CareHomeDeskCareHomeDeskHSE L8 ACOP requires a water risk assessment to be reviewed whenever there is reason to believe it may no longer be valid. This includes changes to the building, significant works, a change in use, a positive Legionella sample, or where a period of two years has elapsed since the last review.
HSE ACOP L8 does not set a fixed review interval for water risk assessments (WRAs) in the way it does for some other checks; instead it requires review whenever there is reason to believe the assessment may no longer be valid. In practice, most competent assessors and HSE guidance treat two years as a reasonable maximum interval even where nothing else has changed, since water systems and their use patterns rarely stay static for longer than that without some drift.
Any significant change to the building fabric or water system should trigger a review, including extensions, refurbishments, the addition or removal of outlets, changes to pipework routing, or periods where parts of the system were taken out of use during works. Building works frequently create new dead legs or alter flow patterns in ways the original WRA could not have anticipated, so a review carried out promptly after works is far more useful than one carried out on a fixed calendar date regardless of what has happened on site.
A change in how the building or specific rooms are used -- for example converting an office to a resident bedroom with an en-suite, or a change in the resident population toward higher dependency or higher infection susceptibility -- alters the risk profile the original WRA was based on. The water risk assessment should reflect current occupancy and use, not the layout and population the home had when the assessment was last written.
A positive Legionella sample result, an outbreak or suspected case linked to the site, or any incident suggesting the control scheme has failed must trigger an immediate review rather than waiting for the next scheduled date. The review following such an incident needs to specifically address what allowed the failure to occur, not simply restate the previous assessment with an updated date.
A water risk assessment that is several years old, even if it was excellent when written, provides little practical protection because it no longer reflects the building, the system or the residents as they actually are. If an incident occurs and the WRA on file does not match reality, the gap between the two becomes a central point of scrutiny in any investigation, regardless of how good day-to-day monitoring has been in the interim.
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