Install a grease trap

A grease trap intercepts fats, oils and grease from your kitchen wastewater before it reaches the public sewer. PUB and NEA approval is required before installation, not after, and the trap needs to be sized to BS EN 1825 for your kitchen's actual grease load — an undersized trap fails almost immediately once you are trading at volume.

Discharging grease-laden wastewater into the public sewer without an approved trap is a regulatory breach that can block your fit-out sign-off, and a blocked or overwhelmed grease trap is one of the most common causes of a kitchen drainage failure mid-service — an expensive, disruptive problem to fix once you are open rather than before.

Watch out for

• Installing the trap before getting PUB and NEA approval, rather than after — approval is a before-installation step, and an unapproved trap can mean redoing the work.
• Undersizing the trap to save on space or cost — a trap sized for a light-use café won't cope with a full kitchen running a fryer and a busy service, and failure shows up as a drainage problem once you are already trading.
• Forgetting the trap needs its own maintenance cycle once installed — cleaning, periodic flushing, and 5-yearly CCTV/visual inspections all belong on your Compliance Calendar, not just a one-off install-and-forget item.

Sources

• PUB — Grease Trap Requirements checked 2026-09-08

See also

• Kitchen exhaust duct baseline degrease
• Sign a pest control contract