AHS Water Hygiene - Legionella Risk Assessment

If you are a duty holder it is your legal obligation to carry out a legionella risk assessment of your water system. In the Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) L8, you must consider the risks from Legionella that could affect your employees or members of the public, and take suitable precautions. This applies to Public and Private organisations.

Further reading: The Approved Code of Practice: Legionnaires’ disease: The control of Legionella bacteria in water systems (L8)  By following the advice you will be meeting the minimum requirements of your duties with respect to those specific matters on which the code gives advice.

The HSE States:

Carrying out a risk assessment is your responsibility. You may be competent to carry out the assessment yourself but, if not, you should call on help and advice from either within your own organisation or from outside sources, eg consultancies.

Your risk assessment should include:

• Management responsibilities, including the name of the competent person and a description of your system
• Competence and training of key personnel
• Any identified potential risk sources
• Any means of preventing the risk or controls in place to control risks
• monitoring, inspection and maintenance procedures
• records of the monitoring results and inspection and checks carried out
• arrangements to review the risk assessment regularly, particularly when there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid

Risk Assessments

Risk assessments evaluate whether suitable control measures are in place to full comply with regulation. We are members of the Legionella Control Association and can help you work toward compliance with ACOP L8 documents.

As part of the risk assessment, we will provide a full report including:

• Initial Inspection and Condition Surveys
• 
Temperature checks
• Schematics to show the inter-relationship of equipment and risks
• Remedial actions ACoP L8 risks
• Information how to fully comply and remain safe
• 
Preparation of Control Measures to Manage the Risk
• Design of a site specific log book and monitoring regime