Hot work permits: when you need one, what it must cover, and how to run it

What counts as hot work

Hot work is any task that produces flame, sparks or enough heat to ignite nearby material. The usual list:

• Welding, brazing and soldering.
• Oxy-fuel and plasma cutting.
• Grinding and cutting with abrasive discs.
• Blow torches and hot-air guns, including for roofing, plumbing and paint stripping.
• Bitumen boilers and torch-on felt.
• Any process producing open flame or sparks in an area not designed for it.

The last point matters. Welding in a welding bay with the right extraction and no combustibles is a routine task controlled by the workshop rules. The same welding job on a customer’s mezzanine next to stored cardboard is a permit job. The permit exists for hot work done outside a designated area, or in any area where a fire would be hard to control.

Why a permit: the law and the insurer

There is no regulation that says “you must issue a hot work permit”. The requirement arrives from three directions:

• The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and effective control measures. For hot work outside a controlled area, HSE guidance treats a permit-to-work system as the expected control, and HSG250 sets out how such systems should work.
• The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (England and Wales; equivalent legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland) makes the responsible person accountable for fire risk from work activities in the premises, including contractors’ hot work.
• Your insurance policy. Most commercial property and contractors’ policies carry a hot work condition, typically requiring a written permit, removal or protection of combustibles within a set distance, fire-fighting equipment to hand and a fire watch after the work finishes. A fire that starts during un-permitted hot work is one of the most common reasons an insurer disputes a claim. Read your own policy wording; the exact distance and fire-watch duration vary.

What a hot work permit must cover

A permit is a written record that a specific job, in a specific place, for a specific period, has been assessed, the precautions are in place, and a named person has authorised it. A good hot work permit covers:

How to run the process

1. Request. The person who needs the work done, or the contractor, asks for a permit. They describe the task, the location, the method and the people.
2. Assess. The authorising person visits the location, not the form. Combustibles, neighbouring areas, what’s above and below, detection, escape routes.
3. Prerequisites. Everything on the checklist is done before authorisation: combustibles moved, extinguishers placed, detectors isolated with the alarm company told, fire watch nominated. This is the step that gets skipped when the checklist is a row of tick boxes.
4. Authorise. The permit is signed and the validity window set. Only now can work start.
5. Work. The fire watch is present. If the job changes, the permit is cancelled and a new one issued, not amended.
6. Fire watch after the work. The named person stays for the full period and checks the surrounding area, including the far side of walls and any voids.
7. Close. Final check, detectors reinstated, permit signed off with the time. The record is kept.

Where hot work permits go wrong

• Tick-box prerequisites. The permit says the combustibles were cleared; the photo taken after the fire says otherwise. A permit system should refuse to authorise until the prerequisites are confirmed, not just ticked.
• The fire watch that goes home. The work finished at 4:30, the watcher left at 4:35. Most hot-work fires start in smouldering material after the workers have gone.
• Permits issued from the office. The authoriser signs without visiting the location and doesn’t know about the cardboard on the other side of the partition.
• Contractors with their own permit. A contractor’s own form is not a permit for your premises. The responsible person for the building authorises hot work in it.
• Rolling permits. A permit that was “still valid from yesterday” is not a permit. Conditions change overnight.

Paper permits or a digital permit to work system

A paper hot work permit works if everyone follows it and fails silently when they don’t. A digital permit to work system makes the sequence mandatory: the prerequisites must be confirmed before the authorise button appears, the authorisation must happen before anyone can sign on, sign-on is a QR scan at the point of work so the list of people under a live permit is accurate, and the record is kept with the times. Expiring permits raise a notification rather than quietly running on.

Hot work permit checklist

If you want a one-page version to pin up, these are the questions the authoriser should be able to answer yes to before signing:

• Have I seen the location myself, today?
• Are all combustibles within the clear radius removed or protected, including behind walls, under floors and in ducts?
• Is the right extinguisher at the point of work, and does the fire watch know how to use it?
• Have detectors been isolated with the alarm company informed, and is someone responsible for reinstating them?
• If flammable vapours could be present, has the area been gas tested and ventilated?
• Are cylinders, hoses, arrestors and electrical equipment checked?
• Is a named fire watch present during the work and for the full period after?
• Does the permit have a finish time today, and a named person to close it?