Guide - Fire Safety - UK-Wide
Several brands, one building, shared ductwork - a dark kitchen raises a question a standalone restaurant never has to: when the extract system is shared, who is responsible for cleaning it?
The short answer
A dark or cloud kitchen packs several operators into one building, often onto shared canopies and shared ductwork. That raises a question a standalone restaurant never has to answer: when the extract system is shared, who is responsible for cleaning it - and who pays when one unit loads it harder than the rest?
Get the responsibility clear and the shared system gets cleaned on a proper interval. Leave it vague and it becomes the duct nobody owns.
The shared-system problem
The thing that makes a dark kitchen different is mixing. A site might run a fried-chicken unit, a burger brand, a curry kitchen and a pizza operation - wildly different grease loads - and where they share a canopy or a duct run, that shared stretch carries the combined output. The high-grease operator effectively loads the system for everyone, which means the shared ductwork can reach the point where it is due a clean far sooner than any single light unit would imply.
It is also a single connected fire path. A flare-up at one unit's cookline can travel a greasy shared duct to the others and up to the common fan. So the condition of the shared system is not a private matter for one operator - it is a risk held in common by everyone cooking on the site, which is exactly why responsibility for cleaning it has to be pinned down rather than assumed.
Who is responsible
Under the Fire Safety Order, control decides responsibility. Each unit operator is normally the responsible person for their own station and the grease they generate. The shared canopy, common ductwork and roof fan usually sit with whoever controls the site - the dark-kitchen operator or landlord - because they control that common plant. Crucially, the Order requires these parties to co-operate and co-ordinate where the system is shared, so the precautions work as one rather than falling into the gap between them.
In practice that means a few things being written down rather than assumed:
Why it matters
The temptation on a shared site is for each operator to assume the shared duct is someone else's concern, and for the heaviest-grease unit to load a system whose cleaning cost is spread across everyone. Left alone, that is how a shared duct goes unmanaged - and because it is a common fire path, the consequences are shared too. The same logic that makes a dark kitchen's energy bill hard to control makes its shared extraction hard to keep clean: when no single operator owns the system, no single operator maintains it.
The fix is the same in spirit - make the duty visible and assigned. Survey the shared system, set its interval from the real combined load, name who arranges the clean, and share the certificate. Then the connected fire path that runs through everyone's kitchen is actually being managed, by someone, on a schedule, with paperwork to prove it.
Questions
Control decides it. Each unit operator is normally responsible for their own station and grease, while the shared canopy, ductwork and roof fan usually sit with whoever controls the site. The Fire Safety Order requires these parties to co-operate so the shared system is actually cleaned.
Where units share a canopy or duct, that shared stretch carries the combined output. A high-grease operator effectively loads the system for everyone, so the shared ductwork can reach the point where it is due a clean far sooner than any single light unit would suggest.
Yes. Shared ductwork is one connected fire path. A flare-up at one cookline can travel a greasy shared duct to other units and up to the common fan, which is why the condition of the shared system is a risk held in common, not a private matter for one operator.
Usually the site operator arranges and pays for cleaning the shared plant, often recharged through a service charge, while each unit handles its own filters and station. The key is that it is written down and assigned rather than assumed, so the shared duct is not left to nobody.
Yes, if the shared system is cleaned as a whole and the certificate is shared. We clean the common canopy, ductwork and fan and issue documentation the site operator and each unit can use for their own fire risk assessment and insurance.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We clean shared dark-kitchen extraction to TR19 Grease on an interval set from the combined load, with certificates the site operator and every unit can use. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.