The most tightly regulated substances in your venue aren't in the kitchen or the first aid cupboard. They're under the sink: the bleach, the descaler, the sanitiser spray your team reaches for forty times a day. And the riskiest moment for them isn't a delivery or a deep clean. It's 5:40pm on a Saturday, when a tired sixteen-year-old is rushing close-down and grabs two bottles to finish faster.
COSHH is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, the law that requires every employer to prevent or control exposure to hazardous substances at work. The regulations are at legislation.gov.uk and the HSE's guidance hub is hse.gov.uk/coshh. For a play venue the scope is mercifully narrow. You're not running a laboratory. You're managing cleaning chemicals, and doing it in a building full of small children who put their hands on everything and then in their mouths.
The rule that prevents the worst day
Never mix cleaning products. Write it exactly that bluntly in your training, because the failure is specific and it happens in ordinary businesses, not chemical plants. Bleach mixed with an acidic product (most descalers, some toilet cleaners) releases chlorine gas. Bleach mixed with ammonia-based cleaners releases chloramine vapour. Either one, in a poorly ventilated toilet block, puts your staff member on the floor and your venue in the news.
The practical controls are boring, which is the point. One product per task, named in the cleaning rota. No topping up one bottle from another. No “a bit of both to shift the limescale”. And ventilation on when the toilets are being cleaned, every time.
What a COSHH assessment involves
A COSHH assessment answers five questions for each product you use: what is it, what harm can it do, who could be exposed and how, what are you doing to control that exposure, and what happens if something goes wrong. It's the same discipline as the general risk assessment, pointed at chemicals.
Your raw material is the safety data sheet, the SDS. Suppliers are legally required to provide one for every hazardous product, and most publish them online. The SDS tells you the hazard classification, the first aid response, and the storage requirements. Collect them before you need them. An EHO who asks for the SDS folder and watches someone start googling has learned everything about your system already.
Then look at the label. The orange-red diamond pictograms do a lot of work:
| Product you probably hold | Typical hazard | The control that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Thin bleach | Corrosive, releases gas if mixed | Never mixed, never decanted, gloves on |
| Limescale remover / descaler | Corrosive acid | Kept physically apart from bleach |
| Sanitiser spray for play surfaces | Skin and eye irritant in concentrate | Correct dilution, surfaces dry before children return |
| Machine dishwash chemicals | Severe corrosive | Closed dosing system, kitchen staff only |
| Maintenance products (adhesives, paints) | Vapour, flammability | Used out of hours, ventilated, stored in the workshop not the cleaning cupboard |
Dilution deserves its own sentence. The manufacturer's ratio is a specification, not a suggestion. Double-strength sanitiser doesn't clean twice as well; it leaves residue on surfaces that toddlers chew.
Storing chemicals in a building full of children
This is where play venues differ from every other workplace running COSHH. Your exposure risk isn't only staff. It's a three-year-old who can open an unlatched door faster than you'd believe.
The standard is simple to state: every chemical lives in a locked cupboard or a locked room, in its original container with its original label, at every moment it isn't actively in someone's hand. The failure patterns are just as specific. A spray bottle left on the party room windowsill because the host got called away. A cleaning caddy parked by the toilet door at 3pm. And the worst one, seen in real incident reports across industries: chemicals decanted into drinks bottles. A clear liquid in a squash bottle is, to a child, squash. If you change nothing else this week, ban decanting into anything that ever held food or drink.
The cleaning cupboard itself wants a once-a-term audit: lids on, labels legible, nothing corroding, bleach and acids on separate shelves, and nothing stored above shoulder height where lifting it down becomes its own hazard.
Training is a record, not a chat
Regulation 12 requires you to give staff information, instruction and training on the substances they work with. For a venue whose weekend team includes sixteen-year-olds, that training has to assume no prior knowledge. What the products are. Why they're never mixed. What the gloves are for. What to do about a splash in the eye (the SDS answer, not folklore). Where the spill kit is.
Then write down who was trained, on what, on which date, with a signature. Verbal training that isn't recorded has a way of never having happened once an incident is being investigated. It's the same principle we keep returning to in our inspection preparation guide: the work counts when the record exists.
What an EHO will actually ask for
Environmental health officers see the same gaps everywhere, so their questions are predictable. The SDS folder, current and matching the products actually in the cupboard. The COSHH assessments, specific to your products rather than a generic sheet. Training records with dates and names. The cleaning rota showing which product is used where. And then they'll open the cupboard, because the cupboard never lies: what's on the shelf either matches the paperwork or it doesn't.
One honest admission: COSHH paperwork drifts. Suppliers change, a cheaper sanitiser arrives in March, and by August the folder describes products you stopped buying. Nobody maintains this perfectly by memory. Put a review date on it and let the system do the remembering.
The ball pit, honestly
Every operator gets asked how often the ball pit is cleaned, usually by a parent holding a phone. The honest framework has three layers, and COSHH runs through all of them.
Daily: a visual and surface pass. Obvious contamination dealt with immediately (a soiling incident means an immediate closure, removal of affected balls, and disinfection of the pit shell, not a scoop-and-hope). Weekly or to your rota: the pit shell, netting and surround wiped down with your named sanitiser at the correct dilution. And on a documented schedule: the full empty, wash and dry. There's no legal fixed interval for a full ball wash, so set one you can defend, follow the manufacturer's guidance for your balls and pit, and record every completion with a date and a name.
The COSHH angle is the product choice. Balls are handled, hugged and occasionally licked, so whatever cleans them has to be food-surface-appropriate or thoroughly rinsed, and completely dry before the pit refills. Harsh bleach solutions on porous plastic leave residue and a smell that parents notice for the wrong reasons. Your sanitiser's SDS and contact-time instructions answer most of this; the discipline is following them at 7pm on a Sunday when the wash is the last job standing between the team and home.
The operational side of ball pit safety (the headcount procedure, the buried-object check) belongs to your risk assessment. The chemistry belongs here. The two documents should agree with each other.
Quick answers
Does washing-up liquid need a COSHH assessment? Usually no. COSHH covers substances classified as hazardous to health, and ordinary hand-dish detergent generally isn't. A one-line note in your assessment saying you considered it and why it's out of scope is worth having.
Hand sanitiser? The 5-litre refill jugs are alcohol, which makes bulk storage a flammability question. Keep the stock away from heat sources and note it in the assessment. The pump bottle on reception isn't the issue.
Surface wipes? Check the tub. Some are classified irritants in a way the equivalent spray isn't. The SDS settles it in thirty seconds.
Do we need COSHH training for volunteers or family members who help out? Yes. The duty covers anyone doing the work under your direction. If they touch the products, they get the training and they go on the record.
Where SafePlay fits
SafePlay keeps the whole COSHH trail in one place: SDS sheets and assessments in the Document Vault with review dates chased by automated reminders, cleaning tasks with the correct product named inside your daily checks, and every staff training record dated and signed in Staff Compliance. When the EHO opens your cupboard, the paperwork on the screen matches the bottles on the shelf, and that's the whole game.