COSHH Assessment Template

Why a safety data sheet is not a COSHH assessment

This is the single most common compliance failure in small cleaning businesses, and it is almost always made in good faith. The operator collects the manufacturers' safety data sheets, files them in a folder, and believes COSHH is dealt with.

It is not. A safety data sheet is the manufacturer's description of the product in general. A COSHH assessment is your description of how your staff use this product in your workplace, and what you have done to control the exposure that results.

The data sheet is where the information comes from. The assessment is what you do with it: the dilution you actually use, the ventilation in the rooms you actually clean, the PPE you actually issue, and the training you have actually given.

What has to be on the assessment

• The hazards, taken from section 2 of the safety data sheet.
• Who is exposed and how: which staff, by what route, for how long, how often.
• The controls, in the order the law expects: eliminate or substitute first, then control at source, then ways of working, and PPE last.
• The PPE specified, including the glove type, because not all gloves resist all chemicals.
• Storage and labelling arrangements.
• Emergency procedures: eye contact, skin contact, inhalation, ingestion, spill.
• Training: who has been trained on this product and when.
• The review date.

Note the order of the controls. Reaching straight for gloves and goggles is the most common weakness in a cleaning COSHH assessment: the law expects you to ask first whether a less hazardous product would do the job, and to record why not if the answer is no.

The three failures that come up at audit

Almost every COSHH problem found on a cleaning site is one of these three.

The third is the one that most often reveals the others. If the assessments and the cupboard do not match, an auditor reasonably concludes that neither is being maintained.

The mixing rule, and why it is not optional

Bleach mixed with an acidic descaler releases chlorine gas. Bleach mixed with ammonia releases chloramine vapour. Both cause serious respiratory injury and both happen in ordinary washrooms, usually because two products were used one after another in a confined cubicle rather than deliberately combined in a bucket.

This is the most frequent serious chemical incident in the cleaning trade, and it is entirely preventable by a rule that is easy to train and easy to check: never use two products on the same surface without rinsing between, and never combine anything.

Put it on the assessment, put it in the induction, and check that the cupboard does not make it easy: an acidic descaler stored next to bleach in an unlit cupboard is an invitation.