Most landlords’ Legionella risk assessments reach the same verdict: a small house or flat, with water flowing through it most days, is low risk. So the assessment is short. The control that actually keeps it low risk is not something on a contractor’s clipboard — it is how the people living there use the water every day.

That is why a one-page tenant information sheet earns its place. It hands the everyday job to the person best placed to do it, in language they will actually read, and it shows you took the human side of control seriously.

What follows is the content for that sheet: what to tell renters, and what to put in writing.

Why the person living there is your best control

The HSE is clear that landlords carry a legal duty to assess and control the risk of exposure to Legionella in the water systems they provide, and equally clear that for most domestic rented properties that risk is low [1]. Low risk is not no risk, and it is not no duty. What keeps a small system safe is constant turnover — water moving through the pipes, taps run, showers used — together with water held at the right temperatures [1][2].

A tenant does almost all of that without thinking about it. They become a problem only when a pattern breaks: a fortnight’s holiday, a spare shower no one uses, a thermostat turned down to save money, a scaled-up shower head left for a year. None of those needs an engineer to fix. Each needs the tenant to know it matters.

So the leaflet is not box-ticking. It is the part of your control measures that you cannot do from a distance, delegated to the one person who is there every day. The HSE specifically expects landlords to make tenants aware of the control measures that need to be maintained [1].

One thing to keep straight: this sheet is not your risk assessment. The assessment is the dated record of how you judged the property and what you decided; the leaflet is what you pass to the tenant off the back of it. If you are unsure whether a let needs an assessment at all, Do I need a Legionella risk assessment to let or sell my property? settles that first.

What to put in the leaflet

Keep it to a single side of A4: plain instructions, no jargon, no temperatures the tenant has to measure. Here is the content, grouped the way a tenant will use it.

When you move in — and any time the home has been empty for a week or more

  • Run every tap and the shower for a few minutes to draw fresh water through before you use them. Open a window or the extractor first, and stand back from the spray.
  • Do the same when you get back from a holiday or any spell away.

Every week or so, as part of normal life

  • Flush through any outlet you rarely use — a spare bathroom, an en-suite, a downstairs cloakroom, the outside tap. Let it run for a minute.
  • Clean and descale the shower head and tap aerators regularly so they don’t fur up. A scaled head sprays more fine mist and is harder to keep clean.

Please leave these alone

  • Don’t turn down the boiler or hot-water cylinder thermostat. The hot water is meant to be hot; turning it down to cut energy bills can let bacteria grow.
  • Don’t adjust or interfere with any stored-water tank, mixing valve or blending valve. If a temperature feels wrong, tell us rather than changing the settings yourself.

Tell us straight away if

  • The hot water isn’t coming through properly hot, or the cold isn’t running properly cold.
  • You see discoloured, cloudy or smelly water from any tap.
  • There’s a leak, or a tap or shower that drips or won’t shut off.

That is the whole sheet. Every line maps onto how Legionella is actually controlled: turnover (running the water), cleanliness (the head), temperature (the thermostat), and early warning (reporting), with the bacteria multiplying fastest in the warm, still water those habits prevent [1][2].

Keep it reassuring, not alarming

A leaflet headed “Legionella” can read to a tenant as “this property is dangerous”. It isn’t, and the wording should say so. Open with a plain line such as: “This home’s water system is low risk. A few simple habits keep it that way.”

Be honest about why showers get a mention without frightening anyone. Legionnaires’ disease is caught by breathing in fine water droplets, not by drinking water, which is why showers — a fine spray, sometimes left unused — get named while the kitchen tap rarely does [3]. A tenant who wants the detail can be pointed to Can you catch Legionnaires’ disease from your home shower?; most just need the habit, not the microbiology.

In my view, the best tenant leaflets are dull on purpose. No bold red warnings, no legal threats — a short, friendly “here’s how this place works” note that sits alongside the ones for the boiler and the bins. Dull gets read and kept. Alarming gets binned.

Hand it over, and keep a record that you did

A leaflet sitting in a drawer at the office controls nothing. Give it to the tenant at check-in, walk through it in thirty seconds while you are showing them the stopcock and the boiler, and — this is the part landlords skip — note that you did.

A single line in the inventory or tenancy file is enough: “Legionella information sheet issued and explained, [date].” Better still, have the tenant initial a copy you keep. If anyone ever falls ill and the question becomes whether you managed the risk, “I told them, and here is the dated proof” is a far stronger position than “I’m sure I mentioned it”.

This is a recurring job, not a one-off. It needs doing at every new tenancy, and the flushing and cleaning advice quietly lapses if no one ever checks the tenant is still following it. Keeping the issue date, the assessment and your between-tenancy flush records in one place — rather than scattered across emails and an ageing spreadsheet — is what makes them retrievable on the day someone asks. For the wider duties this sheet sits inside, Landlord responsibilities for Legionella in rental properties and Legionella control in residential rental properties are the companions to it.

Where plain advice ends and assessment begins

This is general good practice, not legal or medical advice, and the leaflet does not stand in for judging the actual property. A house in multiple occupation, a cold-water tank sitting in a warm loft, long or dead-end pipe runs, or a tenant who is elderly, very young or immunosuppressed can all push a let out of the simple low-risk picture, and those cases call for a competent assessor to set the controls. The advice you give tenants should follow from a site-specific assessment of your building — not from a generic sheet copied off the internet, this one included.

Common questions

Do I have to give tenants a Legionella leaflet by law?

There is no statute that names a “tenant Legionella leaflet” you must produce. What the law requires is that you assess and control the risk, and the HSE expects landlords to make tenants aware of the control measures that need to be maintained [1]. A short information sheet is simply the cleanest way to meet that expectation — and to evidence that you met it.

Does the leaflet replace a risk assessment?

No. The risk assessment is the dated record of how you judged the property’s water system and what you chose to do about it; the leaflet is the slice of that you hand to the tenant. You need both, and the leaflet’s contents should follow from what your assessment actually found, not the other way round.

What if the tenant ignores the advice?

You cannot force a tenant to flush a spare shower, and the law does not expect you to police their daily routine. Your duty is to assess and control the risk, give clear instructions, and act on anything they report [1]. Record that you provided the advice. If a property has features that need active control regardless of tenant behaviour — stored water, low-use outlets, a vulnerable occupant — the control should not rest on the tenant alone, and your assessment should say how it is managed instead.

Sources

[1] HSE, “Legionella and landlords’ responsibilities”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/legionella-landlords-responsibilities.htm [2] HSE, “Hot and cold water systems”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/hot-and-cold.htm [3] CDC, “How Legionella Spreads”. https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/causes/index.html