Companies using water systems urged to do more to prevent Legionella risk

Leisure centres with spa pools and care homes are among the businesses being urged to do more to protect workers and members of the public from legionella risks. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a safety notice targeting companies and organisations that use hot and cold water systems for bathing and washing or in manufacturing processes.

It follows the publication of a separate notice in July aimed at companies with cooling towers and evaporative condensers. These were identified as the most common source of significant outbreaks based on an HSE review of data going back 10 years.

The latest notice stresses the need for measures to be in place to control identified legionella risks and that these are reviewed regularly. HSE’s legionella expert Paul McDermott said: “Companies and businesses have a legal responsibility to ensure they’re doing all they can to protect workers and the public.

“While the numbers of people potentially affected by poorly maintained water systems and spa pools are likely to be smaller than poorly maintained cooling towers, there can still be fatal consequences. These can’t be ignored.

“The information and guidance on managing legionella risks is well-established and readily available. Control measures should be in place and under regular review. The safety notice is not asking employers to do anything more than they should be doing already.”

However, specialist illness lawyers at Irwin Mitchell have repeated their calls for a Public Inquiry into the problems, describing this new safety advice on legionella bacteria as ‘too little, too late’.

Commenting on the HSE notices, Clive Garner, an illness expert at Irwin Mitchell, said: “The release of new guidance on the handling and control of legionella bacteria in water systems is a positive step forward, but questions need to be asked as to whether the progress being made on this issue is genuinely enough to ensure that the terrible problems seen in both Edinburgh and Stoke are not repeated.

“The evidence we have seen in the past, such as the HSE essentially halving inspections in cooling towers last year and the concerns around the accuracy of basic data on the number cooling towers in operation, shows that further improvements are clearly needed in this area.”

The reminders come in the wake of two serious outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in Edinburgh and Stoke-on-Trent earlier this year. In the Edinburgh incident, which killed three people and affected more than 100, a group of cooling towers in the city was pinpointed as the most likely source of the bacteria. While in Stoke, a hot tub was blamed.