Phoenix Journal · Ductwork
A clean you cannot evidence is a clean your insurer and fire officer will not accept. Here is exactly what should land in your inbox after every extract, duct and LEV visit.
The van has gone, the kitchen smells of degreaser, and the ducting looks spotless where you can see it. Then, three months later, your insurer's renewal form asks a single quiet question: can you evidence that your extract system was cleaned to the current standard, and by whom?
That is the moment the whole job either holds up or falls apart. A brigade of technicians can spend a full night scraping grease from a canopy, riser and horizontal run, and none of it counts for anything if all you were handed was a scribbled invoice and a cheerful thumbs-up. The cleaning is the easy part to buy. The paperwork is the part that protects you - after a fire, during a claim, at an environmental health visit, or when a new duty holder takes over and needs to know what state the system is really in.
So treat every visit as a transaction in two halves. Half of it is grease leaving the ductwork. The other half is a defensible record arriving in your hands. If the second half is thin, you have not saved money - you have simply moved the risk onto your own shoulders without noticing.
The extract clean
The reference point in the UK is BESA's TR19® Grease specification, published as a standalone document in 2019 and aimed squarely at fire risk management of grease in commercial kitchen extraction. It matters here because it sets out not just how a system should be cleaned, but what evidence proves it was. A verification report built to that specification is the difference between a clean you can talk about and a clean you can defend.
A compliant post-clean verification report is not a certificate on its own - it is a bundle. When the file lands, you are looking for photographs taken before and after from the same positions, hard measurements rather than adjectives, and enough detail that someone who never set foot on site can understand exactly what was and was not reached. The standard expects a representative set of images through the system, with more where a duct run exceeds ten metres, precisely because grease does not distribute itself evenly and the awkward middle of a long horizontal run is where fires start.
A report is only as trustworthy as the person putting their name to it. Under the TR19® Grease framework, the technicians carrying out and signing off the work should hold the BESA Grease Hygiene Technician (GHT) qualification, and the wider certification should sit under a recognised scheme such as BESCA. This is not box-ticking. If you ever face a fire investigation under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, an assessor will want to see that competent, trained people did the work - and the access limitations section is often the most revealing page in the whole pack. A honest report that says "this riser had no access panels, so it could not be verified" is worth far more to you than a glossy one that quietly implies everything was perfect. It tells you exactly where your remaining risk lives, and it gives you a specification to fix - retrofit access doors so the next visit can reach the parts this one could not.
The wider record
Extract cleaning is one document stream. If your kitchen also relies on local exhaust ventilation to control airborne contaminants - or if you run filtration, canopy extraction rated as LEV, or specialist prep areas - there is a second, separate legal duty with its own paperwork, and it trips up a surprising number of otherwise diligent operators.
Under Regulation 9 of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, every LEV system must undergo a Thorough Examination and Test (TExT) at intervals not exceeding fourteen months. That fourteen months is a legal maximum, not a target - higher-risk processes listed under COSHH Schedule 4 require it more often. The examination should be carried out under representative operating conditions by someone meeting the HSG258 competence criteria, typically holding a qualification such as BOHS P601. What you receive back is a technical document, and you should read it as one.
Keep those reports. Regulation 9 requires TExT reports and associated repair records to be retained for at least five years, and in practice you will want them for longer - a claim or an enforcement question can arrive well after the ink has dried. If a report is confirming your extraction actually clears cooking odours and airborne grease as intended, it is also quietly answering a question a lot of managers ask after a spotless daily clean, which is why a kitchen still smells after a full daily clean - the surfaces are gleaming, but the extract path carrying the vapour away has not been verified.
Individual documents are useful. A joined-up trail is what actually protects you, because risk is rarely about one visit - it is about being able to show a continuous history of competent maintenance. High-throughput sites feel this most keenly. A venue that turns over enormous covers in short bursts, such as a stadium or event kitchen running flat out then falling silent, builds grease fast and needs its evidence to keep pace; the same discipline that governs deep cleaning after the crowds leave applies to the humblest café extract. The trail matters more than the volume.
Practically, that means keeping every pack in one place, cross-checking that the certificate dates and the photographed conditions actually match, and diarising the next due date the moment a report arrives rather than when a reminder eventually surfaces. Read the access limitations and the recommended actions as a to-do list, not as small print - they are the contractor telling you, in writing, where next year's problem is already forming. And if a report ever arrives without photographs, without DTT figures, or without a named competent signatory, send it back. A visit that cannot be evidenced to the standard has not really happened as far as your insurer, your fire risk assessment and your duty of care are concerned.
Questions
LEV Thorough Examination and Test reports, along with any associated repair records, must be retained for at least five years under Regulation 9 of COSHH. For TR19 Grease extract cleaning there is no single fixed period, but you should keep verification reports for as long as they might be needed - which in practice means the full life of the current system. Insurers, fire risk assessors and incoming duty holders can all ask to see a continuous history, so treat every pack as a permanent record rather than something to discard at the next visit.
A certificate is a single signed statement that work was carried out, and on its own it proves very little. A TR19 Grease verification report is a complete bundle: before and after photographs from matching positions, Deposit Thickness Test readings in microns, a system schematic showing what was and was not reached, a written note of any access limitations, and the certificate itself. If you were handed only a certificate, you were handed the cover sheet without the evidence behind it - always ask for the full report.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Phoenix surveys and cleans kitchen and building ductwork to the TR19 standard - measured, cleaned and certificated, UK-wide.