The people who use your building are part of how Legionella stays under control, whether or not anyone has told them so. They run the shower on the floor your monitoring round never reaches. They leave the spare-room basin untouched for a season. And they are usually the first to notice when the hot tap runs lukewarm or the cold runs oddly warm. Get the messaging right and occupants become useful sensors and willing helpers. Skip it, or muddle it, and they quietly work against the scheme you pay to maintain: leaving outlets to stagnate, ignoring a “do not use” notice, or assuming the brown water from a rarely-used tap is just how this place is.

So treat communication with occupants as a control measure, not a public-relations afterthought. The duty for that control still sits with you. It cannot be handed to the people who live or work in the building, any more than it can be handed to a contractor [2]. What occupants can do is the handful of things only they are positioned to do, and that only happens if you ask clearly.

What occupants are actually for

Strip away the reassurance and there are three jobs an occupant can do that your scheme genuinely needs.

They report what they see. A tenant who phones in a lukewarm shower or a tap running rusty water has just handed you free monitoring data between formal checks.

They follow instructions during works. A “do not use” sign on a tap mid-disinfection only protects someone if the person who wanders up to it understands it and obeys it.

They run water. In flats, student halls, serviced lets and any space with low-use outlets, the cheapest way to stop a tap stagnating is often the occupant running it, but only if they know which outlets, how often, and why it matters [1].

That last job matters more for some occupants than others. Older people, smokers, and anyone with a weakened immune system or an existing lung condition are more likely to become seriously ill if exposed [3]. So in care settings, sheltered housing and healthcare the message has to reach the staff who act on vulnerable residents’ behalf, not the residents alone.

The communication checklist

Use this as a working list. Each item is something you can write down, date, and tick off, not a vague intention to “raise awareness”. The messages are grouped by when they land.

When someone arrives — induction, tenancy start, new staff

  • State the one route for reporting a water problem (a number, an email, a portal) and what is worth reporting: lukewarm hot water, warm cold water, discoloured or smelly water, an outlet left unused for weeks.
  • Tell residents of lets and low-use spaces which outlets they are expected to run, and roughly how often, in plain language. How to implement a flushing programme for Legionella control covers how that flushing programme is built behind the ask.
  • Warn that hot water is deliberately kept hot enough to control bacteria and can therefore scald, and point out any blended (TMV-protected) outlets, especially where children, older or less mobile occupants are involved [5].

The standing messages — always visible, always current

  • Keep reporting instructions posted where problems actually get noticed: by sinks in shared kitchens, in plant-room corridors, on the back of cleaners’ cupboard doors.
  • Make sure signage is dated and legible, and that out-of-date notices come down. A faded “flush weekly” sign from two managers ago trains people to ignore signs.

When you need occupants to act

  • Ask for the specific task, not the principle. “Run the basin and shower in room 4 for two minutes this morning” beats “please help us prevent Legionella”.
  • For voids — empty student rooms over summer, flats between tenancies, a closed office wing — say who flushes and when, and confirm it happened. If the occupant has left, that job falls to your team, not to nobody.

When something changes — works, disinfection, an unexpected result

  • Before a disinfection or system clean, tell occupants what they will notice (a chlorine smell, discoloured first-draw water, taps temporarily out of use) and when normal service resumes, so a routine job does not trigger alarm or, worse, a wave of people deciding the water is unsafe and giving up on reporting.
  • Put “do not use” notices directly on the affected outlets, not on a distant noticeboard, and remove them the moment the outlet is cleared.
  • If a check or sample comes back outside the expected range, decide what occupants need to know based on real exposure and clinical advice. Be honest and specific, avoid both panic and a cover-up, and record the decision and the exact wording you used.

Using and recording it

The habit that turns this from goodwill into evidence is writing down that you communicated, not just that you did the physical task. Keep the actual wording of a notice, the date it went up and came down, and who it reached. If a tenant was told at sign-up which outlets to flush, the tenancy pack and its date are your record. The same logbook discipline that covers temperatures and flushing should cover the messages [1].

Two-way traffic matters as much as one-way. Log occupant reports even when they turn out to be nothing, because the pattern — three lukewarm-shower calls from the same riser in a fortnight — is exactly the early warning a quarterly check would miss.

The parts people skip

Most sites do the easy half. The reporting line gets set up and then nobody closes the loop, so a tenant who reported brown water and heard nothing back stops reporting. Voids are the other blind spot: the departing occupant is assumed to have flushed, the arriving one assumes the place is fine, and the outlet sits warm and still in between. And the “do not use” sign that never comes down quietly teaches everyone that your signs do not mean anything.

In residential lets this is sharpened by the landlord’s own duty to assess and control the risk, which includes making tenants aware of what they need to do [4]. Legionella control in residential rental properties works through that tenant relationship in detail.

A note on limits

This is general guidance, not a script for a specific incident. What you tell occupants after a temperature exceedance or a positive sample depends on the system, who is exposed, and clinical input. A single sample only describes the outlet and the moment it was taken, so it is not, on its own, a clean bill of health to pass on [6]. When a result carries health implications, take advice from your water-safety adviser and, where relevant, public-health professionals before settling the message. Sampling frequency itself follows your risk assessment rather than a fixed calendar [6].

FAQ

Do we have to tell occupants every time we test the water?

No. Routine monitoring does not need broadcasting, and over-communicating trivial checks tends to make people tune out. What does need communicating is anything that changes what occupants experience or must do: works, a “do not use” period, or a result with possible health implications, where the message should be honest and specific.

How do we get tenants or staff to actually flush low-use outlets?

Make the ask concrete and small. Name the exact outlets, give a simple frequency, explain in one line why it matters, and attach it to a moment that already exists: the tenancy sign-up, a team handover, a laminated card by the door. Vague appeals to “help prevent Legionella” rarely change behaviour; “run these two taps for two minutes each Monday” sometimes does.

What should a “do not use” notice actually say?

Put it on the outlet itself, state plainly that the tap or shower must not be used, and give a date and a contact. Leave out technical detail nobody needs at the basin. The notice has one job: a clear instruction in the half-second someone reaches for the tap, and it must come off the moment the outlet is back in safe use.

Sources

[1] HSE, “Legionnaires’ disease. The control of legionella bacteria in water systems — Approved Code of Practice and guidance (L8)”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/l8.htm [2] HSE, “Legionnaires’ disease — what you must do”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/what-you-must-do/index.htm [3] NHS, “Legionnaires’ disease”. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/legionnaires-disease/ [4] HSE, “Legionella and landlords’ responsibilities”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/legionella-landlords-responsibilities.htm [5] HSE, “Hot and cold water systems”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/hot-and-cold.htm [6] HSE, “Testing and monitoring your water system for legionella”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/testing-monitoring-water-system.htm