Compliance & responsibility
A franchise multiplies the same compliance question by every unit - and gets the wrong answer if nobody is clear who owns the duct at each site.
The short answer
In a franchise, the responsible person under the Fire Safety Order is whoever has control at each individual unit - normally the franchisee operating that kitchen as employer and occupier, not the brand at head office. That means the legal duty to clean and certify the extract system sits site by site. But leaving each operator to interpret it alone is how a brand ends up with twenty different standards, twenty record formats and a handful of units quietly out of compliance. The duty is local; the system for managing it should not be.
Untangling who owns what
Three documents shape responsibility at each site and they do not always agree. The Fire Safety Order puts the duty on whoever controls the premises - usually the franchisee. The unit's lease then allocates the cleaning obligation between that operator and their landlord, which can differ from site to site depending on who holds the building. The franchise agreement sits on top, often requiring the operator to meet brand standards that include extract cleaning and to evidence it.
Where this goes wrong is the assumption that because the brand mandates a standard, the brand carries the duty. It does not - the operator with control does. But a brand that specifies TR19 cleaning, names a frequency, requires certificates in a common format and checks they exist protects both itself and its franchisees, because a fire or an insurance dispute at one badly run unit can still damage the whole network's reputation and cover.
Running it at scale
The practical model is a central compliance framework that every site follows. Standardise the specification - the same full-system TR19 clean, the same verification, the same certificate format - so records are comparable across the estate. Set each site's frequency from its own cooking volume rather than a blanket rule, because a flagship city unit and a quiet suburban one do not carry the same grease load. Then stagger the visits so the whole estate is not due at once and no unit is ever far from its last clean.
Above all, collect the evidence centrally. A single compliance calendar showing every site's last clean, next due date and certificate status turns a scattered pile of local paperwork into a network-wide view - so head office can see at a glance which units are current and which are drifting, before an inspector or insurer finds out first.
One standard, every site
Managing duct compliance across a franchise is far easier when every site is cleaned to the same specification and documented the same way. A full canopy-to-discharge clean to TR19 Grease, verified and certified in a single consistent format, means head office and franchisee are reading the same evidence - and the network's compliance can be seen, not assumed, one unit at a time.
Questions
Under the Fire Safety Order, the responsible person is whoever has control at each site - normally the franchisee operating that kitchen, not the brand. The duty sits site by site.
The legal fire-safety duty falls on the operator with control of each unit. But a fire or insurance dispute at one poorly run site can still damage the whole network, which is why brands specify and check the standard.
No. Set each site's frequency from its own cooking volume. A busy flagship carries far more grease than a quiet unit, so a single blanket interval leaves some sites over-cleaned and others exposed.
Standardise the specification and certificate format, stagger the visits so the estate is never all due at once, and collect every site's records in one central compliance calendar showing last clean, next due and certificate status.
So records are comparable across the estate and head office can verify compliance at a glance. Twenty different formats make it impossible to see which units are current and which are drifting.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We clean and certify multi-site extract systems to one specification, with records in a single format.