Patisserie, Cake and Decorating risk assessment (NSW)
Secure your legal baseline with a diagnostic tool authored by a Certified Industrial Hygienist: 37 hazards and 182 controls for patisseries, cake makers and decorating studios, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
18 activities, 37 hazards, 182 controls. One industry, one login.
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The 18 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (18 hazards), Process Safety (5) and Occupational Hygiene (14). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓The inherent hazard register in Word: every hazard here with what could go wrong, the possible consequence and its starting risk rating, to read before the walk and share with the people you consult.
✓Access to the Patisserie and cake decorating online calculator, tied to the email address used at checkout. Answer Yes, No or N/A on a phone or tablet; untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your checklist, results and report.
✓A finished Word report (.docx) with every hazard, your answers, the residual risk and your prioritised Action Plan already in it — to print, sign and keep with your safety records.
✓The health surveillance pathway: when health monitoring is required, a medical referral form for the registered medical practitioner, and a worker respiratory symptom questionnaire.
✓An inspection readiness checklist for a SafeWork NSW visit, and an annual review template.
What this pack is
Generic safety templates leave you with most of the work and all of the liability. A patisserie and cake decorating business that has not managed flour, icing sugar and starch dust, airbrushed and spray colours, and hot sugar and caramel work is exposed to regulatory action, and those are the hazards a general template handles worst.
Flour, icing sugar and starch dust from mixing and dusting, airbrushed and sprayed colours, sheeter roller draw-in, hot sugar and caramel burns, and gas torches.
Each business type here is a complete risk assessment for one kind of kitchen, with the hazards and their starting ratings already identified by a Certified Industrial Hygienist. You answer Yes, No or N/A to the controls, and the calculator works out your residual risk, builds the Action Plan and produces the finished report.
Patisserie, Cake and Decorating
Workplace risk assessment for patisseries, cake makers and decorating studios in New South Wales: 18 activities, 37 hazards and 182 controls across safety, process safety and occupational hygiene. Completed in the online calculator, which works out control scores, residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan and produces a finished Word report to print and sign.
- ✓37 hazards across 18 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated — the inherent hazard register, in Word, is yours to download at once
- ✓182 controls listed for you, ranked by the hierarchy of control — you answer Yes, No or N/A in the online calculator
- ✓Colour-coded residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan, worked out for you; air monitoring goes on the plan wherever it is a missing control
- ✓A finished Word report to print and sign — attach it to your hazard register and you are audit-ready
- ✓The health surveillance pathway with its medical referral form and worker symptom questionnaire, an inspection readiness checklist and an annual review template
18 activities, 37 hazards, 182 controls. One industry, one login.
Secure checkout via Stripe. Sign in and start as soon as the payment goes through.
Run more than one kind of kitchen? See every business type
The most serious hazards in patisserie and cake decorating
A sample of the 37 hazards in this assessment, each shown with its consequence and the starting risk rating given by a Certified Industrial Hygienist before any controls are counted. The controls themselves are in the calculator.
Flour dust is a respiratory sensitiser: baker's asthma and rhinitis, which can become permanent. Once sensitised, a worker can react to very small exposures. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust has its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3 (8-hour TWA, inhalable) - a new entry, much lower than the 4 mg/m3 grain dust figure many bakeries have used as their reference. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4D.
Flour dust is a respiratory sensitiser: baker's asthma and rhinitis, which can become permanent. Once sensitised, a worker can react to very small exposures. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust has its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3 (8-hour TWA, inhalable) - a new entry, much lower than the 4 mg/m3 grain dust figure many bakeries have used as their reference. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4D.
Burns, smoke inhalation, fatality; loss of premises. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crushed or amputated hands and arms, fractures; mixers have caused fatal and life-changing injuries in bakeries. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crushing and degloving injuries to fingers, hands and arms. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Explosion, fire, burns and fatality. Process Safety · inherent risk 4B.
How one hazard is rated
Hazard S1.1 — manual handling of flour and sugar sacks — starts at 3D, rated before any controls are counted. The calculator lists 6 controls for it, from elimination and extraction at the source down to PPE, monitoring and emergency arrangements. You answer Yes, No or N/A for each on the floor. Once the last one is answered it works out the control score, applies any severity reduction earned by physical controls, and shows the residual risk as RED, YELLOW or GREEN. Every control you answered No to goes into your Action Plan, most urgent and most effective first, ready for a responsible person and a due date.
Icing sugar, starch and colour mist in the pastry kitchen
A patisserie produces a finer, lighter dust than a bread bakery. Icing sugar is sieved over sponges, cornflour is shaken across the bench to roll fondant, and flour goes into the planetary mixer by the sackful for pastry and cake batters. The decorating bench is often where the dusting happened an hour earlier.
