The Kitchen at Forty Degrees

The UK currently has no legal maximum working temperature for indoor workplaces. No number you hit and stop. The Health and Safety Executive asks employers to keep conditions reasonable and to act when workers are uncomfortable, but the line where that becomes enforceable has never been drawn.

The Department for Work and Pensions confirmed this year that it will launch a public consultation on proposed updates to the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations. The timing was not coincidental. The UK has endured three heatwaves in 2026, and the third arrived in July.

What is being proposed

The emerging framework sets two thresholds. At 24°C, once workers report discomfort, employers would be required to act: ventilation, cool water, rest breaks, adjusted rotas. At 30°C, workers in standard roles could stop entirely. For roles classified as physically demanding, that threshold drops to 27°C.

A professional kitchen brigade carrying hot pans from the pass, working through a two-hour service at full pace: that is physically demanding by any reasonable definition.

A working kitchen in July in the south of England regularly runs well above those levels. Some operators reported temperatures above 40°C during this summer's heatwaves. The proposed threshold for stopping physically demanding work is 27°C. The gap between those two numbers is significant, and the consultation has not yet explained how it intends to close it.

What the industry said

UKHospitality called for flexibility. The argument is reasonable in principle: a rule that applies identically to an office in Reading and a kitchen in Brighton during a heatwave is too blunt an instrument. Operators should have to demonstrate they are managing their environment and protecting their people, rather than simply being told to close when a thermometer hits a fixed number.

That case is right. The question is whether a consultation designed to produce legally enforceable guidance will produce something that reflects the reality of a busy kitchen, or something that looks sensible on paper and does not survive contact with a Saturday service in July.

The industry has a strong track record of accepting genuine welfare obligations. Operators who have not taken heat seriously are wrong to have ignored it. The consultation is asking the right question. The concern is whether the answer, once codified, lands in a way that actually improves conditions or simply shifts the liability.

The kitchen that runs anyway

We run kitchens across Sussex. The Castle Inn, Tollgate, the Bull, the Berwick, Ash and Honey. A kitchen in the south of England in July is not a place that naturally sits at 27°C. It is a place of hot surfaces, extraction running at full capacity, and a brigade moving quickly in a confined space.

Managing that environment is a real obligation. The people running the pass on a hot Friday night deserve a framework that takes their working conditions seriously. That part of the consultation's purpose is sound.

What a framework cannot change is the cost structure of a service that still has to run. The rota is set. The prep is done. Every fixed cost in the building is committed before a single cover arrives. A kitchen operating in difficult conditions is still a kitchen with food prepared, staff paid, and a dining room waiting to earn.

The seat that earns regardless of the temperature outside

The argument for filling the empty seats does not weaken on a hard service. A kitchen working at full cost, in difficult conditions, has more reason to make every chair count, not less.

Around 4pm, when the shape of the evening is clear, venues release the tables they expect to lose on Halfseat: food at half price, drinks at full price, a real cut of the booking fee going directly to the venue. The brigade has already prepped. The rota was set before the day's temperature was known. The question at 4pm is only whether that seat earns something before service ends, or earns nothing while every cost in the building runs regardless.

The consultation will take time to produce guidance. Parliament will scrutinise it. The industry will make its case.

Tonight, the kitchen is already on. The chair is already cold. The cost of leaving it that way has not changed.