The tile of the thread is about no hot water. We've had this one before. Fee for intervention or not, the might of the HSE are not going to beating a path to your door for a temporary or transient situation that does not present a significant risk to your staff. Keep your staff informed, if necessary make temporary arrangements but keep a sense of proportion about it as well. Are they going to suffer significant ill health or injury? I doubt it. And as it is Friday. Some years ago, South Eastern Turkey, tent city, middle of winter, flying ops to enforce the no fly zone over Northern Iraq. Welfare facilities pretty basic. Porta loos, shower tent. Squadron Leader SENGO happens to mention one morning that the 'chaps' seem a 'little down'. "Might have something to do with the fact that we haven't had any hot water for 8 days sir" I replied!!! I'm still here!

It was just no hot water, plenty of cold. We did think about heating some up but then increased risk of burns and MH injuries came to mind! Thanks anyway - not had an irate emails so guessing all is back to normal now.

Docking36832 - Though you alluded to an emergency in your opening post, the non-availability of a supply of hot water in an office-type workplace for a few hours doesn't constitute an emergency. As you later added that nobody had made any complaints, it seems that the employees didn't think the situation constituted one either. By contrast, mind you, if there had been no water to even brew some tea, that would almost certainly require fairly urgent action to obtain sufficient water for this purpose! :-)

I presume by the reference to toilets you are concerned about hand washing. If this is the case then I would not worry. In fact, washing in hot water (i.e. about 40 deg C) actually damages the skin's natural barrier and it can take an hour or more to recover. Hands should only be washed in lukewarm water, and cold water is preferable to too hot. So there is no real health and safety issue here. Chris