Farnham Road runs north from the A4 on the west side of Slough as the A355, one of the town’s busiest routes, and for a long stretch it is lined with places to eat: karahi and kulcha houses, Indian and Chinese takeaways and chai cafés, trading from a run of shop units along the road. Kitchens strung along a road like that drain into shared Thames Water sewers, and fat that leaves one unit’s sink cools and sets in the same pipe as fat from the takeaway six doors along. That is the local argument for a working grease trap, and the legal one is in the FOG guide: when a shared run blocks, the sewerage undertaker can trace the grease back to the kitchens on it, and the premises with a file of dated Waste Transfer Notes is the one that can show it was not the cause. Slough’s food businesses can have their traps emptied and cleaned by TrueFlow on a schedule or as a one-off, and the paperwork comes with every collection. The service in full is on the grease trap cleaning page.
Hotel kitchens on a different clock
A takeaway’s trap fills over two evening services. A hotel’s fills around breakfast service, then again whenever the function suite is booked, so a wedding on Saturday can add a month’s worth of fat in an afternoon. Slough’s conference hotels around Cippenham Lane and the A4 run kitchens of that kind, and for any of them the emptying interval has to follow the events diary rather than a fixed calendar: a visit the week after a run of functions does more good than one on the first Monday of the month.
Emptied, scraped and recorded
Whichever kind of kitchen it is in, the visit runs to the method on the service page: the whole contents out rather than skimmed, the chamber scraped, the unit refilled and flow-tested, with photographs before and after. The contents leave with TrueFlow Ltd, an Upper Tier registered waste carrier, and the Waste Transfer Note is signed there and then. Where the outlet has been running slowly, the kitchen line beyond the trap is jetted on the same attendance (£150 upwards including VAT, pressures to 4000psi), so the run is as clear as the chamber. What the law expects of a food business, and why, is explained under kitchens and restaurants.
Access on a main road
A kitchen on Farnham Road has no service yard, so the engineer works from the kerb. Timing misses both the kitchen’s service and the road’s traffic: early morning before deliveries, or mid-afternoon. Hotels have the opposite problem, a yard but no quiet hour, so visits there go into the gap after breakfast clears or on a day with nothing in the function diary, and since the line is answered at every hour of the day and night both are easy to book.
What it costs in Slough
A kitchen on Farnham Road is priced for its own unit and its own interval, a hotel for its own, and the figure is confirmed in writing before the first collection; sizing the job carries no fee. A trap that overflows during service gets an emergency attendance. Yard gullies and washroom stacks are under commercial drainage in Slough.
Slough grease trap FAQs
Does the van need to park next to the kitchen to empty the trap?
No. The unit is emptied where it stands and the contents carried out sealed, so a van at the kerb or in a side street serves a kitchen with no yard. Floors are protected along the route, and the surfaces are cleaned afterwards.
Who signs the Waste Transfer Note at a leased restaurant: the tenant or the landlord?
The business handing over the waste, which is almost always the tenant running the kitchen, because the duty of care sits with the producer of the waste. The note names that business, describes the load and is signed by both parties on site. A landlord can be given a copy, but the tenant’s file is the one an inspector asks for.
Can a hotel grease trap be serviced in the afternoon lull between lunch and dinner?
Yes. The afternoon gap is often the best window in a hotel, because breakfast and lunch have cleared and the evening prep has not started. A trap in good order is a short job inside that gap; one that has been left to set hard takes longer, which is one reason a regular schedule costs less than an overdue clean.
Before the sink tells you
An overdue trap, a new schedule or a first look at a unit nobody has opened: ring 0808 175 7440, or ask for a visit. Homes in the town are covered on the Slough page.