Kitchen Extraction Cleaning Insurance: Fire Risk and Cover

Kitchen extraction cleaning insurance is normally arranged as a specialist cleaning policy rather than a standard cleaners' package. The core is public liability, usually at a limit of indemnity (the most the insurer will pay for any one claim) of £5 million or £10 million because catering contracts and landlord agreements commonly ask for it. Add employers' liability if you have any staff, cover for damage to the ductwork and plant you are working on, your machines and van, and in many cases professional indemnity because of the post-clean report you issue at the end of the job.

What makes this trade different is fire. A grease-laden extract system is one of the most common starting points for a serious commercial kitchen fire, and the firm that last cleaned it will be asked questions after any loss. Underwriters know this, so they look hard at how you work: whether you cut access panels with power tools, whether you go onto roofs to reach fans, whether you enter ducts large enough to climb inside, and what your paperwork says about the condition you left the system in.

This guide walks through the covers that matter, the hot works condition that quietly sits in many policies, the access and confined space questions insurers ask, and how industry standards such as TR19 Grease feed into both your liability and your professional indemnity exposure. It is general guidance rather than advice for your business, and what you are actually covered for always depends on your policy wording and the insurer's acceptance of your risk.

What does kitchen extraction cleaning insurance cover?

Most duct and canopy cleaning firms end up with a package built from the following parts. Not every business needs all of them, and not every insurer offers each section on the same terms.

• Public liability. Pays compensation and legal costs if you injure someone or damage property that belongs to a third party. A canopy filter dropped onto a pass, a flooded kitchen floor after a wash-down, a customer slipping on degreaser overspray in a corridor. Public liability for cleaners is the section contracts ask to see most often.
• Employers' liability. A legal requirement under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 if you employ anyone, with a minimum limit of £5 million. The HSE can fine up to £2,500 for each day you trade without it.
• Damage to property worked upon. The part of the policy that responds when you damage the very thing you were cleaning, such as a fan motor, a flexible duct run or a stainless canopy. Standard public liability often restricts or excludes this, which is why it needs checking rather than assuming.
• Tools and equipment. Rotary brush systems, air movers, vacuum units, pressure washers, inspection cameras, access platforms. Cover usually sits under tools and equipment insurance for cleaners with conditions about overnight vehicle storage.
• Professional indemnity. For the advice and certification element: your post-clean report, your recommended cleaning frequency, your grease deposit measurements.
• Legal expenses, personal accident and business interruption. Optional, but worth pricing if a damaged van or stolen rig would stop you earning.

You can see how the sections fit together on our specialist and deep cleaning insurance page, which covers extraction work alongside other higher-risk cleaning disciplines.

Why fire risk changes the way insurers price this work

Grease vapour condenses inside canopies, filters, plenums and duct runs. Heat it with a flare-up from a chargrill or a fryer and the deposit becomes fuel that carries fire through a building, often above ceilings where nobody can reach it. That chain of events is why the extract system attracts so much attention after a fire, and why your name on the last clean sheet matters.

In England and Wales the duty sits with the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which requires a suitable fire risk assessment and the maintenance of fire precautions. Scotland and Northern Ireland have equivalent regimes. You are not the responsible person for your client's premises, but you are the specialist they rely on, and the kitchen's own property insurer may have written a condition into their policy requiring extract ductwork to be cleaned at stated intervals to a recognised standard.

The practical effect is twofold. If a fire happens and the system was dirty, the restaurant's insurer may look to recover its outlay from you. If a fire happens and your certificate said the system was clean when photographs suggest otherwise, you have a liability problem and a professional indemnity problem at the same time. Underwriters price extraction cleaning with both routes in mind, so expect more questions than a general office cleaning submission.

TR19 Grease, post-clean reports and professional indemnity

TR19 Grease, published by the Building Engineering Services Association, is the specification most UK clients, fire risk assessors and property insurers refer to for the internal cleanliness of kitchen extract systems. It deals with risk-based cleaning frequency, access provision, measurement of grease deposits, photographic evidence and a verification report at the end of the job.

