Health and Safety

Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH)

“Two members of staff were very happy with the excellent First Aid training they completed last week. They found it very informative especially with the latest information about defibrillators. Thank you to The Health & Safety Dept.“

Alba, Beverage Company, 16 April 2026

“We particularly value the friendliness and responsiveness of the service and are confident that we have protected our organisation from potential risks and liabilities in these important yet complex areas.”

16 April 2026

If your business handles hazardous substances, you're legally required to manage the risks they pose. Our team carries out COSHH assessments that meet HSE expectations, helps you put proper control measures in place, and keeps your business compliant - without you having to learn the regulations from scratch.

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What is COSHH?

COSHH stands for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health. It's the set of UK regulations that requires employers to control the substances in their workplace that could harm their employees, things like chemicals, fumes, dust and biological agents.

In short, if your business uses or creates anything that could be harmful to health, COSHH applies to you. And the law is clear: it's the employer's responsibility to make sure those risks are properly managed.

A COSHH assessment is the process of identifying and assessing risks from hazardous substances, usually recorded in a written assessment. It looks at the substances in use, the people who could be exposed, and the controls in place to keep everyone safe. Get it wrong and you're not just risking your employees' health, you're risking enforcement action from the HSE.

Do I need a COSHH assessment?

If your business uses or produces hazardous substances, then yes. And that covers more workplaces than people often realise.

You'll need a COSHH assessment if your team works with cleaning products, paints, adhesives, fuels, solvents, dust (from wood, stone or flour), fumes, gases, or biological agents. The same goes for any substance created during your processes, even if you never bought it in.

COSHH assessments should be reviewed whenever there is reason to believe they are no longer valid, or where there has been a significant change. Many businesses also choose to review them annually as a matter of good practice.

If you're not sure where you stand, we can take a look and tell you. Get in touch and we'll have a quick chat about your setup.

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How we help with COSHH

COSHH regulations are complex and can be hard to navigate, especially if you haven't dealt with them before. Our experts can support and guide your business through the maze of COSHH, offering practical help and sensible advice every step of the way.

We come and look at how your business actually works, then build COSHH assessments that fit. We don't rely on off-the-shelf templates or hand you forty pages of jargon, and what you end up with is a set of clear documents your team can actually use, with the risks identified and the controls spelled out in plain English.

As well as the assessments themselves, our team can help with:

Identifying the hazardous substances in use across your sites
Reviewing your existing control measures and pointing out the gaps
Managing your safety data sheets so they're up to date and accessible
Checking exposure against workplace exposure limits (WELs)
Writing emergency procedures for spills, leaks and accidental exposure
Providing COSHH training for your staff and managers
Reviewing your COSHH paperwork year on year as your business grows

Let our team take the reins on COSHH, so you can focus on running your business.

How a COSHH assessment is carried out

A proper COSHH assessment follows a clear process. Skip a step and you end up with paperwork that won't stand up to scrutiny, from your employees, from a client doing due diligence, or from the HSE.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Identify the hazardous substances. We walk the site, talk to your team, and pull together a list of everything in use. This often picks up substances that nobody had thought to flag.

Step 2: Decide who could be harmed and how. Employees, contractors, visitors, cleaners. We look at how each substance could cause harm; breathing it in, getting it on the skin, splashing it in the eyes, swallowing it.

Step 3: Evaluate the risks. How likely is exposure? How serious would the harm be? And are the current controls actually doing the job?

Step 4: Decide on control measures. We follow the proper hierarchy: eliminate the substance if possible, substitute for something safer, engineer the risk out, put procedures in place, and use PPE as a last line of defence.

Step 5: Record everything. Clear, written assessments your team can read and follow. Colour-coded so you can see at a glance what's high risk and what isn't.

Step 6: Review. Whenever there's reason to think the assessment is no longer valid or something significant has changed, and ideally once a year as good practice.

Most businesses get the first two steps right and trip up on three and four. That's where having a fresh, experienced set of eyes makes the difference.

Get a COSHH assessment done properly

COSHH regulations explained

The full name is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. They're the UK law that sets out how employers have to manage the risks from hazardous substances at work.

In simple terms, the regulations say employers must:

Assess the risks before work with hazardous substances starts
Put proper controls in place to prevent or reduce exposure
Keep those controls working and review them over time
Monitor exposure where it's needed
Provide health surveillance where the risks call for it
Give employees the information, instruction and training they need
Have a plan for accidents, spills and emergencies

The HSE enforces COSHH, and the consequences of getting it wrong can be serious; improvement notices, prohibition notices, fines, and in the worst cases, prosecution. The regulations apply to every business, whether you've got two employees or two hundred.

What the law doesn't tell you is how to actually do any of this in your workplace. That's where a good COSHH assessment, and the right support behind it, makes all the difference.

COSHH training and ongoing support

A COSHH assessment is only useful if the people doing the work actually understand it. The regulations make it clear that employers have to give their staff the information, instruction and training they need to work safely with hazardous substances.

