The file has quietly drifted
Purchasing switched a degreaser on price and the drum looked the same on the shelf. A supplier reissued a sheet to an inbox that no longer exists. The assessment still describes the old product.
Assessment of the substances your people use, store or create, with the controls, monitoring and training the regulations require, kept current when a product or a process changes.
Twenty minutes, no charge. Or call 07949 084819.
Carried out to COSHH 2002 and ACOP L5
Consultants in Cheshire and the West Midlands
Professional indemnity insured
Who this is for
COSHH files rarely fail loudly. They drift, and the drift only shows up when somebody external asks a question. If you recognise one of these, the Greenlight Call will tell you where you stand.
Purchasing switched a degreaser on price and the drum looked the same on the shelf. A supplier reissued a sheet to an inbox that no longer exists. The assessment still describes the old product.
A folder of sheets, filed and current, and nothing that says what happens when your people use those products in your building at your quantities.
An HSE visit, an insurer or a customer audit has asked how exposure is controlled, and the answer is spread across memory, email and one spreadsheet.
What is assessed
A safety data sheet describes a product in the abstract. A COSHH assessment describes exposure: who, how much, how often, through which route, and what is stopping it.
Not only what arrives in a drum. Dusts, fumes, mists, vapours, gases and biological agents generated by the process itself count, and are the ones most often missed.
The classification on the sheet the supplier issues now, checked rather than copied forward from whatever version is in the folder.
Inhalation, skin and eye contact, ingestion and injection, set against how much is used, how often, for how long and by whom.
Where the substance has a limit in EH40, whether exposure is likely to approach it, and what that means for the level of control and for monitoring.
Elimination, substitution and engineering control first, then how the work is organised, with respiratory protection and gloves as the last line rather than the first answer.
Whether the extraction fitted is the right type in the right place, and whether the thorough examination and test required at least every fourteen months has actually been done.
Whether the substance or the process brings either into scope under Regulations 10 and 11, and what would need to be put in place if it does.
What the people handling the substance have been told, and whether it matches what they are actually asked to do with it.
Spillage, first aid, eyewash and rescue. What happens on the day a control fails, rather than only on the days it works.
How it works
The inventory and the sheets can be gathered before anyone comes to site. What cannot be done remotely is watching the decant, the clean down and the maintenance job that happens twice a year.
Twenty minutes on what you use, how it is used, and what you already hold on paper.
We work through the substance list with you and gather the current safety data sheets in advance.
The work observed as it is actually done, including the tasks that never appear on a process map.
Written up, checked against the sheets and against the work, and signed off by a named assessor.
A reissued sheet, a substituted product or a changed process starts a re-review, rather than waiting for an anniversary that nobody has diarised.
What it costs
Quoted per site, after the Greenlight Call
COSHH support is delivered through a retained arrangement rather than as a one-off visit. A consultant putting their name to your assessments has to know the site and stay with it, and that does not work as a single day out. The figure follows the number of substances, the number of sites and the complexity of the processes, and it is agreed in writing before anything starts. Air sampling and exposure monitoring, thorough examination and testing of extraction, occupational health surveillance and any physical remedial work are scoped and quoted separately, and the action plan tells you what to order and roughly what it costs.
How the work is delivered
A sheet written for a sealed warehouse tells you very little about a hand decant into an open tray in a room with one wall fan. The assessment has to describe the second thing.
The question is how much of it gets into someone, by what route, on a normal day and on a bad one. Everything else follows from that.
Extraction before respirators. Respiratory protection is the control that fails quietly, because nobody hears a poor face fit.
Products used the same way at the same quantities can share an assessment. Products that merely look similar cannot, and separating them is most of the work.
Every assessment carries the assessor who signed it and the date they did. That is what makes it a record rather than a document.
What this assessment is built to
Assessments are carried out by professionally qualified assessors and technically reviewed before the report reaches you. Registrations and CVs are available on request.
Proof
Straight answers
Yes. Regulation 6 of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 says an employer must not carry out work liable to expose employees to a substance hazardous to health unless a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk has been made, together with the steps needed to meet the rest of the regulations. Where five or more people are employed, the significant findings and the steps taken to prevent or control exposure have to be recorded.
No. The sheet describes the product. The assessment describes what happens when your people use it, in your building, at your quantities, with your ventilation and for as long as the job takes. Two sites can hold the same sheet and need completely different controls. Filing the sheets is a useful first step and it is not an assessment.
Anything classified as hazardous under the CLP Regulation, any substance with a workplace exposure limit in EH40, biological agents, and dust of any kind present in the air at a concentration of 10 mg/m³ inhalable or 4 mg/m³ respirable as an eight hour average. That last one catches a great deal that nobody purchased: wood dust, flour dust, silica from cutting, welding fume and rubber process fume are all in scope even though they arrive as a by-product of the work rather than in a container.
Asbestos and lead have their own regulations, as do radioactive substances. Substances that are hazardous only because they are flammable or explosive fall under DSEAR rather than COSHH, and we can advise whether both apply, or carry out a DSEAR risk assessment alongside. Substances hazardous only because they are at high pressure or at extreme temperature also sit outside COSHH. Plenty of materials fall under both regimes, which is one of the more common gaps we find.
Regulation 6 requires the assessment to be reviewed regularly, and reviewed forthwith where there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or where there has been a significant change in the work. That is a set of triggers rather than a date in a diary. In practice the triggers are a reissued safety data sheet, a substituted product, a changed process, a new or altered control, or an incident. The question worth asking is not how often you review, but who notices when something changes.
Sometimes, and the assessment is what tells you. Regulation 10 requires exposure monitoring where it is needed to show that adequate control is being maintained, or where the substance and process appear in Schedule 5. Regulation 11 requires health surveillance where employees are exposed to a substance and process listed in Schedule 6, or where there is an identifiable disease linked to the exposure, a reasonable likelihood of it occurring and a valid way of detecting it. Both are carried out by specialist providers and are scoped and quoted separately.
No. It comes through a retained arrangement. A consultant putting their name to your assessments needs to know your site and stay with it, and that only works as an ongoing relationship rather than a single visit. Retained support is where COSHH sits, alongside the named competent person, the helpline and the site visits.
Consultants are based in Cheshire and the West Midlands, and most of our work sits in the corridor between them: Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, the North West and Merseyside, Shropshire and the Midlands, and across into Yorkshire. Beyond that corridor we work nationwide. Wherever the site is, the price you are quoted after the Greenlight Call is the price.
Next step
Five boxes, about a minute. Every enquiry is read by a consultant rather than a call centre, and we come back to you within one working day. If the honest answer is that your assessments are sound and two of them need updating, we will tell you that instead of quoting for a programme.
Would rather talk now? Call 07949 084819 or email enquiries@yorkgreen.uk.
We reply within one working day.