Legionella risk assessment for your rental property, done in minutes

A legionella risk assessment is a short written record of the water system in one rental property, the things about it that could let legionella bacteria grow, and what you have done about them. It is the landlord document people most often assume needs a contractor and a certificate. It does not. DocuTenant describes it the way it actually works: the self-assessment HSE says most landlords can do themselves.

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You answer a small set of questions in plain language. What heats the water: a combi boiler, a stored hot water cylinder, an electric immersion heater or an instant water heater. Whether hot water is stored above 60 degrees, and what the thermostat is set to. Whether there is a cold water tank, and if there is, whether it has a fitted lid, whether it is insulated, and where it sits. Whether the incoming mains runs below 20 degrees. Whether the property has stood empty, and for how long. Whether there are shower heads, and what condition they are in. Whether there are dead legs, meaning lengths of pipework feeding an outlet nobody uses.

Then you tick the control measures that are genuinely in place, set a risk rating of low, medium or high, and add any notes. The document assembles itself as you answer, and the preview on this page is the real template with sample details in it rather than a picture of one.

Previewing is free and unlimited. No account, no card. You pay £9 once for this document type at this property when you want the PDF or the Word file, and after that you can regenerate it as often as you like at no further cost. Pro is £9.99 a month or £89 a year and covers every document at every property.

When you need one

Three moments, and they are all easy to walk past.

The first is a new tenancy. You are already gathering the gas safety record, the EPC and the deposit paperwork, and the water system assessment belongs in the same pile. A new tenant is entitled to ask what you did about it, and an assessment written the week they moved in answers that far better than one reconstructed afterwards.

The second is a change to the water system. A new boiler, a cylinder taken out, a bathroom moved, an outside tap added, a shower replaced. Any of those changes the answers, which means the old assessment now describes a property that no longer exists.

The third is a review. The document itself says the assessment should be reviewed annually, or whenever the water system, the way the property is used, or the tenancy changes. A property that has sat empty between lets is exactly the case worth redoing, because standing water is the condition the whole assessment is about.

What the assessment covers

The finished document has five parts and fits on a couple of pages.

It opens with the property, the landlord or assessor, the assessment date and the risk rating. Then it sets out the context in a single paragraph: the duty to assess and manage the risk of legionella bacteria in the water systems of rental properties under the HSE Approved Code of Practice L8, and the fact that no specific certificate is required.

Section two is the water system table. System type, whether hot water is stored above 60 degrees, the thermostat setting, whether a cold water tank is present, the incoming mains temperature, void periods, shower heads and their condition, and dead legs. Where a tank is present it adds the lid, the insulation and the location.

Section three lists the control measures you ticked, printed as a checked list. Hot water stored at 60 degrees or above. Cold water below 20 degrees. No long dead legs in pipework. Shower heads cleaned regularly. The system flushed if the property is vacant more than seven days. A fitted lid and insulation on the tank. Thermostatic mixing valves maintained. An annual flush of infrequently used outlets. Water temperature checks recorded.

Section four is the risk rating, with the explanation of what that rating means written out rather than left to the reader. Section five is your notes, if you added any. It closes with a signed declaration and a date.

There is a second path in the same document. If you paid somebody to carry out the assessment, switch it to a professional assessment and the document records the assessor, their company, the date, the risk level and the key findings, and states that the full report is held on file.

England and Scotland

This one does not change at the border. The document is the same in England and in Scotland, and you are not choosing between two versions.

Build and preview it free, then look at the inventory and schedule of condition while you are setting the property up, or see all 47 templates and what £9 per document type per property buys.

The same document on both sides of the border. The assessment does not change when the property does. There is one version, it names the HSE Approved Code of Practice L8 as its context, and you do not have to pick between an England file and a Scotland file.

There is no legionella certificate. Unlike the gas safety record or the EICR, nothing issues you a certificate for this and no register holds one. What you have is the assessment itself, dated and signed, plus the record of what you did about anything it flagged. That is precisely why writing it down matters more here than it does for the documents somebody else hands you.

It is a self-assessment by design. The product describes it as the self-assessment HSE says most landlords can do themselves, and the form is built around that. The professional path exists for the cases where you have paid for a survey and want the result recorded in the same place as everything else about the property.

Review it rather than file it. The declaration in the document asks for the assessment to be reviewed annually, or when the water system, the use of the property or the tenancy changes. Regenerating it at DocuTenant costs nothing once the document type is bought for that property, so a review is a five-minute job rather than a reason to put it off.