Cleaning company Q3 has been forced in court to deny that it is a specialist cleaning company capable of properly cleaning a kitchen extract system.
The Red and Rosso restaurant in Guernsey suffered a catastrophic fire on 21ˢᵗ January 2020. You can read all about it here (including some interesting comments) and here. The full-service FM/cleaning company Q3 is accused of breach of contract and negligence.
Pictured: Emergency services at the scene of a fire that engulfed Red and Rosso Restaurants in January 2020.
Evidence was given that parts of the system had not been properly cleaned. It seems that the contractor is not able to deny that. Instead it has claimed that it didn’t know that it should clean properly and entirely.
They were forced to say that they are not specialist kitchen extract cleaners and so could not be expected to know what was being asked of them.
There had been a previous duct fire in July 2018 after which the fire brigade told the restaurant to clean the system. Q3 had been cleaning the system since 2012. They reportedly carried out at least four cleans between 2017 and the disastrous fire. The last cleaning was carried out some three months earlier on 6ᵗʰ October 2019.
“The plaintiffs argue that the defendant, Q3 Services (CI Ltd), failed to clean them adequately and/or failed to advise anyone about problems accessing parts of the system and the risk of fire.”
There are no reports about what was missed and why and we’ll be lucky to find any more reports in the general press. So this really brings it home to the specialist cleaning industry that it is absolutely essential to say clearly what you can and cannot do and to give at least a warning (and ideally a costed recommendation) if there remains a significant fire risk.