Who Is Responsible for COSHH in the Workplace?

Responsibility for COSHH in the workplace ultimately sits with the employer.

Under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH), employers have legal duties to assess risks from substances hazardous to health and ensure exposure is prevented or adequately controlled.

However, effective COSHH management is rarely the responsibility of one person. Managers, supervisors, health and safety personnel, employees and external specialists may all have a role to play.

What are the employer's responsibilities under COSHH?

Employers need to understand which hazardous substances are present or generated by their activities, how people could be exposed and what controls are required.

Responsibilities can include:

• Identifying substances hazardous to health
• Assessing the risks from exposure
• Preventing exposure where reasonbly practicable
• Maintaining and checking control measures
• Providing employees with suitable information, instruction and training
• Monitoring exposure where required
• Providing appropriate health surveillance where required
• Establishing arrangements for relevant accidents and emergencies
• Reviewing COSHH assessments when necessary

The HSE provides further guidance on what employers need to do to prevent or adequately control exposure to hazardous substances.

Hazardous substances are not limited to labelled chemical products. Dusts, fumes, vapours, mists, gases and biological agents may also need to be considered. Our guide to what substances are covered by COSHH provides further examples.

Who should carry out a COSHH assessment?

Employers do not necessarily have to personally complete every COSHH assessment.

The assessment can be carried out by someone with appropriate knowledge, skills and experience. Depending on the organisation, this could be a manager, health and safety professional, competent employee or external specialist.

Delegating the task does not, however, remove the employer's overall responsibility.

Whoever carries out the assessment needs to understand both the hazardous substance and the activity being assessed.

This means considering factors such as:

• How the substance is used or generated
• Who could exposed
• The potential routes of exposure
• Existing control measures
• Relevant workplace exposure lmits, where applicable
• Whether additional controls are required

Our guide to what a COSHH assessment should include explains these requirements in more detail.

What are managers and supervisors responsible for?

Managers and supervisors often have an important role in making sure the controls identified through COSHH assessments are followed in practice.

Depending on their responsibilities, this could include ensuring:

• Employees follow appropriate working procedures
• Engineering controls such as extraction are used correctly
• Required PPE or RPE is available and used appropriately
• Problems with control measures are reported
• Employees receive relevant information and instruction
• Change to substances or processes are identified
• COSHH assessments remain relevant to the work

A COSHH assessment has limited value if the precautions identified within it are not implemented in the workplace.

Do employees have COSHH responsibilities?

Yes. Although the primary legal responsibilities sit with the employer, employees also have an important part to play.

Employees should follow the information, instruction and training provided and use the control measures established for their protection.

This can include:

• Following safe working procedures
• Using extraction and other engineering controls correctly
• Wearing PPE or RPE where required
• Storing and handling substances appropriately
• Reporting damaged or ineffective controls
• Reporting spills, incidents or unexpected exposure
• Attending relevant training
• Cooperating with appropriate health surveillance or exposure monitoring

Employees are also often well placed to identify changes or problems with a process.

For example, an operator may notice that extraction is no longer capturing dust effectively or that a chemical is now being used differently from the method described in the assessment. These issues should be reported so the risk can be reassessed.

Who is responsible for COSHH training?

The employer is responsible for ensuring employees receive appropriate information, instruction and training about the hazardous substances associated with their work.

Employees may need to understand:

• Which substances could harm their health
• How exposure could occur
• The precautions they need to follow
• How control measures should be used
• Relevant PPE or RPE requirements
• What to do if something goes wrong
• How to report probelms or concerns

Simply providing access to Safety Data Sheets or COSHH assessments does not necessarily mean employees have been adequately informed about the risks associated with their work.

Who is responsible for reviewing COSHH assessments?

The employer must ensure COSHH assessments remain suitable and sufficient, although responsibility for carrying out the review itself can be delegated.

An assessment may need to be reconsidered following changes such as:

• Introducing a new substance
• Chaging a product or process
• Introducing new machineryy
• Increasing production
• Changing existing control measures
• Receiving significant new hazard information
• An incident or case of work-related ill health
• Evidence that the existing assessment may no longer be valid

COSHH assessments should therefore be treated as working documents that reflect what is actually happening in the workplace.

Can a COSHH consultant take responsibility?

External specialists can support employers with COSHH assessments, exposure risks and control measures, particularly where substances or processes are more complex.

However, appointing an external consultant does not transfer the employer's overall responsibility for protecting employees.

The organisation still needs to ensure recommendations are implemented and that the controls identified through the assessment are used effectively.

For organisations requiring additional expertise, Spiers Safety provides COSHH assessment and hazardous substance management services, supporting employers with the assessment of hazardous substances, workplace exposure and practical control measures.