Rank: New forum user 
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Hi
In our staff Canteen we have a large urn type water boiler rather than a standard kettle.
The urn is one that must be topped up with cold water manually.
A contractor recently commented that the urn is not up to HSE guidelines as someone could deliberately contaminate the urn.
maybe over kill but I cant seem to find any guidance on this , and surely if someone wanted to they could deliberately contaminate a standard kettle full of water .
Has anyone come across any guidance or advice on this before ?
I would have thought , so long as the urn is PAT tested and in a suitable location all is well ?
cheers
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I love these contractor "experts" who know everything but never direct you to the specific guidance to justify their assertions.
If contamination is a possibility kettles, water coolers, drinking fountains and the like would be subject to strict controls - given that the URN you describe is:
1) Still commercially available
2) In common use in catering and non-catering establishments
3) Available to rent from providers
the only conclusion is that they have identified a minimal hygeine risk and tried to dress it up as "elf n safety".
Did they observe the lid placed on a contaminated surface and left whilst the urn was filled from empty? Many years ago when I worked in outside catering the URN was cleaned before filling at a new location and after that the lid was only raised briefly to top-up the water (place the lid on a work surface or leave it off for a long time and Chef soon corrected you).
Malicious contamination does not only happen with water URN's - saline drips, wine bottles, baby formula all bring various recent media reports to mind.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I love these contractor "experts" who know everything but never direct you to the specific guidance to justify their assertions.
If contamination is a possibility kettles, water coolers, drinking fountains and the like would be subject to strict controls - given that the URN you describe is:
1) Still commercially available
2) In common use in catering and non-catering establishments
3) Available to rent from providers
the only conclusion is that they have identified a minimal hygeine risk and tried to dress it up as "elf n safety".
Did they observe the lid placed on a contaminated surface and left whilst the urn was filled from empty? Many years ago when I worked in outside catering the URN was cleaned before filling at a new location and after that the lid was only raised briefly to top-up the water (place the lid on a work surface or leave it off for a long time and Chef soon corrected you).
Malicious contamination does not only happen with water URN's - saline drips, wine bottles, baby formula all bring various recent media reports to mind.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I love mysterious "HSE guidelines" which appear suddenly but fade away on closer scrutiny. They usually appear when there is a chance of making a quick buck. Sometimes they metamorphosise into non-existent British standards.
See similar in relation to fire and food safety.
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Rank: Super forum user
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If the water boiler needs filling up manually, I would consider the risk of it over turning / its stability etc to be a point to be checked.
A boiler holding 5/10 gallons of very hot/close to boiling water would leave some nasty scalds.
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Rank: Super forum user
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You need the British Standard for tea making as there are no regulations.
From memory I think it is BST42A24T
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