How Much Does COSHH Non-Compliance Cost?

The HSE Enforcement Approach

The Health and Safety Executive does not exist to catch businesses out. Their stated purpose is to prevent workplace harm, and their preferred approach is to secure compliance through guidance and education before resorting to formal enforcement.

But when they find serious breaches — or when a worker has already been harmed — they enforce firmly. The HSE's enforcement policy follows a clear escalation path, and COSHH breaches regularly feature across every level of it.

Understanding what each level of enforcement means, and what it costs, helps put the business case for compliance in concrete terms.

Types of Enforcement Action

Verbal and Written Advice

For minor issues — a missing review date, a slightly outdated SDS — an inspector may simply advise you to fix the problem. This is informal and carries no legal penalty, but it is documented in the inspector's notes. If they return and find the same issue, it will not be treated as a first offence.

Cost: Zero in direct penalties. Some staff time to implement the fix.

Improvement Notices

An improvement notice is a formal legal document requiring you to remedy a contravention of health and safety law within a specified period — typically 21 days, though this can vary depending on the complexity of the fix.

Improvement notices are issued when the inspector identifies a breach that is not causing immediate serious risk but still needs correcting. Common COSHH-related improvement notices include:

Missing or inadequate COSHH assessments
Assessments that have never been reviewed
No evidence of COSHH training for exposed workers
Local exhaust ventilation not tested within the required 14-month interval
Health surveillance not in place where legally required

An improvement notice is published on the HSE's public register of enforcement notices and remains visible for 5 years. Anyone — clients, contractors, insurers, competitors — can search it.

Cost: No direct fine, but the time and expense of achieving compliance within the deadline, plus the reputational impact of a public notice. For businesses that bid on contracts, a published improvement notice can cost you work.

Prohibition Notices

A prohibition notice stops an activity immediately — or prevents it from starting — because the inspector judges it involves a risk of serious personal injury. The activity cannot resume until the risk has been remedied.

In a COSHH context, prohibition notices are issued for situations like:

Workers using known carcinogens without any controls
Spray painting or welding in enclosed spaces with no ventilation or RPE
Handling corrosive substances without any skin or eye protection
Using substances in a way that could cause acute poisoning

Cost: The activity stops. For a construction site, that might mean a trade is stood down for days while controls are put in place. For a manufacturer, it could mean a production line shutdown. The direct cost depends on what is prohibited and for how long, but lost productivity from even a single day's stoppage typically runs into thousands of pounds.

Prosecution

The HSE prosecutes when the breach is serious, when harm has occurred, or when the dutyholder has persistently failed to comply despite earlier intervention. COSHH-related prosecutions typically involve:

Workers developing occupational disease (asthma, dermatitis, cancer) due to uncontrolled exposure
Acute incidents — chemical burns, toxic inhalation, poisoning
Systematic failure to assess or control known hazardous substances
Ignoring previous improvement or prohibition notices

Since 2016, sentencing for health and safety offences in England and Wales has followed the Sentencing Council's Health and Safety Offences Definitive Guideline. This guideline links fine levels to the offender's turnover, the culpability of the breach, and the level of harm caused or risked.

What Are the Actual Fine Levels?

The Sentencing Council guideline categorises offences by harm and culpability, then scales fines according to the organisation's turnover. For a health and safety offence (which COSHH breaches fall under):

For organisations with turnover up to £2 million (typical SMEs):

Culpability	Harm Category 1 (death/serious injury)	Harm Category 2 (significant harm)	Harm Category 3 (moderate harm)	Harm Category 4 (low harm)
Very high	£250,000 – £1,600,000	£100,000 – £500,000	£50,000 – £250,000	£20,000 – £100,000
High	£100,000 – £500,000	£35,000 – £200,000	£15,000 – £75,000	£5,000 – £35,000
Medium	£35,000 – £200,000	£10,000 – £75,000	£5,000 – £35,000	£1,000 – £10,000
Low	£10,000 – £75,000	£3,000 – £25,000	£1,000 – £10,000	£200 – £3,000

These are starting points. Courts can go above or below these ranges depending on aggravating or mitigating factors.

For larger organisations, fines scale upward significantly. Organisations with turnover above £50 million have faced COSHH-related fines in the hundreds of thousands to millions of pounds.

The HSE's annual statistics on enforcement actions show that the average fine for health and safety offences has increased substantially since the 2016 sentencing guideline came into effect. The data published in HSE's annual statistics tables consistently shows that courts are using the guideline to impose fines that are meaningful relative to the offender's means.

