A restaurant is the one premises type where the greatest hazard, the busiest space and the least mobile group of people are all in the same building at the same time. The assessment is not really about the dining room. It is about a fryer, a duct full of grease running through the structure above it, and whether a full room of seated strangers can get out past a kitchen that is on fire.
The fryer and what sits over it
Cooking oil burns at a temperature water makes worse, so the provision over a fryer is a suppression system releasing a wet chemical agent over the canopy with a fuel shutoff wired into it, and the extinguisher in the kitchen is wet chemical rather than the water or foam unit everywhere else. The assessment should say whether the system has been commissioned, when it was last serviced, and whether the shutoff actually isolates the gas or the electricity supply, because a suppression release that leaves the burner running has bought a few seconds.
The duct is the route the fire takes upstairs
Grease builds inside the extract duct, and the duct passes through ceilings, voids and sometimes several floors of a building that is nothing to do with the restaurant. A fire in the duct starts inside the structure, past every detector in the room, and the only control is cleaning the duct along its whole length at an interval set by how much it is used. Ask for the cleaning record with photographs at each access point, and ask where the access points are, because the usual finding is a duct cleaned where somebody could reach it and untouched for the rest of its run.
Escape from a full dining room
Occupancy is high, the layout changes with every function, and half of the people have never been in the building before. Furniture creeps into the route over a service, the second exit ends up behind a stacked table, and a fire door onto the alley gets wedged for deliveries. The assessment has to consider the room as it is used on a Saturday night rather than as drawn, and it has to name who checks the routes before service rather than leaving it to whoever notices.
Staff, and the rooms above
Kitchen staff turn over fast and often speak several first languages, so the training the assessment relies on has to be something a new starter gets in their first shift, not an annual session they missed. And where there is accommodation above, whether it is a flat, staff rooms or a hotel, the standard is the sleeping one: detection reaching a bed, a protected route that does not pass through the kitchen, and separation between the two uses that somebody can actually evidence.
Questions people ask about restaurant fire risk assessment
Does a small restaurant need a written fire risk assessment?
The assessment is required either way, and the significant findings have to be recorded where article 9(6) applies, which includes any premises with five or more employees. In practice an unwritten assessment cannot be shown to an officer or handed to a new manager, so it is written in all but the smallest cases.
How often should the kitchen extract duct be cleaned?
On an interval set by how heavily it is used, with heavy frying needing it most often. The evidence that matters is a record showing the whole run was cleaned, with photographs at each access point, rather than a certificate for a visit.
Which extinguisher goes in a commercial kitchen?
A wet chemical unit for cooking oil and fat, sited near but not over the risk, with the usual provision for class A fires elsewhere in the premises. Water and foam must not be used on burning oil.
Who is the responsible person in a leased restaurant?
Whoever has control of the premises to the extent of the fire safety measures, which is normally the operator for the demise and the landlord for shared routes and structure. Where the extract passes through the landlord's building both have a part, and the assessment should say so.