Piperdam 2011: the holiday-lodge hot tub that killed a guest

Piperdam Golf & Leisure Resort Limited was fined £120,000 in 2011 after a guest died of Legionnaires’ disease contracted during a stay in one of the lodges at its golf and leisure resort near Dundee. The strain that killed him was found in the lodge’s hot tub and two of its shower heads. No suitable risk assessment had been carried out, and the control measures were inadequate.

This is the case in our legionella enforcement tracker that speaks most directly to anyone running a holiday let: the setting was a lodge resort, the equipment was a hot tub and ordinary showers, and the person who died was a paying guest.

What happened

In 2008, Edward Warnes, 60, spent a week with his family in one of the lodges at the Piperdam resort near Dundee. On returning home to East Anglia, Mr Warnes and his partner fell ill with what they believed was flu. His partner, who suffered a short, feverish form of the illness, recovered. Mr Warnes did not: he was admitted to hospital on 9 April, where blood tests confirmed Legionnaires’ disease, his condition deteriorated, and life support was withdrawn on 11 April.

Angus Council investigated, and established that the strain of legionella that caused Mr Warnes’ death was present in the hot tub and in two of the shower heads in the lodge where the family had stayed. That finding is what the whole case turns on: the source was not an obscure piece of industrial plant but the two most ordinary features of a holiday lodge — the hot tub guests relax in and the showers they wash in.

The operating company, registered as Piperdam Golf & Leisure Resort Limited (Companies House SC150138), was prosecuted by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service following the council’s investigation. In March 2011 it pleaded guilty at Forfar Sheriff Court to breaching sections 3(1) and 33(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974: section 3(1) is the duty to conduct the undertaking so that people other than employees — here, the guests — are not exposed to risk, and section 33(1) makes failing in that duty a criminal offence.

The failings the investigation found

The recorded failings were two, and they sit at the very start of water-safety management, which is what made them fatal:

• No suitable risk assessment. The company had never properly assessed the risk from the lodge water systems, hot tub included. Everything that ACOP L8 and HSG282 expect — the controls, the checks, the records — flows from that assessment. Without it, the rest cannot exist.
• Inadequate control measures. The controls that were in place were not adequate to keep the hot tub and showers safe. In a hot tub — warm, recirculated, aerated water used by a constant turnover of different guests — an inadequate regime is exactly how legionella reaches dangerous levels.

Neither failing is exotic or hard to spot, and that is the point. They are the first two items in any competent holiday-let water-safety regime, and their absence killed a guest.

The fine and costs

The fine was set at £150,000 and cut to £120,000 because the company admitted the offence early. The case predates the 2016 sentencing guideline that now sizes health and safety fines by culpability, harm and turnover; the later cases in the tracker show how sharply penalties have risen since. Even so, it remains one of the clearest holiday-sector legionella prosecutions on record — a guest, a lodge, a hot tub, and a six-figure fine in the sheriff court.

The lesson for holiday-let owners

For anyone running a holiday let — a lodge, a cottage, a caravan with a hot tub — the lessons are direct:

• The hot tub is the highest-risk item you own. Warm, aerated, recirculated water used by a rapid turnover of guests is the textbook legionella scenario, and it has its own HSE guidance, HSG282. The regime it sets out — disinfection, testing, cleaning, records — is the standard a holiday-let hot tub is judged against. See hot tubs and spa pools.
• Shower heads carry the same duty. Two of the positive findings here were shower heads. Regular cleaning and descaling of shower heads, and running them through when a let stands empty, is basic control, not best practice.
• Void periods are your enemy. A lodge that stands empty between bookings lets water stagnate at growth temperatures in pipework and outlets. A documented flushing routine at changeover and during voids is the control.
• The assessment comes first, and the records prove it. No suitable risk assessment had been carried out at Piperdam, and that absence anchored the prosecution. Assess each let, act on what you find, and keep the log book that shows you did.

None of the controls is complicated: assess the water system in each let, run any hot tub to the HSG282 regime, keep temperatures in range, flush at changeovers, clean the shower heads, and write it all down. The free risk assessment builder is an indicative starting point for structuring that assessment — it records and organises what you find; it never certifies a system as safe. For the wider record of how these cases end, see the enforcement tracker and legionella fines and prosecutions.

Source: The Scotsman’s report on the 2011 sentencing. Figures are recorded as published in our legionella enforcement tracker dataset; check the linked source before relying on any figure.