Mr. Stephen Clarke, Managing Director for National Legionella Information Centre, awarded Mr. Karl Knipe its award for excellence. Kings Group has worked with its portfolio of landlords to comply with the law on having a legionella risk assessment carried out on their rented properties followed up with an ongoing duty of care procedure to ensure tenants health and safety are at the fore front of service.
Mr. Clarke states:
“Kings Group has won this award of £2,500 due to the way they have shown great care and timely support in promoting to their landlords the need to comply with the law on Legionnaires Risk Assessments. Every Landlord and Duty Holding Letting Agent must comply or face the possibility of fines and possible criminal prosecution being carried out against them. The difficulty in the rental sector is that this law is complicated and is not merely a paper exercise.
A lot of letting agents think that a single risk assessment is all that is required. However, it is not. The disease can occur at any time with the right conditions. A risk assessment ascertains if there is a risk at that time not in the future. Nlic supports an on going duty of care that supports the HSE requirements under (Regular Attention) derived from pages 1 to 7 of the HSE Part 2 HSG274 Guidelines.
The threat is from tenants whom become ill and yet the illness may not have been derived through the water system. But, a case could be brought against the landlord and duty holding agent who have not carried out a risk assessment and have an on-going duty of care procedure in place.
HSE state in their guidelines a number of other procedures that need to be managed out with the risk assessment and these actions are not being maintained thus creating a high risk of legal issues being instigated against the letting agent and or Landlord by the Tenant themselves.
“In Kings Group’s case, they have worked hard to adhere to the law and are now off the NLIC at Risk Register. Their timely determination to manage this legal duty has secured them a cheque for £2,500 to be used in marketing awareness in the local communities about the disease.”
Mr. Knipe adds: “We are delighted with the service NLIC provides and it’s a relief for an agency as large as Kings Group. Their service has been seamless and very supportive. Our Landlords are delighted and have peace of mind.” NLIC is the industry standard service provider managing an NLIC National at Risk Register of compliant Letting Agents and Landlords working to educate and promote the disease and the legal duties to the industry in the UK. This register is available to all HSE departments across the United Kingdom.
NLIC has its own risk management team carrying out risk assessments and maintaining the ongoing duty of care, without which a risk assessment is open to legalities against the letting agent and landlord alike.
The Nlic team go the extra mile and cover off actions that no other risk assessment company supplier does. https://ow.ly/T1Pf5
