Hot work permit. A printable hot work permit for welding, cutting, grinding, soldering and hot bitumen work — the precautions before, the watch during and the sign-off that closes it.
This is the paper version. FireOptix does the same job on a phone, with the record filed against the building or the asset automatically.
What is on the sheet
- The location, the work, the equipment and who is carrying it out
- Precautions before work starts: combustibles removed or protected, openings covered, services isolated, equipment checked
- Whether fire detection in the area is being isolated, by whom, and the record that it was put back
- Firefighting equipment at the workplace and who is trained to use it
- A fire watch during the work and a continued watch after it, with the finish times recorded rather than the duration prescribed
- A cancellation and hand-back block: the area checked, the detection restored and the permit closed by name
Why this record matters
Hot work starts fires after the work has stopped. That is the whole reason a permit exists: it is not a record that somebody was allowed to weld, it is a record that somebody went back and checked the area once the welding was finished and everybody had gone home.
The permit is built around three moments — before, during and after — because those are the three things that get skipped in that order. Of the three, the one that matters most on this sheet is the hand-back: a permit with no cancellation entry is a permit nobody closed, and an area nobody re-checked.
Isolated detection is given its own block for the same reason. Covering a detector so the work does not set it off is sometimes necessary and is always a window during which the area is unprotected. A sheet that records the isolation but not the restoration has documented the window and not its closing.
The times are fields, not figures. How long a fire watch should continue depends on the work, the materials and the premises, and is a matter for the risk assessment and for whoever is competent to set it — so the permit asks when the watch started and when it ended, and leaves the required period to be set by the people who can set it.
Use it with
- Fire risk assessment templateA printable fire risk assessment form, covering the premises, the people at risk, the hazards, the fire safety measures already in place and the significant findings that come out of it.
- Fire safety audit checklistA printable audit checklist for checking that fire safety management is actually happening — the records, the testing, the training and the open actions — as distinct from assessing the risk itself.
- Weekly fire alarm test recordA printable log for the routine fire alarm test — which call point was used, whether the sounders were heard everywhere, and what was wrong if anything was.
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© 2026 FireOptix. Free to print, copy and use in your business. Not for resale. Please keep this notice.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Written for England and Wales. General guidance, not legal advice. Checked October 2026.