Updated on October 19, 2026
Food Safety, Health & Safety
12 min read
What is a COSHH assessment? The 5-step guide for UK food businesses
From heavy-duty cleaning degreasers to cooking fumes and airborne dusts, managing hazardous substances is a daily reality for teams across a range of workplaces.
The Health and Safety Executive reported that 1.9 million workers suffer from work-related ill health, with 11,000 lung disease deaths a year estimated to be linked to past exposures at work.
The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations are key to preventing hazardous substances from causing long-term harm to your employees, customers, and anyone who sets foot on your premises.
Find out what a COSHH assessment should include and how to stay compliant.
Key summary
| What is a COSHH assessment? | A COSHH assessment is a type of risk assessment that evaluates the potential health risks from hazardous chemicals, fumes, dusts, and biological agents stored or generated on your premises. |
| What does a COSHH assessment cover? | A COSHH assessment should cover the identification of hazards, the assessment of risks, and outline how those risks will be controlled. As part of the assessment, all findings should be logged and the control measures regularly reviewed. |
| How many steps are there to COSHH compliance? | There are five core steps:
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| Who has to complete a COSHH assessment? | Any UK employer who uses, stores, or creates hazardous substances has a legal responsibility to carry out a COSHH risk assessment. |
What is COSHH?
COSHH, which stands for the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, is a piece of UK legislation that protects workers from exposure to hazardous substances. The regulations make it a legal duty for employers to conduct a COSHH assessment.
A COSHH assessment is a thorough risk assessment that looks at how chemical and biological hazards are stored, handled, and generated across your facilities, and puts controls in place to mitigate them. Under COSHH regulations, your risk assessments must be tailored to actual working practices.
COSHH applies to a wide spectrum of workplace elements, not just things labelled as ‘hazardous’, including:
- Cleaning chemicals — Heavy-duty oven cleaners, floor degreasers, sanitisers, and descalers.
- Airborne particles — Flour, wood, and silica dust.
- Gases and fumes — Cooking fumes containing oil mists, smoke, and carbon monoxide from gas-fired equipment.
- Biological agents — Germs, bacteria, and spores.
What should a COSHH risk assessment include?
When an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) inspector evaluates your premises, they’re looking for documented proof that any hazardous substances are managed safely within your daily workflows.
A compliant COSHH risk assessment document acts as a clear record, detailing the specific risks present across your kitchen, cleaning stores, or wider premises and explains how your business keeps team members safe.
A complete written assessment must cover the following core areas:
- The substance and where it is used — The name of the product, where it’s stored, where it’s used on-site, and why your team needs it.
- How dangerous it is — Clear details of red-and-white diamond hazard symbols, legal warnings (like skin burns or toxicity), and official Workplace Exposure Limits (WELs). WELs are limits that cap the maximum concentration of airborne hazards — like cleaning chemical vapours, dust, or cooking oil mists — that your team can safely breathe over a set period during their shift.
- How it could harm someone — A breakdown of how the substance can enter the body during a shift, whether through breathing in fumes, skin contact, eye splashes, or accidental swallowing.
- Who might be at higher risk — Specific checks for team members or visitors who need extra protection, including pregnant employees, young workers, or staff with existing health conditions like asthma or dermatitis.
- How to control the risk and handle emergencies — The physical controls you need (like ventilation hoods or safe dosing tools), required Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), correct disposal steps, and immediate first-aid instructions.
If your business stores Safety Data Sheets (SDS), it’s important to know that SDSs are separate from COSHH risk assessments. An SDS explains the safe supply, handling, and use of chemicals, and is essential if a chemical is hazardous and is needed for use at work. However, it isn’t the same as a completed risk assessment.
Annabel Kyle, Technical Director at Food Alert, highlights:
“Presenting a thick binder of Safety Data Sheets isn’t proof of COSHH compliance. An SDS details the chemical properties of a product, but it doesn’t explain how your kitchen porter safely dilutes it or how long your line chef is exposed to cleaning vapours. A compliant risk assessment bridges that gap by adapting those technical guidelines to your specific physical layout, equipment, and shift patterns.” [
How to complete a COSHH assessment
By breaking down your operations into a clear, structured workflow, you can identify hidden hazards, protect your shift teams, and make sure your premises remain compliant.