We can help with:

COSHH awareness training for staff who work with hazardous substances day to day
Manager-level training for the people responsible for implementing controls and supervising others
Refresher sessions when something in your assessment changes
Toolbox talks for site-based teams in construction and similar industries

Training can be delivered on-site, online or as a mix of both. We'll find what works for your team.

COSHH policy and documentation

A lot of our clients also need help with their COSHH policy, the document that sets out how the business manages hazardous substances as a whole.

A good COSHH policy:

States your commitment to controlling exposure to hazardous substances
Spells out who's responsible for what
References the COSHH assessments that sit underneath it
Fits properly into your wider health and safety setup

If you haven't got one, we'll build it. If you have but it's been gathering dust, we'll review it against the current regulations and how your business actually runs today.

Common substances we assess

COSHH covers a wide range of substances, and the mix is different in every business. The ones we come across most often include:

Cleaning products: bleach, descalers, degreasers, disinfectants
Construction substances: silica dust, cement, wood dust, solvents, adhesives
Manufacturing chemicals: welding fume, machining coolants, paints, lubricants
Healthcare substances: disinfectants, sterilants, cytotoxic drugs, anaesthetic gases
Food sector substances: sanitisers, allergens, flour dust
Office substances: toner, cleaning products, occasional maintenance chemicals
Biological agents: in healthcare, labs, waste handling and agriculture

If your business uses something not on the list, that's fine. We assess what you actually use, not what a template says you might.

Pricing

There's no fixed price for a COSHH assessment because every business is different. A small office with a couple of cleaning products needs a very different scope to a manufacturing site with hundreds of substances and complex processes.

What we can tell you upfront is this:

We give a fixed-fee quote after a quick chat about your setup
Most SMEs find that outsourcing COSHH works out far more cost-effective than trying to do it in-house
We offer ongoing retainers for businesses that want year-round H&S support, with COSHH built in
One-off project work is available if you just need a baseline assessment done properly

Get a fixed-fee quote

Commonly asked COSHH questions

Who can carry out a COSHH assessment?

Whilst it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure a COSHH assessment is carried out, they may not actually write the assessment themselves. Large organisations often have an individual or a team or a team employed who is responsible for health and safety. Smaller companies may appoint a ‘competent person’ who can assist and advise on these matters. The person must have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to carry out the assessment properly, as well as a good understanding of hazard and risk.

How often should I review a COSHH assessment?

A COSHH assessment should be reviewed at least annually, or every time a relevant change is made within the work environment. For example, they should be reviewed if there are any reasons to believe the original assessment is no longer valid, such as reports are received from supervisors that there are defects in control systems, or new substances are introduced to the workplace or being produced by the workplace. If you have any reason to think your COSHH assessment may need to be updated, it’s vital to check.

What is the difference between a COSHH assessment and a risk assessment?

A risk assessment identifies the hazardous properties of a substance and therefore highlights its potential to cause harm. A COSHH assessment examines the circumstances that a substance is being used in, and therefore highlights the actual risk that the substance could cause harm.

The COSHH assessment is designed to ensure that correct decisions are made about the control measures which should be taken to prevent or control substances that are hazardous to health. A more general risk assessment is the starting point of a COSHH assessment as it only provides information about the substance itself, and not advice about how to control it.

Do I need to provide employees with a copy of the COSHH assessment?

All employees must have access to both the COSHH assessment and relevant data sheets for all substances that they work with or around that are hazardous to health.

It is necessary for employers to provide employees with comprehensive information about the risks, hazards and controls measures relating to hazardous substances. They must also provide training and instruction in order for the employee to be able to use the control measures.

What's a safety data sheet, and how does it fit with COSHH?

A safety data sheet (SDS) is a document supplied with many hazardous substances, describing what it is, what it can do, how to handle it and what to do if something goes wrong. It's the starting point for a COSHH assessment, but it isn't the assessment itself. The SDS tells you about the substance. The COSHH assessment tells you what happens when you actually use it in your workplace.

What happens if the HSE finds we don't have proper COSHH assessments?

It depends on how serious it is. A first-time gap with no harm done may mean an improvement notice and a deadline to put things right. Ongoing failure, or actual harm to an employee, can lead to prosecution and significant fines. COSHH breaches are consistently among the most common enforcement actions the HSE takes in UK workplaces.

Can we use COSHH templates from the internet?

Templates can be a starting point, but generic ones don't meet the regulations because they don't reflect your specific substances, processes or people. The HSE's own COSHH Essentials sheets are useful for very simple cases, most businesses are better off with bespoke assessments, especially in regulated sectors.

How much does a COSHH assessment cost?

It depends on the scope of the work, such as how many substances, how many sites and how complex the work is. Most SMEs find it works out cheaper than recruiting in-house, and far cheaper than the consequences of getting it wrong. The best way to get an accurate figure is to get in touch and talk it through with our team.