Legionella risk assessment in Kingston upon Thames

Updated 15 September 2026

Kingston upon Thames is a historic riverside market town that still runs like a county town: the Bentalls centre and the surrounding streets form one of the biggest retail draws in the south-east, and Kingston University and Kingston Hospital give the town a large student and healthcare population. Purpose-built student blocks along the river and around the campuses bring communal plant rooms, boosted cold water and hundreds of showers per building, while the riverside pubs, restaurants and hire boats add hospitality demand of a distinctly tidal-Thames character. Older Victorian and Edwardian villas in Norbiton and Surbiton are widely converted to flats with shared storage tanks.

Local water supply

The mains water supplier for Kingston upon Thames is Thames Water (Thames 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.

Thames Water describes the water it supplies in the Kingston upon Thames area as hard to very hard (>200 mg/l typical) — the company's own statement, not a measured town figure, so no mg/l value is published (source: Thames Water). Water hardness still matters for scale: scale inside calorifiers, cylinders, and mixing valves gives legionella a foothold while blunting temperature control, so descaling and inspection belong in the written scheme of control. Check the supplier's postcode water-quality checker for the figure for your exact supply zone.

Legionnaires' disease: the national picture

UKHSA does not publish a separate surveillance figure for London, so no regional number is shown here. The most recent national figure recorded 472 confirmed cases of legionellosis across England and Wales in 2024 — the England & Wales average context, not a count for this region.

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

Typical cost in Kingston upon Thames

Legionella risk assessment costs in Kingston upon Thames 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 London

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 Kingston upon Thames itself; the cases below are the most recent recorded elsewhere in London, shown as regional context rather than local history. They are drawn from our legionella enforcement tracker, which records each one against its primary source:

St Christopher's Hospice, 2016 (Healthcare). The Sydenham hospice failed to appoint a competent person to control legionella in its hot and cold water system. A patient died of Legionnaires' disease in August 2012 and an orderly later spent 18 days in a coma. Convicted at Southwark Crown Court in 2016 of breaching HSWA ss.2 and 3; sentenced to a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs. No fine was imposed. Recorded as a prosecution with a death rather than a fine.

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 Kingston upon Thames

We are building a directory of qualified water hygiene assessors in Kingston upon Thames 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 Kingston upon Thames area
• Will quote against a clear scope (number of outlets, inclusion of hot and cold surveys, whether sampling is included)

Legionella testing labs covering Kingston upon Thames

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 Kingston upon Thames 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 Kingston upon Thames

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

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