Phoenix Journal · Ductwork
Commercial leases rarely spell out who cleans the kitchen extract, tests the LEV or answers to the insurer - until a grease fire forces the question. Here is how landlord and tenant compliance duties usually divide, and which ones no lease can sign away.
Lease compliance
When a grease fire starts in a commercial kitchen extract system, nobody checks the lease first - but the moment the loss adjuster arrives, everybody does.
Ductwork cleaning, ventilation maintenance and LEV testing sit in an awkward gap between the fabric of a building and the day-to-day running of a business. That is exactly where landlord and tenant duties blur, and where a badly drafted or half-read lease leaves both parties exposed. This guide sets out who typically carries which duty, why some obligations cannot be signed away at all, and how to pin the detail down before it becomes a dispute.
Every lease is different, so treat the lists below as the common pattern rather than gospel - your own document and its schedules always win. Read them alongside your repairing covenant and any service charge schedule.
The starting point is a simple but often-missed principle: statutory health, safety and fire duties follow control, not the wording of a lease. You can agree between yourselves who pays for a duct clean, but you cannot contract out of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, or the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. If a tenant is the employer running the kitchen, the tenant is almost always the responsible person for fire safety inside the demise and the duty holder for LEV - regardless of what the repairing covenant says about who foots the bill.
That distinction matters because leases allocate cost, while legislation allocates liability. A well-drafted lease makes the two line up. A poor one leaves a tenant paying for cleaning they never realised they were also legally answerable for, or a landlord assuming the tenant has a duct clean regime in place when the covenant never actually said so.
Most commercial kitchens are let on FRI or effectively FRI terms, meaning the tenant takes on repair, maintenance and insurance cost for the demised premises. Extract ductwork inside that demise is generally caught. The catch is the word "repair" - grease removal is maintenance, not repair, so a bare repairing covenant may not clearly compel routine cleaning at all. Landlords increasingly add an express obligation to clean and maintain the ventilation system to a recognised standard, and to produce certificates on demand. If your lease has that clause, TR19® Grease is the standard it points to in practice.
TR19® Grease is the BESA specification for the internal cleanliness of kitchen extract systems. It sets recommended cleaning frequencies driven by daily usage - broadly three-monthly for heavy use of around twelve hours or more a day, six-monthly for moderate use, and annually for light use - and it requires post-clean verification, with grease film thickness measured and recorded rather than simply declared clean. A certificate that shows measured deposit levels and photographs is what an insurer and a loss adjuster will ask to see. Note also that the older single TR19 has been split: TR19® Grease covers kitchen extract, while TR19® Air covers general supply and extract ventilation, so make sure the lease and your contractor are pointing at the right one.
Where the kitchen or an adjoining process generates fumes, mists or dust that need capturing at source, you move into LEV territory. Under COSHH Regulation 9, any LEV system must undergo a thorough examination and test at least once every fourteen months, and that duty falls on whoever controls the process - normally the tenant. The same discipline applies to spray booths and finishing areas; if your building shares services with that kind of operation, our guidance on running spray booths safely and staying on the right side of fume compliance shows how the LEV and COSHH regime works in practice. Keeping the logbook current is part of the tenant's covenant to comply with statutory requirements, even where the lease never mentions LEV by name.
In reality, the buildings insurer often decides this argument before a court ever could. Many policies now make regular TR19® Grease cleaning and a current certificate a condition of cover. Miss it, and a grease-fire claim can be reduced or refused, with the loss traced straight back to poor maintenance. Because the landlord usually arranges buildings insurance and the tenant usually does the cleaning, a gap here hurts both. It is worth checking, in writing, that the policy conditions and the tenant's cleaning obligations actually match - and that certificates flow to whoever holds the policy.
Two documents save the most grief. First, a schedule of condition taken at the start of the term, ideally including the state and grease loading of the extract system, so a tenant is not later billed for fouling that predated them. Second, a clear record throughout the term - clean reports, verification data and LEV certificates - which answers dilapidations questions at lease end without argument. If you are negotiating heads of terms now, get the ventilation, ductwork and LEV obligations named explicitly, tied to TR19® Grease and COSHH, and mapped to the insurer's conditions. It costs nothing at that stage and settles a great deal later.
Questions
Not always as clearly as landlords assume. A full repairing and insuring lease pushes repair and maintenance cost onto the tenant, and extract ductwork within the demise is generally caught. However, grease removal is maintenance rather than repair, so a bare repairing covenant may not compel routine TR19 Grease cleaning at all. Many landlords now add an express clause requiring the ventilation system to be cleaned to a recognised standard, which removes the ambiguity.
They can agree who pays, but not who is legally liable. Duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and COSHH follow control of the premises and the process, not the wording of the lease. If the tenant is the employer running the kitchen, the tenant is normally the responsible person for fire safety inside the demise and the duty holder for LEV testing, whatever the covenant says about cost.
TR19 Grease recommends cleaning frequency by usage - broadly three-monthly for heavy use of around twelve hours or more a day, six-monthly for moderate use, and annually for light use, with measured post-clean verification. LEV systems must have a thorough examination and test at intervals not exceeding fourteen months under COSHH Regulation 9. Both should be recorded and the certificates kept.
Because it often settles it first. Many buildings insurance policies now require regular TR19 Grease cleaning and a current certificate as a condition of cover, and a grease-fire claim can be reduced or refused if that condition was not met. Since the landlord usually arranges the insurance while the tenant does the cleaning, both parties should confirm in writing that the policy conditions and the cleaning obligations match, and that certificates reach whoever holds the policy.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Phoenix surveys and cleans kitchen and building ductwork to the TR19 standard - measured, cleaned and certificated, UK-wide.