Flour remains the sensitiser that carries the long-term liability. Baker's asthma and rhinitis can be permanent, and once a pastry cook is sensitised even a small puff from a sieve can set off symptoms. The new WEL for flour (cereal) dust, 0.5 mg/m3 as an 8-hour inhalable average from 1 December 2026, sits well under the 4 mg/m3 grain dust number many kitchens still quote. Icing sugar and starch add to the dust load and to the fuel for a dust cloud ignited by a torch or burner.
Decorating brings exposures a bread shop never sees. Airbrushed food colours, sprays and lustre dusts put a fine mist into the decorator's breathing zone, often in a small room with the door shut to keep the finish clean. Boiling sugar, caramel and hot syrups cause deep burns, and kitchen blowtorches run on gas cartridges that have to be stored somewhere.
What an inspector looks for on the pastry side
The pastry sheeter usually draws attention first. The assessment asks whether the roller guards are interlocked so the rollers stop when lifted, and whether an emergency stop or trip bar can be reached from both ends and is tested before use. The planetary mixer gets the same scrutiny: a bowl guard that halts the beater when opened, and a daily check of interlocks and the emergency stop.
From there the questions widen to the rest of the room. Can each machine be isolated at a lockable switch, or unplugged where the person cleaning it can see the plug? Does every cold room and freezer have an internal release that is not iced over, and is the release and alarm tested on schedule? Are portable appliances and RCDs tested by a competent person? For decorators working alone before opening, is there a check-in with a set response when one is missed?
The hygiene questions cover how sugar and flour are cleaned up, how airbrushing is ventilated, where gas cartridges are kept, and whether exposure has ever been measured.
Where a patisserie's first pass tends to land
A typical first walkthrough shows the ovens and mixers in reasonable order and the powders poorly managed. Icing sugar is sieved at chest height with no extraction, cornflour is thrown across the fondant bench, and the whole room is swept dry at the end of the day. Airbrushing happens at a spare bench rather than in a ventilated spot, and nobody has asked the decorators whether their chest feels tight.
Yellow turns green on physical changes. Interlocked roller guards on the sheeter, a slow-start mixer with a bowl-down interlock on bowl-lift models, oven steam vented before the door opens, tempering machine guards and lids kept on while running, and flour bought in smaller bags or delivered to a bulk bin all earn more than a procedure does.
NOT RATED looks like this: croissant dough jams at the outfeed and someone lifts the sheeter guard to free it with the rollers still turning. That is a prohibited practice, so the calculator refuses to rate the sheeter hazard until the practice stops. A decorator trapped in a walk-in whose door cannot be opened from inside is the other common way to lose a rating.
How your controls are scored
Not generic advice — the specific, hierarchy-of-controls measures written into the pack, matched to how these assets actually fail.
Built for the people who do this work
If you operate, maintain or contract to these assets in NSW, this pack is written for your duties.
- ✓Patisseries, cake makers and decorating studios
- ✓Businesses running planetary mixers, dough and pastry sheeters, airbrushes and gas torches
- ✓Owners and managers who need a risk assessment that stands up to a SafeWork NSW visit
- ✓Safety coordinators covering several sites or several brands
- ✓Businesses whose insurer, landlord, franchisor or client has asked for a documented assessment
- ✓Supervisors inducting apprentices and casual staff onto kitchen hazards
Authored to the codes and the law
The Codes of Practice and Australian Standards these documents are measured against, and the legislation behind them.
- §Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW)
- §Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW)
- §Workplace exposure standards for airborne contaminants (Safe Work Australia)
- §Managing risks of hazardous chemicals in the workplace — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
- §Managing risks of plant in the workplace — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
- §Managing the work environment and facilities — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
Frequently asked questions
Add an in-house CIH risk assessment review
Complete your risk assessment using our digital engine, then have our in-house Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and Full Member of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (MAIOH) review your specific results to ensure bulletproof compliance.
Post-completion expert review
Not sure if you categorised your site’s controls correctly? Complete your online assessment and send us the generated report. Our in-house experts will review your residual risk scores, validate your “N/A” selections, and ensure your action plan adequately addresses your highest liabilities (like hexavalent chromium or LEL environments) before you sign off.
- Scope
- Remote CIH and MAIOH review of your completed calculator report and hazard register.
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days.
- Pricing
- Remote review is billed at an hourly rate of $250 AUD/hour (total quote based on the number of sections reviewed).
Download it, score it online, sign it.
Read the hazard register, walk the kitchen with the calculator open, and download the finished .docx report with your Action Plan already inside it. Print it, sign it off, and you are audit-ready for this kitchen.
Price in AUD, no GST charged · Jurisdiction: New South Wales — WHS Act 2011, WHS Regulation 2025 and SafeWork NSW Codes of Practice applied
This is a generic risk assessment for a typical business of this kind, to support your due diligence — completing it is not compliance in itself. You must answer it for your own site, consult your workers, put the missing controls in place, and get competent advice where it says so — exposure monitoring, for example, is work for an occupational hygienist. The limits are set out at the front of every report.