Guide - Fire Safety - UK-Wide
Landlord, tenant, or both? In a leased unit the Fire Safety Order and the lease decide together. Here is how responsibility for the extract system is split - and where the dangerous gaps appear.
The short answer
There is rarely a single answer to who cleans the extract system in a leased unit. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 a building can have more than one responsible person at once, and the lease determines who owns which part of the system:
The practical questions are simple to state and easy to get wrong: who is the responsible person, where does the demise end, and who holds the certificate. The lease and the Order answer them together.
Who is responsible
The Fire Safety Order defines the responsible person by control. In a workplace it is the employer; otherwise it is whoever has control of the premises in connection with running a business there. For a tenant operating a kitchen, that is normally you - you control the cooking, so you control the grease and the duty to manage the fire risk it creates.
But the Order goes further. Article 5(4) treats anyone who, under a contract or tenancy, has an obligation for the maintenance or safety of the premises as having control to that extent. So if your lease makes the landlord responsible for maintaining the ductwork up to the roof fan, the landlord picks up a share of the duty for that part. A single extract system can therefore sit under two responsible persons - you for the canopy and your section, the landlord for the shared riser and the fan - and the Order expects you to co-operate so the whole system is actually cleaned.
Read the lease
The document that settles most arguments is the lease, specifically the repairing covenants and the extent of the demise. The questions worth answering before a dispute arises are:
Why it matters
The most dangerous situation in a leased kitchen is not a clear duty on the wrong party - it is a shared system where each side assumes the other is handling it. Article 22 of the Order exists precisely for this: where responsibility is split, the parties must co-operate and co-ordinate so the precautions work as one. A duct that the tenant thinks is the landlord's, and the landlord thinks is the tenant's, is the one that goes years without a clean.
End of lease sharpens all of this. Landlords increasingly require a current TR19 certificate before returning a deposit or settling dilapidations, and a system handed back greasy can become a charge against you. The way to stay clear of every version of this is to read the lease, agree in writing who cleans what, clean the whole system on a risk-based interval, and make sure both parties hold the certificate. Clarity now is far cheaper than an argument after a fire or at handover.
Questions
It depends on the lease and on control. The tenant who runs the kitchen is usually the responsible person for their unit under the Fire Safety Order, but where the lease makes the landlord maintain shared ductwork or the roof fan, the landlord shares the duty for that part. Often it is split.
Read the demise and the repairing covenants in your lease. Whatever falls inside your demise is normally yours to maintain and clean; shared risers and roof-mounted fans are frequently retained by the landlord as common parts. The service charge schedule also shows what the landlord arranges.
That is the most dangerous outcome and the most common. Article 22 of the Fire Safety Order requires landlord and tenant to co-operate and co-ordinate where a system is shared. Agreeing in writing who cleans what, and sharing the certificate, removes the gap where nothing gets done.
Very likely. Landlords increasingly require a current TR19 certificate before returning a deposit or settling dilapidations, and a system handed back greasy can become a charge against you. Cleaning the whole system before handover and holding the certificate protects your position.
Yes, if the whole system is cleaned and both parties receive the certificate. We clean the full extract line and issue documentation that the tenant can use for their unit and the landlord can use for the shared parts, so a single visit satisfies both duties.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We clean the full extract line to TR19 Grease and issue a certificate both landlord and tenant can rely on - for shared ductwork and end-of-lease handovers. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.