Legionella risk assessment in Chesterfield

Updated 7 September 2026

Chesterfield is best known for the crooked spire of St Mary and All Saints, but its legionella-relevant stock comes from its coal and engineering heritage and its role as the main service centre for northeast Derbyshire. Chesterfield Royal Hospital anchors the healthcare estate, the town's markets and town centre hospitality add smaller commercial premises, and former industrial land has been redeveloped into offices, retail, and housing with new plant alongside older retained pipework. Victorian and Edwardian terraces across the town are widely let, keeping landlord risk assessments a steady part of local water hygiene work.

Local water supply

The mains water supplier for Chesterfield is Severn Trent Water (Severn Trent Water website). The mains supply is treated and controlled by the supplier, so your legionella duties begin where the water enters your premises. Anything downstream of the boundary stop tap (storage tanks, calorifiers, pipework, outlets) is your responsibility.

Water in the Chesterfield area is classed as Soft on the Drinking Water Inspectorate hardness scale (around 68.3 mg/l as CaCO₃), according to WaterGrade water quality data (single source - unverified). Harder water lays down scale inside calorifiers, cylinders, and mixing valves, and scale gives legionella a foothold while blunting temperature control, so in hard-water areas descaling and inspection belong in the written scheme of control. Check your supplier's postcode water-quality checker for the figure for your exact supply zone.

Legionnaires' disease in the East Midlands

The most recent regional surveillance figures recorded 58 confirmed cases of legionellosis in the East Midlands in 2023, a rate of 1.2 per 100,000 residents.

These are the confirmed figures UKHSA states explicitly; a full region-by-region table is not published, and surveillance counts only laboratory-confirmed, reported cases, so they are a floor rather than the true total. The national picture, with the trend since 2017, is on the Legionella Data Index. The regional figure changes nothing about your own duties: whatever the count, a non-domestic water system in Chesterfield still needs a risk assessment, a control scheme, and the records to show the scheme is being followed.

Typical cost in Chesterfield

Legionella risk assessment costs in Chesterfield depend more on the water system than on the location. A rough guide:

• Small premises, mains-fed only, no storage: £150 to £250
• Typical office or shop with a hot water cylinder: £200 to £400
• Care home, hotel, or school with stored hot and cold water: £400 to £800
• Premises with a cooling tower or evaporative condenser: from £800, often much higher

Cooling towers drive the cost up because they are notifiable to the local authority under the Notification of Cooling Towers and Evaporative Condensers Regulations 1992, and they need quarterly sampling and extensive cleaning. Get a tailored estimate with our cost calculator.

Legionella enforcement in the East Midlands

Prosecutions for legionella failings are usually brought under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, whether by the HSE, a local authority, or (in Scotland) the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. No case in our tracker is recorded in Chesterfield itself; the cases below are the most recent recorded elsewhere in the East Midlands, shown as regional context rather than local history. They are drawn from our legionella enforcement tracker, which records each one against its primary source:

Amey Community Limited, 2024 (Facilities management) — fined £600k. Facilities manager at HMP Lincoln, where a 71-year-old prisoner died of Legionnaires' disease in 2017. The firm had failed to act on a 2016 risk assessment, had no written control scheme, and did not monitor water temperatures.

Four Seasons Health Care Limited, 2016 (Care home) — fined £600k. A 90-year-old resident died of Legionnaires' disease at a Kirkby-in-Ashfield care home in 2012 after the company failed to properly manage legionella in the water system. Prosecuted by the local authority.

The failings behind these cases are consistent: no suitable risk assessment, no written scheme of control, monitoring not carried out, or records that could not show the controls happened. The full dataset is on the enforcement tracker, and legionella fines and prosecutions explains how the courts approach sentencing.

Find a legionella risk assessor in Chesterfield

We are building a directory of qualified water hygiene assessors in Chesterfield and across the UK. In the meantime, look for assessors who:

• Work for a company registered with the Legionella Control Association (the LCA is the main UK trade body for water hygiene)
• Hold a City & Guilds or equivalent qualification in legionella risk assessment
• Can provide references from similar premises in the Chesterfield area
• Will quote against a clear scope (number of outlets, inclusion of hot and cold surveys, whether sampling is included)

Legionella testing labs covering Chesterfield

Routine temperature monitoring is done on site, but where your risk assessment or written scheme calls for water sampling, the samples go to a laboratory for culture. None of the UKAS-accredited laboratories in our directory is based in Chesterfield itself, so the nearest UKAS-accredited labs are listed below — all accept postal samples, and posted sampling is how most premises use them:

• Feedwater Laboratories (UKAS no. 2234), turnaround ~10 days, from £82.68 per sample
• Eurofins Water Hygiene Testing UK Limited (UKAS no. 9658)
• ALS Environmental (ALS Laboratories (UK) Limited) (UKAS no. 1314)

Methods, turnaround times and published prices for the full directory are compared on the legionella testing labs page. Sampling is not a substitute for day-to-day control: a clear result records what was found at that outlet on that day, it never certifies a system as safe, and it sits alongside the routine checks in your written scheme of control, not instead of them.

Building types in Chesterfield

Different building types have specific legionella considerations. Browse the guides most relevant to Chesterfield premises:

• Landlords and rental properties
• Offices
• Care homes
• Hotels
• Schools
• Dental practices
• All building types