That report is advice. When you state that a system has been cleaned to a given standard, record deposit readings, flag the sections you could not reach and recommend a next service date, a third party is going to rely on it. If your recommended frequency was too long for a 24-hour wok kitchen, or you signed off areas you never opened, the allegation is negligent professional service rather than accidental damage. Public liability does not usually respond to that, which is where professional indemnity for cleaning and facilities companies comes in.

Two details matter when you buy professional indemnity. It is almost always written on a claims-made basis, which means the policy that responds is the one in force when the claim is made against you, not the one in force when you did the work. And it will carry a retroactive date, the point in time before which work is not covered. Keep the policy running after you stop certifying, and avoid letting a new insurer set a retroactive date that cuts off years of past reports.

A fire starts in a vertical riser eight months after a clean. The loss adjuster asks for the previous three service reports. Yours is thorough on the canopy and plenum, silent on the riser, and does not mention that no access panels existed above the ceiling void. The question that follows is whether you told the client in writing that a section was uncleanable, and what you recommended they do about it.

Hot works exclusions and why duct cleaners get caught out

Cutting an access panel into a grease-coated duct with an abrasive disc is hot work. So is any grinding, welding or flame cutting. Most liability policies either exclude hot work completely, or cover it subject to a hot work condition that sets out exactly what you must do: a written permit, the area cleared of combustibles, extinguishers to hand, and a fire watch of the area for a stated period after work finishes (commonly 60 minutes, though the wording varies by insurer).

Breach the condition and the insurer may decline the claim. Fail to tell your broker you do hot work at all and you have a bigger problem, because you have not made a fair presentation of the risk. Our guide on fair presentation of risk for cleaning businesses explains the duty that commercial customers owe under the Insurance Act 2015 in plain terms.

Practical ways to keep this clean:

• Use cold methods where possible. Hole saws, nibblers and purpose-made access panel kits avoid sparks entirely.
• If you must cut hot, hold a written permit for every occasion, keep the signed copies, and apply the fire watch period your policy specifies rather than the one you think is reasonable.
• Ask your broker to confirm in writing whether hot work is covered, excluded, or covered subject to conditions, and which conditions apply.
• Tell the client in advance. Many landlords and shopping centres have their own permit systems that override yours.

Access risks: roofs, ladders, confined spaces and out-of-hours work

Reaching a kitchen extract system rarely means standing on a kitchen floor. Fans sit on flat roofs, risers run through plant rooms, and large duct runs are entered rather than brushed from outside. Each of these changes the underwriting picture.

Working at height is governed by the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Insurers typically ask what height you work to, what access equipment you use, whether you use mobile towers or powered access, and whether anyone holds an appropriate access qualification. Roof work also brings a property damage angle: a dropped tool or a dragged hose through a single-ply membrane leads to water ingress that costs far more than the cleaning contract. The thinking is similar to the ladder and roof exposure covered in our guide on window cleaners insurance and working at height.

Duct entry may fall within the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997. If any of your team enters a duct, riser or plant enclosure where there is a foreseeable risk of fume build-up, entrapment or loss of consciousness, you need a safe system of work, trained operatives and emergency arrangements. Tell your broker. Some insurers will not write confined space entry at all, others will with conditions, and discovering this after a claim is the worst time to find out.

Nearly all extraction cleaning happens at night or early morning, after service and before the first delivery. That brings alarm codes, keys and lone working into scope. If you hold client keys or fobs, read our guide on keyholding risks and consider loss of keys cover, which can pick up the cost of replacing locks and reprogramming a suited system. The out-of-hours access issues set out in our office cleaning out-of-hours guide apply equally to a hotel kitchen at 2am.

Damage to the system you are cleaning

This is the section that generates the most day-to-day claims and the most arguments. The duct, fan, filters and canopy are the property you are working on, and many standard liability wordings treat that differently from other third party property. Insurers variously call it damage to property worked upon, treatment risk or a custody and control exclusion. Our explainer on treatment risks and the gap in standard public liability sets out the principle.

Where cover for property worked upon is available it usually carries its own lower limit and its own excess (the first part of each claim you pay yourself). Check both figures. A £10 million public liability limit is no help if damage to the ductwork sits at £25,000 with a £1,000 excess and the fan replacement runs to £18,000 plus three days of lost trade. Our guide to the true cost of a cleaning claim explains why the consequential costs usually dwarf the breakage.

