Legionella risk assessment companies: how to choose between legionella risk assessment companies near me, what a legionella risk assessment company or legionella risk assessor actually does, and where a legionella consultant, legionella control services and water hygiene consultancy fit, and where who can carry out a legionella risk assessment, legionella risk assessment birmingham, legionella risk assessment nottingham, legionella risk assessment scotland, legionella risk assessment near me, legionella risk assessments london and legionella risk assessment london fit

How legionella and water hygiene works

1. Work out whether you need a firm at all. HSE is explicit that most landlords can assess the risk themselves and do not need to be professionally trained or accredited. A small property on a mains supply with no stored water and only basins and toilets may need little more than a recorded judgement. Where the system has tanks, calorifiers, long dead legs, showers, spa facilities or a cooling tower, or where the building is large or partly empty, that stops being true.
2. Ask what the assessment will actually cover. A schematic of the system as it now is, not as it was drawn. Every asset: tanks, calorifiers, pumps, expansion vessels, showers, TMVs, and the outlets nobody uses. Temperature readings taken on the day. Dead legs and blind ends identified. The people at risk, including anyone more susceptible. Then a written scheme of control with who does what, at what frequency, and what to do when a reading is out of range.
3. Check the firm's standing rather than its certificate. There is no statutory register of legionella risk assessors. Membership of the Legionella Control Association is the recognised sign that a firm has committed to a published code of conduct for the services it registers, and it is worth asking which services their registration covers, because it is service by service. Ask who attends, what they will produce, and whether remedial work is quoted by the same firm that found it.
4. Be careful what you are being sold. HSE states plainly that health and safety law does not require a landlord to obtain or produce a legionella test certificate, and that sampling is not usually required for domestic hot and cold water systems. A firm selling an annual certificate for a two bedroom flat is selling a document the law does not ask for. Temperature monitoring, not sampling, is the normal way of showing a system is under control.
5. Get the fee against a defined system. Fees move on the number of outlets and assets, the number of buildings, whether a schematic exists, whether sampling is included and whether the assessor is expected to produce the written scheme as well as the assessment. Two quotes are only comparable once both firms have been told the same thing about the system.

Paperwork and evidence

Common questions

Is a legionella risk assessment a legal requirement?

The assessment is. It arises from the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and from COSHH, with HSE's L8 Approved Code of Practice setting out what is expected. What is not required by law is a legionella test certificate.

Who can carry out a legionella risk assessment?

A competent person. HSE says most landlords can assess the risk themselves and do not need to be trained or accredited, and that they can arrange for someone else to do it if they do not feel competent. Complex systems normally need a specialist.

How often should it be reviewed?

HSE states that the law does not prescribe an annual or biennial review. It should be reviewed periodically and whenever something changes: an alteration to the system, a change of use, a period of vacancy, or a case of the disease.

Does this site carry out the assessment?

No. This is an introducer. The enquiry goes to a legionella risk assessor or water hygiene contractor who does the work, and the terms are between you and them.

Licensed contractors by county