Guide - TR19 Grease - UK-Wide
School kitchens cook hard in short term-time bursts, then sit empty. Those breaks are the natural window for a thorough extract clean - here is how to use the calendar and start September compliant.
The short answer
A school kitchen cooks intensively in short bursts - hundreds of covers across a tight lunch service, term-time only - then goes quiet for the holidays. Those holidays are the ideal time to clean the extract system thoroughly, with the kitchen empty and no service to work around:
Term-time use is real and concentrated, so the system genuinely needs cleaning - but the calendar gives you a clean run at it that most kitchens never get.
Term-time load
It is easy to underestimate a school kitchen because it is closed so often, but during term it works hard. A single lunch service might plate several hundred meals in under an hour, with fryers, combi ovens, griddles and bratt pans all going at once. Batch-frying chips, breaded products and the like puts a meaningful grease load into the canopy and duct across a term, even though the kitchen is dark every evening, weekend and holiday.
That stop-start pattern has a quiet downside. During the long breaks the system sits idle for weeks, and idle grease does not stay soft - it oxidises and hardens onto duct surfaces, so a system left uncleaned across successive holidays builds a tougher deposit than the cooking hours alone would suggest. Cleaning in the break clears it before it sets.
Using the calendar
The school year hands you ready-made windows, and the trick is matching the clean to the right one:
Why it matters
A school is a premises full of people who need help to evacuate, which makes the fire-safety duty around the kitchen extract system a serious one. The responsible person - usually the school, trust or local authority - has to manage the grease risk like any other commercial kitchen, and an inspection or a fire risk assessment will expect to see the system cleaned and certificated. The empty holidays are not a reason to defer the clean; they are the best possible opportunity to do it properly.
The sensible pattern is to survey the load, set an interval that reflects how hard the kitchen runs in term, and book the clean into the holidays so it is unhurried and disruption-free - finishing with a certificate that carries the school cleanly into the next term.
Questions
Because the kitchen is empty, the clean can be thorough and unhurried with no lunch service to work around, and any access work can be done with clear runway. The long summer break in particular is the natural slot for a full whole-system clean before September.
Typically every six to twelve months, depending on how much frying and high-volume cooking happens in term. A survey measures the load and sets the interval; a busier kitchen may want a top-up at a half-term as well as the summer clean.
Term-time output is concentrated and grease-producing, and the long idle breaks make it worse, not better - idle grease oxidises and hardens onto duct surfaces. Cleaning in the holidays clears it before it sets into a tougher deposit.
Yes. Multi-academy trusts and local-authority catering teams often run many kitchens on one calendar, and the holidays let us work through a portfolio of sites without disrupting any lunch service, certificating each one.
Yes. The clean finishes with a TR19 Grease certificate carrying micron readings, photos and a dated next-due interval, so the kitchen starts the term clean, compliant and with the next clean already planned.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We clean school kitchens to TR19 Grease while they are empty and certificate them for the new term. Single sites or whole trusts. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.