Step 1: Identify which substances are hazardous
Start by building a complete inventory of all chemicals and substances stored, handled, or generated throughout your venue.
- Create a comprehensive inventory — Walk through every area of your premises, including kitchen prep lines, chemical store cupboards, cellar areas, and waste stations, to log all substances in use.
- Account for process-generated hazards — Remember that hazardous substances aren’t always delivered in a bottle. Your inventory must also include hazards produced during daily operations.
- Gather key substance information — Collect detailed information about each substance, including the form it takes (such as liquid, gas, powder, or vapour), how it enters the body, the health harm it could cause, and how it’s stored and handled daily.
- Check labels and Safety Data Sheets — Look for red-and-white diamond-shaped hazard symbols and warnings on packaging. If a label doesn’t offer much information, consult the manufacturer’s Safety Data Sheet. If an SDS is missing or out of date, request the latest version directly from your supplier.
- Group low-risk substances — High-risk substances, like those linked to severe health risks, must be evaluated individually. However, to save time during administrative checks, you can group substances with similar hazardous properties and control measures together.
Step 2: Determine who is at risk
Once your inventory is complete, you need to assess who could come into contact with these hazards during a typical operational cycle.
- Look beyond your core shift team — Consider anyone who enters the workspace, including kitchen staff, front-of-house teams, night cleaners, maintenance contractors, and visiting guests.
- Identify vulnerable workers — Evaluate whether specific team members need extra protection. Vulnerable groups include pregnant employees, young workers, staff with disabilities, or team members with known medical conditions, like asthma.
- Understand how people might be exposed — Look closely at daily tasks to evaluate the specific ways staff or visitors could come into contact with a substance during their shift. This could be through breathing in vapours or dust, direct skin contact, eye splashes, or accidental ingestion.
- Determine exposure frequency and duration — Assess how often and for how long team members are exposed to each substance during routine work.
- Consider health screening — Issuing confidential health screening questionnaires can help you spot pre-existing conditions, like skin allergies or respiratory issues, before exposure occurs.
Step 3: Assess the risk
Review the likelihood and potential severity of harm from each identified substance under real working conditions. Gather insights by combining technical SDS data, supplier advice, and direct feedback from staff on the floor.
Key questions to ask during your evaluation include:
- How severe are the potential health impacts?
- How likely are staff to be exposed to each substance?
- How much of the substance is handled during a typical shift?
- Are team members adequately trained in handling the substance safely?
- Are the existing control measures enough to prevent exposure?
Step 4: Put protective measures in place
If your evaluation identifies significant risks, you must implement appropriate safeguards. Always follow the established hierarchy of controls to manage risks effectively:
- Eliminate the risk — Ask whether the substance is genuinely needed. Can you adapt the operational process to remove the chemical hazard altogether?
- Substitute the hazard — If elimination isn’t possible, can you replace the substance with a safer alternative?
- Contain the hazard — Can you modify your processes to reduce exposure or release of the substance? These include using automated dosing systems, local exhaust ventilation (LEV), or fume extraction hoods to limit your employees’ exposure.
Annabel advises:
“When putting control measures in place, don’t jump straight to supplying personal protective equipment like gloves and goggles. While PPE can be a necessary safety option, it’s usually your final line of defence. First, think about whether you can substitute a corrosive chemical for a milder alternative, or automate chemical dilution using fixed dosing units. Reducing human exposure at the source makes long-term compliance much easier for shift teams to keep up consistently.”
Step 5: Record, monitor, and review
If your business employs five or more people, you are legally required to keep a written record of your COSHH assessments; however, it’s recommended to do this regardless of headcount.
- Document your findings — Clear documentation makes sure that protocols are easy for staff to understand and review. Your records should outline the substance name, where and why it’s used, its hazardous properties, potential exposure pathways, who’s at risk, and the exact control measures put in place.
