insurer’s policy conditions. Three worlds, three vocabularies, three sets of dates.
When those records live apart, the failure mode is predictable. The grease clean is booked and certified, everyone relaxes, and the LEV test quietly slides past its fourteen-month limit because nobody owned that particular clock. Or the extract is cleaned on time but a section behind a fixed ceiling was never accessed, so the PCVR covers eighty per cent of the run and the certificate reads as if it covers all of it. Come a fire, an audit or a change of insurer, the gap that was invisible on the day becomes the first thing anyone notices.
A single dashboard removes the seams. Instead of asking “where is the extract certificate?” you ask one question - “is anything overdue or approaching due?” - and the answer is on one screen. The value is not the technology; a well-kept spreadsheet does the job. The value is that one person, or one view, now owns every date at once, so no obligation depends on someone remembering it in isolation.
For an operator running several kitchens, the case gets stronger with each site. Different kitchens cook differently, and cooking style drives grease load, which drives cleaning frequency. A high-volume charcoal or wok line fouls its ductwork far faster than a site doing mostly cold preparation, so a sensible programme sets frequencies per zone rather than applying one interval everywhere. That thinking is set out in our note on zoning a kitchen by cooking type, and it is exactly the kind of nuance a shared dashboard is built to carry - each zone with its own interval, its own last-clean date and its own next-due flag.
The same consolidated view pays back beyond compliance. Once every clean, test and inspection is logged in one place with dates and readings, you are holding a genuine operational record - how often each system really fouls, where access is a recurring problem, which sites run hot. That record is the raw material for smarter decisions about airflow, energy and plant, which is why an extraction dashboard sits naturally alongside a wider energy audit for hospitality. Compliance data collected once can serve twice.
You do not need a bespoke platform to start. Begin with the three groups above, list every extract system and zone by name, and give each a row with its standard, its responsible owner, its last completed date and its next-due date. Attach the actual certificate - the PCVR, the LEV report, the fire risk assessment - so the evidence lives with the deadline rather than in a separate archive. Set a reminder that fires well before each due date, not on it, so a booking can be made in good time rather than in a rush.
The test of a good dashboard is simple. If your insurer, a fire officer or an incoming facilities manager asked you today to prove your extraction system is compliant, could you answer in minutes, with dated evidence, and honestly say nothing has lapsed? If the answer is yes, the seams between grease, air and fire have been closed. If it takes a search through three inboxes to find out, the case for consolidating has already made itself.
Questions
At minimum you need a current TR19 Grease Post-Clean Verification Report for the ductwork, a Thorough Examination and Test report for your local exhaust ventilation under COSHH, and a fire risk assessment that considers the extract system. Each carries its own deadline, so a compliance dashboard lists them side by side with next-due dates. Keeping them together is what turns three separate obligations into one manageable view.
They run on different clocks, which is exactly why a single view helps. TR19 Grease cleaning frequency depends on usage - roughly every three months for heavy use, six months for moderate use and twelve months for light use. LEV testing under COSHH Regulation 9 must happen at least every fourteen months, and your fire risk assessment should be reviewed regularly and whenever the kitchen changes.
Several UK insurers make their cover conditional on the extract being cleaned by a recognised TR19-compliant contractor, and some name this directly in the policy. If a fire is linked to grease build-up and the cleaning was inadequate or done by an unqualified contractor, your right to indemnity can be challenged. A dashboard that stores the verification report alongside the policy wording lets you show compliance at once.
No. The case is for consolidation, not for a particular product. A well-kept spreadsheet that lists every system by name, with its standard, owner, last-completed date, next-due date and the attached certificate, does the job perfectly well. What matters is that one view owns every deadline at once, so no obligation depends on someone remembering it in isolation.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Phoenix surveys and cleans kitchen and building ductwork to the TR19 standard - measured, cleaned and certificated, UK-wide.