COSHH Training: What the Law Requires, Who Needs It and How to Record It

The training duty is about making sure people understand the substances they work with and how to use them safely. As a minimum, staff need to know which products are hazardous, what the hazards are, how to use each product correctly including dilution, what protective equipment to wear, how to store products safely, and what to do if something goes wrong, such as a splash, a spill, or a gas leak. They should know where to find the assessment and safety data sheets, and how to read the GHS pictograms and hazard statements on a label. The depth should match the role: a kitchen porter handling neat degreaser needs more than a waiter who rarely touches chemicals. The test is whether someone could, if asked, explain the risks and controls for the products they actually use.

For most hospitality roles, a formal certificated course is not required by law. What the law requires is adequate training, and a well-run in-house briefing tied to your own assessment and products usually meets that better than a generic online course, because it covers the chemicals staff actually use. A short, recognised COSHH awareness course can still be worthwhile for the person who carries out the assessments, because it builds confidence in reading safety data sheets and applying the hierarchy of control. The distinction worth holding onto is between training the assessor, where a course adds real value, and training the wider team, where a practical briefing about your own products is usually the more effective and more honest approach.

There is a lot of free COSHH training material about, and for the wider team it is often all you need as a starting point. The Health and Safety Executive publishes plain-English guidance on its COSHH pages, chemical suppliers run free product training and will usually send someone to walk your team through the products you buy from them, and the safety data sheet itself is a training document if someone talks it through. A paid course, typically an online COSHH awareness certificate at £20 to £40 a head or a half-day classroom session, buys structure and a certificate to file. Where a paid course earns its money is for the person writing the assessments: an assessor who has been taught to read Section 2 and Section 8 of a safety data sheet, and to apply the hierarchy of control, produces assessments that survive inspection. For a kitchen porter, the most effective training remains ten minutes with the manager, the actual bottle, the actual gloves and the actual dilution cap.

The regulations set no expiry on COSHH training and no legal requirement for a certificate at all. Training providers usually recommend a refresher every year, and many certificates carry a three-year validity that the provider chose rather than the law. The legal test is whether training is adequate and kept up to date, so the practical rule is: brief before first use, re-brief when a product or process changes, and run a short refresher at least annually. Record each one. If you do buy certificated courses, note the validity the provider states and diarise the refresher, because an expired certificate with no later briefing looks like training that lapsed.