Who Is Responsible for COSHH in the Workplace?

The employer holds the primary responsibility for compliance with COSHH. Assessment and day-to-day actions can be delegated to competent managers, safety professionals, supervisors or consultants, but the employer remains accountable for ensuring exposure is prevented or adequately controlled.

Employees also have duties to use controls, follow instruction and report problems. Effective COSHH therefore depends on clear ownership across the organisation, not one person called “the COSHH officer”.

What is the employer responsible for?

Under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, employers must manage risks from substances hazardous to health. HSE summarises the core duties as identifying hazards, assessing risk, preventing or controlling exposure, maintaining controls, providing information and training, monitoring exposure where appropriate, arranging health surveillance where required and planning for emergencies.

The employer should provide:

• A process for approving and purchasing chemical products.
• Access to current safety data sheets and other evidence.
• Suitable and sufficient task-based assessments.
• Engineering and procedural controls selected through the hierarchy.
• Examination, maintenance and testing of controls.
• Information, instruction, training and supervision.
• Exposure monitoring and health surveillance where indicated.
• Emergency arrangements and incident learning.
• Time, budget and authority for actions to be completed.

Delegating a form to a junior employee without access to the workplace or power to fix defects does not discharge these duties.

Who can carry out a COSHH assessment?

A COSHH assessment can be completed by an internal employee or an external adviser, provided the person is competent for the work. Competence combines relevant knowledge, practical understanding and the ability to recognise the limits of one's expertise.

The assessor should understand:

• The substances and forms generated or used.
• How the task is really performed, including non-routine work.
• Routes and patterns of exposure.
• The hierarchy and reliability of control measures.
• Applicable workplace exposure limits.
• Maintenance, monitoring and health-surveillance needs.
• Vulnerable groups and foreseeable emergencies.

A low-complexity cleaning task may be within a trained manager's competence. A process involving carcinogens, respiratory sensitisers, complex local exhaust ventilation or uncertain exposure may need occupational hygiene, engineering or occupational health expertise.

Does a consultant take over legal responsibility?

No. A consultant can provide competent specialist advice and produce assessment evidence, but the employer must supply accurate information, check the work applies to the site and implement the recommendations.

Agree the scope before appointment. Clarify whether the consultant will observe tasks, sample exposure, review controls, train staff or simply review documents.

The employer should challenge generic outputs. An attractive report is not suitable if it describes the wrong product, misses maintenance work or recommends controls that cannot be used.

What should managers and supervisors do?

Managers convert policy into resources and priorities. Supervisors make the controls work during each shift.

Their practical responsibilities commonly include:

Small businesses may combine roles, but the functions still need owners. One person cannot verify every store, task and control without input from those doing the work.

What are employees responsible for?

Employees should make full and proper use of control measures, use personal protective equipment as instructed, follow hygiene and emergency procedures and report defects or symptoms through the defined route.

They should not bypass interlocks, switch off extraction to reduce noise, mix unapproved products or use an unlabelled container. They should participate honestly in training, monitoring and health-surveillance processes.

These duties do not justify blaming workers for a badly designed system. If a control is impractical, unavailable or routinely defeated by production pressure, management must address the underlying cause.

Who owns the chemical register and SDS?

Assign one governance owner and local stock owners. Procurement can obtain supplier documents, while department owners verify physical stock and EHS checks regulatory and assessment implications.

A workable change path is:

1. Procurement identifies a new or substituted product.
2. The product owner obtains and verifies the SDS.
3. A competent person screens COSHH, DSEAR and storage needs.
4. The department confirms the real task and controls.
5. An authorised person approves use and actions.
6. Supervisors brief staff and release the product.
7. The register records location, version and assessment links.

The Safe Foundry workflow supports the SDS-to-assessment part of this chain, while the employer supplies site context and approval. See the feature overview and help centre for product details.

Who decides whether health surveillance is needed?

The employer must determine the need through the risk assessment and arrange an appropriate scheme. A competent occupational health professional often advises on the surveillance method and interprets individual results.

Health surveillance is not a substitute for control. It is used where identifiable disease or adverse effect is linked to the exposure, valid detection methods exist and workplace conditions make the effect reasonably likely despite controls.

The employer holds health records required by the scheme, while confidential medical records remain with the occupational health professional.

Who is responsible for contractors?

Both the host and contractor need coordination. The host should understand chemicals contractors bring to the premises and communicate site hazards and controls. The contractor employer remains responsible for its employees, equipment and assessments.

Agree responsibility for storage, permits, ventilation, waste, spills and emergencies before work begins. Do not assume a contractor's SDS pack proves the task has been assessed in the host environment.

Who approves and reviews assessments?

The organisation should define authorship, technical review and operational approval. Separating these functions can be useful for higher-risk tasks: the assessor evaluates risk, the department confirms practicality and a competent reviewer checks technical quality.

Review when the assessment may no longer be valid or significant change occurs, including product reformulation, new equipment, altered quantity, control failure, monitoring result, worker concern, incident or near miss.

HSE's COSHH assessment guidance explains the employer process and the requirement to record significant findings where there are five or more employees.

How should responsibility be documented?

Use a simple responsibility matrix with named roles, deputies and escalation routes. Include who can approve products, stop work, fund actions, close defects and release quarantined stock.

The clearest accountability test is practical: when a new solvent arrives with a changed SDS, everyone should know who checks it, who reviews affected tasks, who changes controls and who tells the workers. If each step belongs to “someone in safety”, the system has no real owner.