Managing COSHH across multiple sites means one assessment per location, each describing the substances and conditions actually present there, written to a single shared method and rolling up into one group view. Same method everywhere. Different content in every building.
At one site, COSHH has a clear shape. Across ten or fifty, the pressure to simplify arrives fast, and it usually lands on the assessments. One master document, rolled out everywhere, reviewed once. It solves the administrative problem and quietly creates a legal one.
So how do you hold a common standard across an estate while every assessment still describes the place it belongs to?
Why one COSHH assessment cannot cover every site
Regulation 6 requires the assessment to consider the level, type and duration of exposure, and the circumstances of the work including how much of the substance is involved. Those are properties of a location, not of a company.
The Health and Safety Executive makes the same point about its own tools. Its COSHH guidance notes that generic advice only carries you so far, and that you have to check the guidance fully describes the task you actually do before relying on it. A group template is generic advice with your logo on it.
This shows up in enforcement. Among the common findings in COSHH inspections are assessments that exist but lack site-specific detail. The paperwork is there. It just does not describe the building the inspector is standing in.
What local detail means at site level
Take one degreaser used at two locations.
At the first it is decanted into a small tray inside a ventilated bay, used for twenty minutes a shift by two trained technicians. At the second it comes out of a twenty-five litre drum in a store with a single high window, used across most of the day by whoever is on rota. Same product, same Safety Data Sheet, same hazard classification.
The exposure is nowhere near the same. Neither is the control that would count as adequate, and neither is the answer to who might be harmed and how. A suitable and sufficient COSHH Assessment has to reflect the second site as it is, not as head office would prefer it were.
Local detail is the part that makes the document worth having.
One standard, many realities
Good multi-site COSHH does not force every location to be identical. It sets a shared standard for how assessments are written and reviewed, then lets each site fill in its own reality. Uniform method, local truth.
Why a file per site loses the detail too
The instinct that avoids the group template is a spreadsheet or folder for each location. That protects local content and gives up something else.
Fifty files on fifty drives cannot be compared, cannot be rolled up, and cannot tell anyone where to look first. Method drifts because nothing holds it together. One site writes its assessments one way and reviews them on a different rhythm, and the detail that site fourteen recorded carefully sits in a format nobody else uses.
There is a second cost, and it is the one that ages worst. When a supplier reissues a Safety Data Sheet, nothing in a folder tells you which of your fifty sites uses that substance, or which assessments now rest on a sheet that has changed. Every location holding its own file means every location has to notice independently. Local truth with no shared standard is almost as hard to defend as a shared standard with no local truth.
That is what happens when the tool cannot connect the sites, and it rarely starts with the people.
Who is accountable for COSHH across a group
The duty under COSHH sits with the employer, which at group level means the organisation is accountable for every location it runs. Regulation 6 also requires employers with five or more employees to record the significant findings of each assessment, so at scale that is a live record per site.
In practice, a regional or group safety director carries it, and that person cannot be in every building every week. HSE guidance for leaders and line managers is aimed squarely at people in that position, those putting in place or overseeing an organisation's health and safety arrangements rather than performing them site by site. This is where flattening starts. When you cannot see fifty sites, standardising them into one document feels like control. It is the opposite, because it removes the only thing that made the assessments defensible.
When a client or an inspector asks a group to prove its COSHH position, the answer has to hold for every location, including the ones nobody has visited this quarter.
The weakest link is invisible
Across a group, overall compliance is only as strong as its worst site, and that is precisely the site least likely to raise its hand. If you cannot see each location's position at a glance, the one in trouble stays hidden until an incident or an inspection finds it for you.
How a location hierarchy keeps local detail visible
The fix is a structure that mirrors the organisation instead of overwriting it. A parent-child tree, built to match how the business runs, doing four things:
- Holding a separate assessment for every location, recording the substances, volumes, ventilation and controls in place there.
- Applying one shared template and one review standard, so an assessment written at site twelve is built the same way as one written at site three.
- Flagging every assessment affected when a supplier updates a Safety Data Sheet, across every site that holds the substance.
- Scoring each location and aggregating those scores upward, so the accountable person reads the group position and drills into any single site's own detail.
Standardising the method is what makes the local content comparable. The two stop being a trade-off and become two settings on the same system.
Twenty-two sites, one safety director
Think about what an audit request looks like in a facilities group running twenty-two locations with one safety director covering all of them.
Under folders, the update is a chase. Emails out, partial replies back, a spreadsheet stitched together that is out of date by the time it is finished. Worse, nobody can say whether site fourteen's assessment describes site fourteen or was copied across from site three eighteen months ago.
Under a connected system, the director opens one view and reads a score for every location. Then the inspector asks about the solvent store at site nine, and what comes up on screen is site nine's store. Its volumes, its ventilation, its people, reviewed on the same standard as the other twenty-one. The estate did not become uniform. It became legible.
That is the point of Sevron's Accelerated Compliance approach at scale, keeping every site Certified, Competent and Compliant without collapsing them into one another. Safety365 runs COSHH across every location in one system, with site-scoped assessments and Safety Data Sheets rolling up into a compliance dashboard. The detail stays where it belongs and the position stays visible from the top.
Can you see every site's COSHH position without flattening any of them?
See how a location hierarchy gives central oversight while each assessment stays local, at any scale. Larger locations run on a full Safety365 licence. For the small ones, a single depot, a one-person satellite, a contractor working to your standard, the free Small Business Bundle covers fifteen COSHH assessments and live Safety Data Sheet management at no cost, written to the same method as everywhere else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can one COSHH assessment cover all my sites?
Rarely. Regulation 6 requires the assessment to reflect the level and duration of exposure and the circumstances of the work, which vary by location, so each site usually needs its own assessment written to a shared standard.
Are generic COSHH assessments legal?
Only where they genuinely describe the work being done. An assessment that does not match the substances, quantities and conditions at a site is unlikely to be considered suitable and sufficient, and lack of site-specific detail is a common inspection finding.
Who is legally responsible for COSHH across multiple sites?
The employer, which at group level means the organisation itself rather than any individual site manager. A group or regional safety director normally discharges that duty, but accountability does not sit with them personally.
What is a location hierarchy in COSHH management?
A parent-child structure that mirrors how an organisation operates, with every assessment, substance record and action scoped to a specific site. A user tagged to a parent location sees everything held beneath it.
How do you keep consistency without ignoring local differences?
Standardise the method rather than the content. Set shared templates and a common review standard for how assessments are written, then let each site record its own substances, volumes and controls.
Why do spreadsheets struggle with multi-site COSHH?
A separate file per site cannot be compared or rolled up, so there is no shared view, no way to hold a common method, and no way to spot every assessment affected when a supplier reissues a Safety Data Sheet.
Across an estate, you are only as compliant as the site you cannot see. See how Safety365 brings every site into one view.
Safety & Compliance Experts
The Sevron team brings decades of combined experience in health and safety compliance, risk assessment, and workplace safety solutions.
Reviewed by
Dale Allen
CEO & Founder
