The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister received information about the 2002 fatality following an approach by its officials to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). This information comprised a copy of the HSE factual report into the accident and a covering letter.
HSE has made it clear that at the time of the fatality, it considered the circumstances which led up to the accident to be very rare. The information passed to ODPM was taken into account in our work with relevant trade and industry bodies to develop minimum standards of competence for the Building Regulations Competent Persons Schemes and in our preparations for a planned review of part g of the building regulations to fully consider all aspects of hot water safety.
Neither HSE nor CLG took any further action to disseminate the information from the report of the 2002 accident more widely.
The Health and Safety Executive issued a safety alert in July 2007 detailing the causes of the accident and the typical warning signs to watch out for. This alert was sent to a wide range of stakeholders including housing associations, local government and local authority housing departments. We are working with HSE and others to ensure that any gaps there may be in awareness of this particular risk are closed. In particular we intend to formally ask the Housing Corporation to bring the HSE alert and advice to the attention of housing associations and are working with HSE to re-issue the HOUSE advice and alert to all local authorities both in their capacity as an enforcement authority and as a landlord.