I think that its disgusting that the CPS have told there workers to continue working under all the stress they have any without taking into consideration they can catch a potentially fatal disease! They must be so reassured that they have been provided with handcream to wash their hands in. Would you even want to use the cold taps! What if they needed to make a brew or wash something. Surely Legionnaires is a notifiable disease and shouldn't there be a statement from the Public Health Authority to inform staff how safe it is rather that the CPS bigwigs deciding not to ask them to investigate for the sake of a few man-hours!

If this was my work, I would be refusing to work in the building, do people not remember what happened in Barrow in Furness. It is not safe and unfair to make people work in that environment, can you imagine the pressure they are under, wondering if they have contracted this fatal disease. Have they all been screened…..? No, probably not, they have been given hand gel. I bet the people who have made the decision to keep the staff in the building are based elsewhere. This is a disgrace; this is human lives we are talking about. What is more important than that? Get them re-located.

When i read this headline
Deadly bacteria found? i thought they had found a politician working or lord lucan.hheeehe

It seems strange to me that concerns are enough to ask staff not to use the hot water, but not enough to pose a risk to their health.
I am sure that I would not feel safe working in a building where it was known that this ‘deadly’ bacteria was present.

I'm sure the CPS know their way around a court room and what (by definition) constitutes evidence. Should one of their workers contract this serious condition this decision would appear wholly litigable and their (lack of) action surprises me.

Presuming the levels are low then there is little actual risk from office hand washing. Showers present a higher possible risk, but it is not clear if there are any in the building running of this hot water supply, or if levels are so low even this risk is remote.

What is very worrying however is that it “was detected during routine checks” in the hot & cold water system. You might have thought that the CPS would have wanted to comply with the criminal law. In the case of legionella this effectively means complying with the HSE's Approved code of practice for Legionella “L8”. L8 is very clear that the key defence is proper engineering risk assessment of the water system. It specifically says that “routine” biological testing is NOT an appropriate control measure, (for hot and cold water systems) unless the system is known to be dangerously out of control and cannot be brought under control. Other sorts of tests to a system (such as temperature testing ARE very much appropriate).

So either the CPS is a) flouting the law and has not done an appropriate risk assessment at all, b) has done an inadequate/incompetent one that does not take heed of the guidance, or c) it knows that its hot and cold water system is so badly controlled that it has to resort to biological testing.

Perhaps the Manchester Evening News might like to ask the CPS which of these three possible scenarios is actually the case.

why is every body accusing the CPS of not following ACoP L8 guidance as we do not know what is in place. ACoP L8 states that if the hygiene regime is temperature control and that if the temperatures are not within parameters then routine sampling is required. Further to this the article states that it is a multi-tenanted building with 14 storys to which the CPS are just one tenant, I would conclude from this that the water services are probably the landlords responsability and not the CPS. If the CPS are testing the water which is above the minimum standards required by ACoP L8 then they should be aplauded not critisised. From the report they have removed any possible risk by not using the hot water until the system has been Chlorinated, which again will be down to the landlord or property owner not a tenant. Please Editor research the guidance ACoP L8, get the facts of what has happened and just dont go for the CPS as they are a good story and scare munger all of us the public