The acceptable lead limit in water is being halved – a regulatory change that risks becoming a major liability for healthcare property owners. While the deadline for full compliance is still a decade away, the reality of managing live, ageing healthcare assets means that every refurbishment or mismatched fitting installed today could be a non-compliance issue tomorrow, as Ayrton Byng, specification manager at Brymec, explains.
There is a comforting fiction taking hold in NHS estates planning. It goes something like this: 'The lead limit in drinking water is moving from 10 micrograms per litre to 5, but the transition runs to January 2036, so we have a decade to figure it out. Budget cycles can absorb it, so refurbishments scheduled for the late 2020s can carry on as planned. The procurement frameworks we are tendering against today will be fine.'
Unfortunately, they will not.
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