Staff, subcontractors and chemicals

Extraction cleaning is physical work carried out in confined, hot and often awkward spaces using strong alkaline degreasers. Burns, eye injuries, slips on wet steel and manual handling injuries are all realistic. If you employ anyone, including casual night crews, you need employers' liability cover. If you are unsure whether your arrangement counts as employment, the position for helpers is set out in our guide on sole traders and employers' liability for a helper.

Many extraction firms scale up for big jobs using other crews. Insurers draw a line between labour-only subcontractors, who work under your direction using your equipment and are usually treated as employees for insurance purposes, and bona fide subcontractors who carry their own liability policy and work to their own method. Get certificates of insurance from bona fide subcontractors before they start, check the limit is at least equal to yours, and read our guide on labour-only subcontractors and your cleaning insurance before assuming either status.

Chemical handling falls under COSHH. Keep safety data sheets on the van, provide eye protection and chemical-resistant gloves, train operatives on dilution and never decant into unlabelled containers. Our plain-English COSHH guide covers the basics. Decent chemical control also helps at renewal, because it is exactly the sort of evidence an underwriter wants when they are pricing a burn or respiratory claim exposure.

One line that catches people out: you must not disconnect, move or recommission gas-fired catering appliances unless the work is done by a Gas Safe registered engineer. If your crews pull fryers forward to clean behind them, know where your responsibility stops.

What insurers ask when you request a quote

Expect a more detailed set of questions than a domestic or office cleaner faces. Having the answers ready speeds everything up and reduces the chance of a mismatch between what you do and what you are covered for.

• What percentage of your turnover is kitchen extraction cleaning, and what is the rest?
• Do you carry out any hot work, including cutting access panels with abrasive discs?
• What is the maximum height you work at, and what access equipment do you use?
• Do operatives enter ductwork or any confined space?
• Do you issue TR19 Grease verification reports or recommend cleaning frequencies?
• Do you work on high-rise, hospital, school, airport or listed premises?
• Do you hold client keys, fobs or alarm codes?
• What is your largest single contract value and your largest client?
• Do you use subcontractors, and on what basis?
• Have you had any claims or incidents in the last five years, including ones that did not become claims?

The specialist cleaning insurance questionnaire we use only asks the questions that apply to cleaning businesses, so you are not working through pages about scaffolding or retail stock to get to a price. If extraction work sits alongside a broader contract, the contract cleaners or commercial and office cleaning routes may suit better, and we can tell you which fits.

A practical checklist for extraction cleaning firms

1. Confirm your public liability limit meets every contract you hold. Many catering groups and managing agents specify £10 million. Our guide to public liability limits for cleaning contracts explains how to check.
2. Find the hot work wording in your policy. Note whether it is an exclusion or a condition, and what the fire watch period is.
3. Check the property worked upon limit and excess, then compare it with the replacement cost of the largest fan or duct run you touch.
4. Write down whether anyone enters confined spaces and make sure your broker has that in writing on the proposal.
5. Keep photographic evidence for every job, before, during and after, including the areas you could not access.
6. Record uncleanable sections in the report and in a separate email to the client, with a recommendation to install access panels.
7. Collect and diarise subcontractor insurance certificates, and check limits and expiry dates.
8. Keep hot work permits, risk assessments and method statements for at least six years, and longer if you issue certificates.
9. Review equipment values annually, including anything bought mid-year, using our equipment and van cover guide as a prompt.
10. Run through the renewal checklist a month before your policy expires, not the day before.

Getting cover arranged

Extraction cleaning sits at the higher-risk end of the cleaning market, and it rewards a submission that explains clearly what you do rather than one that squeezes the work into a generic cleaning description. If a quote comes back cheaply, read the hot work and heights wording before celebrating.

Tell us about your jobs, your access methods and your reporting, and we will put the risk to insurers who understand grease duct work. You can start with the specialist cleaning insurance enquiry form, browse the full range on our cleaning insurance hub, or read more in our guides library. If you also run oven cleaning alongside extraction work, the oven cleaners insurance page is worth a look.