Hot works, and the permit that prevents a summer fire

Summer is the season for site works. Flat roofs get re-covered, plant gets replaced, and repairs happen while the weather holds. A lot of that work involves hot works: welding, cutting, grinding, brazing and torch-on felt roofing. It is ordinary work, and it is also the single most common way a building catches fire during refurbishment. There were 182 hot work fires in England in the 2024/25 year, and 155 of them were started by welding or cutting equipment, according to fire statistics for England analysed by the training firm CE Safety (2025).

The fire often starts after the work stops

Hot works are dangerous in a way that is easy to underestimate. A spark or a hot fragment can travel several metres, lodge in a void or a roof build-up, and smoulder for hours before it takes hold. By then the contractor has packed up and left, the building is quiet, and nobody is watching. That is why insurers treat hot works as a major loss driver. Zurich has reported that accidents involving hot works were behind a run of major fires costing an average of around £425,000 each. The cost is rarely the repair alone. It is the residents, the displacement and the months of disruption that follow.

The permit is a simple control

The control is well established and low-tech. Before any hot work starts, someone responsible issues a permit for that task, that location and that day. The area is cleared and protected, combustible material is moved or covered, extinguishers are to hand, and a fire watch is kept during the work and for at least an hour after it stops, with a final check later in the day. When the work is finished, the permit is closed out and signed off. None of it is complicated. What makes it work is that it happens every time, and that someone can show it happened.

Where it sits for a manager

For a property manager the permit is one part of a bigger picture: which contractor was on site, what they were doing, and what was checked afterwards. Held next to the contractor and permit record and the building's fire safety file, a closed permit is evidence that the work was controlled, rather than a note that goes missing in an inbox. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the responsible person has to manage the fire risk that arises from work carried out on the premises, and a permit trail is the plain way to show that duty was met.

When something does go wrong

If a hot work does cause a scare, a scorch, a small fire, or an alarm activation, the useful thing afterwards is a clear record of what happened and what changed. Logging it as an incident against the building, with the permit that was in force at the time, turns a near miss into something the next review can learn from. The point is not paperwork for its own sake. The same work will come round again next summer, and the building should be a little better prepared each time.