If you employ people, or you control premises used for work, the duty is unambiguous: assess the risk from Legionella and then control it. ACOP L8 is the HSE's approved code of practice for how that is done, which gives it a particular legal weight — you either follow it or you demonstrate that you achieved the same standard another way. We assess offices, gyms, salons, hotels, retail, warehouses, factories and the communal plant in managed buildings.
Not a one-off document. ACOP L8 requires you to control the risk, which means monitoring, recording and reviewing.
Schematics are usually out of date. We trace the system as it now is, including the pipework nobody remembers capping off.
Check points, target temperatures, frequencies and log sheets — operable in-house, without a retainer you do not need.
The domestic debate about whether a simple system needs a paid assessment does not arise in a commercial setting. As an employer or person in control of work premises, the duty applies to you by name, and the question is not whether to assess but how thoroughly.
The incoming supply and any stored cold water · Hot water generation, storage and return temperatures at sentinel points · Full outlet inventory including the ones nobody uses · Dead legs and redundant pipework · Showers, spray taps and other aerosol sources · Cooling towers or evaporative condensers, and their notification status · Spa pools, hot tubs and water features · Humidification and vehicle wash plant · Shutdown and recommissioning arrangements · Who currently monitors what · The written control scheme, responsibilities and logbook.
Surveyed as the system actually is, then reduced to a scheme a facilities manager can operate.
Tanks and calorifiers: temperature, condition, insulation, lids and screens, stratification and turnover.
Measured at the outlets that matter — nearest and furthest from the plant — which is what tells you whether the system is actually in control.
Every outlet listed, including the forgotten ones, and redundant pipework traced. You cannot manage what is not on the list.
Showers, spray taps, safety showers, humidifiers, water features and vehicle washing — the points where exposure actually occurs.
Where present, assessed as the distinct high-risk items they are, including notification status for cooling towers.
A named responsible person, defined tasks and frequencies, and a logbook that would stand up to an HSE inspection.
Common across offices, gyms, hotels, salons and light industrial premises alike.
A tap behind a stack of boxes, a disused shower, an outside tap on a wall the tenant never goes near. None of them on any flushing list.
Started enthusiastically after the last assessment, abandoned when the person who ran it left. This is the finding that matters most after an incident.
Measured at the plant, where they always look fine, and never at the outlet furthest away, where they often do not.
Premises reopening after a closure with no flush-through, which is precisely when the system is at its worst.
The duty to assess and control Legionella risk sits under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, with ACOP L8 as the HSE's approved code of practice. An approved code has a special status: if you did not follow it, you must show you achieved the same standard by other means. Where a case of Legionnaires' disease is linked to premises, the investigation begins with the risk assessment and the monitoring records — and prosecutions in this area have followed the absence of exactly those two documents.
Property type, rough size, number of storeys and what it is used for is enough for us to quote. Survey within days, and your written report within 48 hours of the visit.