It is a legal requirement to have a fully compliant Legionella risk assessment carried out on your rental property.
You are responsible for ensuring that a risk assessment is carried out, on a regular basis, in order to stay fully compliant.
NLIC are supporting landlords and letting agents to remain within the law and protect their tenants, providing recognised standards of assessments.
It is sufficient to have a competent person or member of staff visit the property to carry out an assessment. However, NLIC provide a full protection policy when detailed water and water-pipe assessment is completed by a our fully trained operatives, with a water sample obtained, for analysis by an accredited laboratory.
Please refer to the HSE website at www.hse.gov.uk
Please refer to the TC Young solicitors website at www.tcyoung.co.uk
The HCOP L8 law:
The HSE guidelines/regulations clearly states that it is against the law for a landlord and a joint duty holder not to have a Legionella risk assessment carried out on a rental property, with a small water tank system.
Note: There is some confusion around how many times this must be carried out. The HSE guidelines states that:
“All systems require a risk assessment……it is important to review your assessment
regularly in case of any changes in your system, and specifically if there is reason to
suspect it is no longer valid”.
Changes can be as simple as pipe separators becoming disengaged.
NLIC provide an annual assessment with the resulting protection policy covering its annual inspection.
Our risk assessors manually check all relevant areas of the rental property. They will identify any areas of concern and report these back to the letting agent or landlord by way of a schedule of works. This is all inclusive within the cost of the assessment, and then the works can be carried out by either the letting agent or landlord preferred contractors. NLIC will reassess the property after conclusion of the works at no extra charge.
The aim of the risk assessment that we undertake, is to fully support HSE guidelines in protecting the tenant and assist letting agents/landlords to remain compliant.
A landlord/letting agent is at risk if they should they decide to have an assessment completed by a provider not compliant or indeed a laptop risk assessment. Laptop risk assessments do not provide full protection policy.
Why?
There are over 240 strains of the Legionella bacterium. The bacteria is weak and is present in drinking water, in quantities which do not present a risk to humans, however it can become active at certain temperatures. The bacteria can become lethal when airborne and is easily contracted.
Tenants are becoming increasingly aware that they can take action against the letting agent and landlord where, the required, precautions are not in place.
How?
NLIC carries out a fully recognised assessment service with qualified risk assessors, providing both photos and a full report, to demonstrate that the landlord/letting agent has taken the appropriate steps to protect the tenant.
What happens in the event of an outbreak after the service has taken place?
Legionnaires disease can, in rare cases, still occur, despite full assessment, however having completed a program with NLIC and engaging with ongoing duty of care programs we will provide you with our protection policy.
Some assessment providers use invalid test kits which do not provide any protection policy as only full laboratory analysis identify all strains of Legionella. Water analysis is the definitive test.
