# Kitchen Risk Assessment Template: free UK download

Canonical: https://paddl-ai.co/templates/kitchen-risk-assessment-template
Last reviewed: 2026-09-11 by the Paddl team

Free commercial kitchen risk assessment template, pre-filled with the hazards HSE inspectors expect to see

## In one sentence

The Kitchen Risk Assessment Template is a free PDF for UK food businesses with 3 record sheets: pre-filled kitchen risk assessment covering slips and trips, burns and scalds, knives and slicers, deep fat fryers, gas appliances, electrical equipment, manual handling, cleaning chemicals, hot liquids and lone working, blank risk assessment form in the same layout for hazards specific to your kitchen, action plan sheet with owner, target date and completion columns. Download it, print it or fill it in, and keep it with your food safety records; Paddl keeps the same records on a phone with timestamps and reminders.

Every employer must assess the risks to staff and anyone else affected by the work, and write the significant findings down once there are five or more employees. A commercial kitchen is the highest-risk room in hospitality: hot oil, open flames, knives, wet floors, heavy deliveries and caustic cleaning chemicals in a space where people move fast. This free kitchen risk assessment template follows the HSE five-step method and comes pre-filled with the hazards an inspector expects to find in a kitchen, each with the usual controls, so your job is to check what matches your kitchen, add what is missing and write down what you will do about the gaps.

## Why you need it

- Risk assessment is a legal duty under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, written if you employ five or more
- Catering has one of the highest rates of workplace injury in the UK; burns, cuts and slips lead the RIDDOR reports
- HSE inspectors and environmental health officers both ask for it, and an empty or generic one reads as no assessment at all
- A written assessment with implemented controls is the core of a due diligence defence after an accident

## What is included

- Pre-filled kitchen risk assessment covering slips and trips, burns and scalds, knives and slicers, deep fat fryers, gas appliances, electrical equipment, manual handling, cleaning chemicals, hot liquids and lone working
- Blank risk assessment form in the same layout for hazards specific to your kitchen
- Action plan sheet with owner, target date and completion columns
- The HSE five steps printed on the cover so the method is on the wall, not in a folder

## Record sheets

- **Kitchen Risk Assessment (Pre-filled)**: columns Hazard, Who Could Be Harmed and How, Existing Controls, Risk (H/M/L), Further Action Needed, Owner / Date
- **Risk Assessment (Blank)**: columns Hazard, Who Could Be Harmed and How, Existing Controls, Risk (H/M/L), Further Action Needed, Owner / Date
- **Action Plan**: columns Action, Hazard It Controls, Priority (H/M/L), Owner, Target Date, Date Completed

## How to use it

1. **Walk the kitchen with the pre-filled sheet** Check each pre-filled hazard against your own kitchen at a busy moment, not an empty one. Cross out what does not apply and note what the sheet has missed.
2. **Judge the risk with your controls in place** Rate each hazard high, medium or low as it stands today. Be honest: a control that exists on paper but not in practice does not lower the risk.
3. **Write the further action and give it an owner** Anything rated medium or high needs an action, a named person and a date on the action plan. That column is what an inspector reads first.
4. **Brief the team and diarise the review** Talk the team through the hazards they face and where the assessment lives. Review it annually and after any accident, near miss, refit or new piece of equipment.

## Tips

- Ask the kitchen porters what nearly hurt them last week; they know the real hazards better than the manager
- Keep one assessment per activity where it helps (fryer, deliveries, deep clean) rather than one unreadable document
- Photograph the controls in place so a new starter can see what "guard fitted" means
- Cross-reference the COSHH assessment for the chemicals and the fire risk assessment for the extraction
- Paddl keeps risk assessments live with review reminders and shows the controls to the person doing the job

Download the file from https://paddl-ai.co/templates/kitchen-risk-assessment-template (email required). The Paddl features that keep the same records: https://paddl-ai.co/features/risk-assessments, https://paddl-ai.co/features/compliance, https://paddl-ai.co/features/coshh, https://paddl-ai.co/features/fire-safety, https://paddl-ai.co/features/documents, https://paddl-ai.co/features/team, https://paddl-ai.co/features/mobile-app.