Phoenix Journal · Extraction
Fire safety law is not one UK rulebook - England and Wales sit under the Fire Safety Order while Scotland runs on the Fire (Scotland) Act. Here is how the two regimes differ, and where they both meet your kitchen extract system.
Cross-border compliance
If you run kitchens on both sides of the border, you are working under two different fire safety laws that happen to share a birth year and very little else.
Fire safety law is not a single UK-wide rulebook. England and Wales sit under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, while Scotland runs on the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006. Both were written in the same year, both are risk-based, and both put the burden on the people who control a building rather than on any inspector. But the language differs, the way responsibility is shared differs, and the recent reforms in England have pulled the two regimes further apart.
For a catering operator the practical questions are the same everywhere: who is legally on the hook, what must be written down, and what happens when a grease fire tears through the extract ductwork. This page sets the two systems side by side so you can see where the duties line up and where a policy that passes in one nation quietly falls short in the other.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, usually shortened to the FSO, is the backbone in England and Wales. It names a single “responsible person” - normally the employer or whoever is in control of the premises - who must carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment and act on it. Two waves of reform have since tightened it. The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed that the assessment must cover the building structure and external walls, and Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, in force from 1 October 2023, removed the old exemptions so the assessment and the fire safety arrangements must now be recorded in writing in full, no matter how small the business.
Alongside the FSO, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 layer on operational duties. The direction of travel is clear: informal, verbal compliance is out, and demonstrable, auditable evidence is in.
What works in your favour
Where it catches people out
Scotland deliberately took a different route. There is no Fire Safety Order and, crucially, no single “responsible person” role. The Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, backed by the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006, instead places duties on every party who has control of the premises, to the extent of that control. So a landlord and a tenant can both be duty holders at the same time for different parts of the same building, and neither can fully sign the risk away to the other. Enforcement is the responsibility of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
The underlying model is the same goal-based, risk-reduction approach you meet in England - identify the hazards, protect the people, plan the escape - but the statute expects safe evacuation without outside help and pays explicit attention to those who are more vulnerable in a fire. If your training regime is thin, that shows up quickly here; it is worth checking that your fire safety training genuinely sticks with staff rather than being a box ticked at induction.
What works in your favour
Where it catches people out
For all their differences, both regimes land on the same point when it comes to catering: the accumulation of grease inside extraction ductwork is one of the most common preventable causes of commercial kitchen fires, and a fire in the duct can spread through a building within minutes. Neither the FSO nor the Fire (Scotland) Act names a cleaning frequency, but both require you to control that risk and to prove you have. The industry benchmark either side of the border is TR19® Grease, the specification published by the Building Engineering Services Association, and insurers increasingly make compliant cleaning a condition of cover - with the right to indemnity at stake if a fire is later linked to neglected ductwork.
Typical risk-based frequencies run from roughly every three months for heavy use of twelve to sixteen hours a day, to every six months for moderate use, and annually for light use. What matters to a fire officer in either nation is the same: a current risk assessment, a maintenance record, and post-clean certification with before-and-after evidence.
The safest way to manage a multi-site estate is to work to the stricter of the two positions across the board. Record everything in writing as England now demands, map control the way Scotland requires, and hold TR19® Grease certification for every kitchen. Do that and you satisfy both laws at once, rather than maintaining two brittle sets of paperwork that each fail the moment a site changes hands.
Questions
Correct. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 in England and Wales names a single responsible person, usually the employer or whoever controls the premises. Scotland's Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 has no such role and instead places duties on every party to the extent of their control, so a landlord and tenant can both be duty holders for different parts of the same building.
In England and Wales, yes and without exception. Since Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 took effect on 1 October 2023, the assessment and fire safety arrangements must be recorded in full regardless of business size. Scotland requires assessments under the 2006 Regulations too, but the recording expectations are worded differently, so it is safest to keep everything in writing across both.
Neither the Fire Safety Order nor the Fire (Scotland) Act names TR19 Grease or a cleaning frequency by law. Both, however, require you to control the fire risk from grease build-up and to evidence it, and TR19 Grease from BESA is the recognised way to do that. Many insurers now make compliant cleaning a condition of cover on both sides of the border.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
The right kit only helps if the system stays clean. Phoenix degreases canopies, filters and ductwork to TR19 Grease - UK-wide, overnight.