Water Management - ACopL8 and HTM04-01

Kelly Mansfield - Workplace Law Network
Online advisor - 60 posts

Hi Tomek,

In order to answer your query, I spoke to Giles Green, Principal Scientific Advisor at Bureau Veritas HS&E Limited. His response is as follows:

The answer is, unfortunately, a little bit do-it-yourself.

The whole strategy should be based on a risk assessment, whether the premises are within the NHS, local authority, private or any other sector. It may be, for example that a local authority or privately run residential home for the elderly would have higher risk factors intrinsic in the exposed population than a well-woman or mobile blood pressure and cholesterol check clinic run by the NHS, which would clearly come under the of Department of Health guidance.

The real difficulties usually boil down to whether a risk is negligible or significant and whether one risk outweighs another. Examples of these could be an oversized water tank or slightly warm cold water (or slightly cool hot water) in the first case or the balance of risks when storing water for a sprinkler system or protecting users against scalding in the second case. The solution is that a decision needs to be made and it needs to be made by the appointed Responsible Person, who may very well choose to seek advice from others or from guidance documents.

As a general rule, conventional cold and hot water systems within buildings which are designed, installed and operated correctly constitute a low to very low risk of legionellosis and following the general guidance in L8 is quite sufficient. Even where the exposed population is rather more susceptible to infection than average (as may be the case in some care homes), it may well not be appropriate to do any more, as a regime which controls legionella at insignificant concentrations does exactly that, controls legionella at insignificant concentrations. Where the exposed population is at exceptionally high risk and may be vulnerable to infection at very low exposure levels, as may be the case in high dependency or intensive care wards, extraordinary measures may be required.

The HSE advocate testing for legionella only in certain types of premises and under certain circumstances and point out that negative results may lead to a false sense of security. I would recommend also sampling and testing in a rationalised (most definitely not random) way as a check on the effectiveness of the precautions and a challenge to the assumptions underlying the risk assessment. In my experience, this has uncovered flushing regimes which were simply not being carried out, despite the signed records stating that they were, and peculiarities of systems which were not evident in the course of routine monitoring or inspection in the course of risk assessment. It is, however, important never to use sampling and analysis as a substitute for control measures, either by spending money which would otherwise have been used to control the risk, or by accepting unsatisfactory conditions simply because the analysis has proved negative.

With kind regards,

Giles Green, FWMSoc., Practising Associate of the Academy of Experts
Principal Scientific Advisor

Bureau Veritas HS&E Limited