- Set clear review triggers — Revisit your assessments whenever a new substance is introduced, operational processes change, or a supplier updates an SDS. If no operational changes occur, carry out formal reviews at least once a year.
- Monitor day-to-day execution — Regularly check frontline routines to confirm that staff are consistently following the safety procedures and using protective equipment correctly.
COSHH assessment records should be kept for as long as the identified substances are used or produced by your business. However, if you keep health records of your employees, COSHH regulations state that they must be kept for 40 years to monitor long-term potential Health & Safety risks from exposure.
Annabel comments:
“Recording your COSHH assessments shouldn’t be a one-off admin exercise that sits forgotten in a binder until an inspection arrives. To keep your workforce genuinely safe, your reviews need to reflect the live reality of your daily operations.
Whenever a site introduces a new sanitiser or a supplier updates a manufacturer’s Safety Data Sheet, your risk assessments must evolve alongside those operational changes. Establishing regular physical walk-throughs means that the control measures logged on paper or on a screen are actively practised by your shift teams every single day.”
COSHH risk assessments in 5 simple steps
Know the risks, handle them right, stay compliant.
COSHH risk assessment template
Finding a practical COSHH risk assessment template is one of the first steps to take for team leads looking to structure their compliance records properly.
Here’s an example of a basic COSHH assessment template that can be tailored to your business.
Annabel stresses the importance of tailoring templates to your business’s environment:
“A COSHH risk assessment template is only valuable if it reflects the real-world conditions of your specific workspace. Off-the-shelf forms can give a false sense of security because they list standard cleaning agents without capturing how your team actually handles, dilutes, or stores them on shift. Customising your templates to match your venue’s physical layout, equipment, and exact chemical inventory helps safety protocols stay practical, accurate, and truly protective for your staff.”
Rather than asking busy venue managers to create forms from scratch, our Alert65 food safety software includes a Risk Assessment module with over 200 pre-built templates designed for food and hospitality businesses.
These digital templates can be tailored to your exact site workflows, keeping your hazard records centralised, compliant, and instantly accessible across all your locations.
Frequently asked questions
How many steps are there to COSHH compliance?
We’ve structured our COSHH risk assessment guidance into five core steps, but you may see references to eight steps online. The eight-step framework separates the recording, monitoring, and reviewing phases into individual stages, but to keep compliance practical for busy teams, we group these actions into five clear steps:
- Identify hazardous substances present or generated on site.
- Determine who might be exposed or at risk.
- Assess the severity and likelihood of harm.
- Put practical control measures in place.
- Record, monitor, and review your procedures.
Whether your organisation aligns with a five-step or eight-step structure, the number of stages isn’t as important as how thoroughly they’re executed. The key to a legally compliant COSHH risk assessment is making sure that every hazard is evaluated and that your control measures are consistently followed during daily shifts.
Where should a COSHH file be located?
A COSHH file contains all the essential safety documentation for hazardous materials used or produced on your premises. It usually includes completed risk assessments, your inventory of hazardous substances, SDSs, safe handling workflows, and staff training logs.
Your COSHH file must be located on your premises where it’s easily accessible to workers handling hazardous substances, designated first aiders, and visiting EHOs.
Which substances require a written record of assessment?
Under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, a written record of a COSHH assessment is required for any substance classified as hazardous to health if your business employs five or more people.
This includes commercial cleaning chemicals, concentrated sanitisers, and hazards that are byproducts of your business’s services, like flour dust, carbon monoxide, or cooking oil mists.
What is a COSHH Safety Data Sheet?
A COSHH Safety Data Sheet (SDS) is a document provided by chemical manufacturers that contains information on the properties, health hazards, storage conditions, safe handling requirements, and emergency spill procedures for a specific chemical.
An SDS is an essential source of information for your assessment, but having an SDS doesn’t substitute or mean you can skip carrying out a full COSHH risk assessment tailored to your workplace.
By embedding these five simple COSHH steps into daily routines and giving your senior staff the right tools, you protect your team, safeguard your customers, and keep your business permanently inspection-ready.
Ready to simplify your safety? Book a demo of our Alert65 compliance management software today.