Individual Liability

Directors and senior managers can be prosecuted personally under Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 if the offence was committed with their consent, connivance, or neglect. Penalties for individuals include unlimited fines and, for the most serious cases, custodial sentences of up to 2 years.

In practical terms, individual prosecution is reserved for cases where a named person knowingly allowed dangerous practices to continue. But it is not as rare as many business owners assume — the HSE prosecutes individuals alongside their organisations in a meaningful proportion of cases.

Costs Beyond the Fine

The fine from a prosecution is often not the largest cost. The indirect costs of COSHH non-compliance can dwarf the penalty itself.

Civil Compensation Claims

A worker who develops occupational disease due to inadequate COSHH controls can bring a civil claim for personal injury. Occupational asthma claims typically settle between £20,000 and £90,000 depending on severity. Chronic occupational dermatitis claims range from £5,000 to £25,000. Occupational cancer claims, where causation can be established, can reach six or seven figures.

These are claims against the employer, and they can be brought regardless of whether the HSE has prosecuted. A criminal acquittal does not prevent a civil claim.

Employers' Liability Insurance Impact

Every employer in the UK must hold employers' liability (EL) insurance — it is a legal requirement. When a COSHH-related claim is made against your EL policy:

Your insurer pays the claim (subject to policy terms), but your premium increases at the next renewal — often significantly
A pattern of claims can make your business difficult to insure at standard rates, pushing you to specialist insurers with higher premiums
In extreme cases, insurers can refuse to renew your policy

Some insurers now actively assess COSHH compliance as part of their underwriting process. Demonstrating good COSHH management — documented assessments, current reviews, training records — can work in your favour at renewal. Poor compliance can increase premiums before a claim is ever made.

Lost Working Days and Recruitment Costs

A worker diagnosed with occupational asthma may need to be permanently redeployed away from the causative substance — or may leave the business entirely. Replacing a skilled worker costs an estimated £3,000 to £10,000 in recruitment, training, and lost productivity, depending on the role and industry.

If the HSE issues a prohibition notice, the immediate cost is the downtime while you implement controls. For a construction site or manufacturing line, a day's stoppage can easily cost £5,000 to £20,000 in lost output and standing time for workers.

Reputational Damage

HSE improvement notices and prosecution outcomes are published publicly. For businesses that work on contract — cleaning companies, construction firms, manufacturers supplying larger organisations — a published enforcement action can result in:

Existing clients requesting urgent evidence of remediation
Loss of contracts where compliance is a pre-qualification requirement
Difficulty winning new tenders (many procurement frameworks now ask about enforcement history)

The Cost of Compliance vs. Non-Compliance

To put this in perspective, consider what basic COSHH compliance actually costs for a typical SME:

Time to write assessments: 15-30 minutes per substance, once, then 10-15 minutes per annual review
Safety Data Sheets: Free from your suppliers (it is their legal obligation to provide them)
LEV testing: £150-£400 per system, annually
RPE face-fit testing: £30-£50 per person, every 3 years or when mask type changes
Training: A few hours per year for most workers

Compare that to the minimum fine range for a medium-culpability, moderate-harm prosecution of an SME: £5,000 to £35,000. Add a civil claim, insurance premium increase, and lost productivity, and the total cost of a single COSHH failure can easily exceed £50,000.

Use our COSHH Cost Calculator to estimate what your business currently spends on manual compliance — and where the savings are.

The most common COSHH mistakes that lead to enforcement action are also the cheapest to fix: missing assessments, overdue reviews, lack of training records. These are administrative failures, not expensive engineering problems.

The Business Case Is Straightforward

COSHH compliance is not expensive. COSHH non-compliance is. The regulations have been in force since 2002, the expectations are well-established, and the HSE provides extensive free guidance. The businesses that get caught out are almost always those that never set up a system — not those that tried and got a detail wrong.

COSHHmate is being built to make the compliance cost as low as possible — a guided assessment builder, automatic review reminders, training documentation, and a central chemical register, all at a flat monthly fee with no per-user charges. The aim is to make doing it right easier than ignoring it.

Join the waitlist to be first to know when COSHHmate launches.

This article provides general information about COSHH enforcement and sentencing. It does not constitute legal advice. For specific legal questions about enforcement action, consult a qualified health and safety solicitor.