General guidance for operators, not a compliance document. Your local authority environmental health team and your insurer are the authorities on your specific premises.
Operators often expect food hygiene law to state a cleaning frequency. It does not. The requirement is that food premises are kept clean and maintained in good repair, and it is left to you to determine what achieves that and to evidence it.
In practice the interval gets set by three things: how hard your kitchen works, what your insurer requires for extraction, and what you can demonstrate at inspection. Here is how those play out.
Frequency by area
Treating the kitchen as one entity is what causes trouble. Different areas soil at very different rates, and the ones that matter most are the ones nobody sees during service.
| Area | Typical interval | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Canopy filters | Weekly to fortnightly | First line of grease capture. Cheapest thing to keep on top of |
| Canopy interior and plenum | Quarterly | Grease accumulates above the filters where nobody looks |
| Extraction ductwork and fan | 3 to 12 months by usage | Fire risk. Usually specified by your insurer |
| Behind and under fixed equipment | Quarterly | Where pests harbour. A focus at inspection |
| Walls, ceilings, structure | Every 3 to 6 months | Airborne grease settles on every surface, including above head height |
| Drainage gullies and traps | Monthly | Odour and drain fly source, and easily forgotten |
| Full structural deep clean | Every 3 to 6 months | Everything routine cleaning cannot reach |
These are working intervals, not legal minimums. A 16-hour fried chicken operation and a daytime sandwich bar with a combi oven should not be on the same schedule.
What actually drives your interval
- Cooking method. The single biggest factor. Deep frying, chargrilling and wok cooking put far more aerosolised fat into extraction than steaming or baking. A grill house can load a duct in a quarter of the time a bakery does.
- Operating hours. Twelve hours a day, seven days, is roughly three times the loading of a lunch-only site, and the interval should reflect that rather than the calendar.
- Insurer requirements. Often the binding constraint in practice. Many policies specify extraction cleaning at a stated frequency by a competent contractor, with certification. A lapsed certificate can affect a claim after a fire.
- Kitchen layout and age. Tight gaps between equipment, sealed-in units and older, less accessible ductwork all mean routine cleaning reaches less, so the deep clean has to come round more often.
The extraction system deserves its own paragraph
Of everything on this page, extraction is the item where neglect carries the most serious consequence, and it is also the most commonly deferred. Grease accumulating in ductwork is a fire load sitting directly above the ignition source, in a concealed space, connected to the rest of the building.
What matters is that the whole system is cleaned, not just the visible parts. Filters and the canopy face are straightforward. The plenum above the filters, the vertical riser, the horizontal runs and the fan itself are where the real accumulation is, and cleaning only what is visible from the kitchen floor gives a misleading sense of the position.
Ask for access panels to be fitted where the run cannot otherwise be reached, and for photographic evidence of each section before and after. That evidence is what supports both an insurance position and a fire risk assessment.
What gets missed
These come up repeatedly, and none of them are visible during a normal shift.
- The wall and floor junction behind fixed equipment. The classic pest harbourage, and a standard check.
- The underside and legs of prep benches. Nobody looks up from below except an inspector with a torch.
- Ceilings and light diffusers above the line. Airborne grease rises and settles there first.
- Shelving brackets and wall rails. Cleaned around rather than removed and done.
- Fridge and freezer door seals, and the condenser coils. A hygiene point and an equipment efficiency one at the same time.
- Drainage gullies. The first source to check when there is an unexplained smell or drain flies.
The records matter as much as the cleaning
This is the part operators underestimate. Environmental health assess your food safety management system alongside the physical premises, and the hygiene rating reflects both. A kitchen that is genuinely clean but cannot show a schedule and sign-offs is in a weaker position than one that can, because a single visit is a snapshot and your records are the evidence of the system behind it.
- A written cleaning schedule listing area, frequency, product and method.
- Sign-off sheets showing it is actually being followed.
- Certificates for every deep clean and every extraction clean, with photographs.
- Safety data sheets for chemicals in use, as part of your COSHH assessment.
- Your Safer Food Better Business pack, or equivalent, kept current rather than filled in the night before.
If you want a general sense of what a structural deep clean covers before specifying one, the domestic equivalent is set out in what does a deep clean actually include. The principle is the same, which is that anything requiring equipment to be moved or opened belongs in the deep clean rather than the daily routine.
Where this advice comes from
We work to the standards below, and we have pointed you to them directly so you can check anything here yourself rather than taking our word for it.
- Food Standards Agency — The UK authority on food hygiene, including the Safer Food Better Business packs that most small operators use as their documented system.
- FSA — Food hygiene rating scheme — Explains how ratings are assessed, including the weight given to structural cleanliness and to your management records.
- HSE — catering and hospitality — Health and Safety Executive guidance on kitchen safety, including slips from grease and the risks in cleaning work itself.
- GOV.UK — food business registration and inspection — The legal duties on food business operators, and what local authority inspection covers.
What we would actually buy
The most valuable item here is a document rather than a product. Everything else supports it.
A written cleaning schedule, by area and frequency
Costs nothing and is the first thing an inspector asks for. It should list each area, how often, with what, and who signed it off. A kitchen that is clean but cannot evidence a system is in a weaker position than one that can.
A certificate from each duct clean, with photographs
Keep every certificate and the before-and-after images. This is what an insurer will ask for after a fire, and it is the record most likely to be missing when it is needed.
A caustic degreaser rated for catering use
Domestic products will not touch established grease film. Use something specified for commercial kitchens, with the correct dilution, and keep the safety data sheet on file as part of your COSHH assessment.
Canopy filters on a rotation
Have a spare set so filters can go through the dishwasher or a soak tank while the kitchen keeps running. Filters are the cheapest part of the extraction system and the one that most affects how fast grease reaches the ductwork.
A deck brush and a proper degreasing floor cleaner
Grease on a kitchen floor is a genuine slip hazard, and HSE treats it as such. Mopping spreads a thin film; brushing with a degreaser removes it.
Nobody pays us to list these and there are no affiliate links on this page. They are simply what we have found works, and in several cases the cheapest option genuinely is the best one. Whatever you use, patch-test it somewhere hidden first.
The Carpetix Team
We are a carpet, upholstery and rug cleaning team based in Leytonstone, East London. We write these guides from what we run into on actual jobs, which is why you will find us telling you when to leave something alone or handle it yourself rather than call anyone out. If a guide here saves you a call, it has done its job.
Last reviewed and updated 31 July 2026
