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Although COSHH has been in force for a decade, much criticism levelled against it in the early 1990s remains true. Unfortunately, however good a law is on paper, it only protect workers if implemented by employers and enforced by the authorities. The HSE did its own survey of how employers were getting to grips with COSHH in 1991/92, two years after the law came into force. They visited 536 employers and found 38% were complying with COSHH, 75% had done assessments, but only three-quarters of these complied with the law, 27% of COSHH assessments were "less than suitable and sufficient", 36% of premises where COSHH required health surveillance were not doing so, and about 80% gave workers information and training which was "satisfactory or with minor shortcomings". Commenting on the survey, the HSE said, "The most common fault has been for assessments to consist of little more than collections of data sheets, without the all-important evaluation of the risks arising from those hazards."

In April 1992 the HSE also telephoned 2,000 randomly selected employers with fewer than 50 employees. It found 62% had heard of COSHH, 65% had not started their assessments, and 42% admitted they had done nothing.

In 1997, the HSE published research which it had commissioned on employers' understanding of OELs and COSHH. Managers responsible for health and safety in 1,000 businesses, plus 150 union safety reps, were interviewed by telephone in mid-1996. 35% of managers admitted they had never heard of COSHH, or did not know what it was about. Although 45% of managers claimed they knew what an OEL was, when asked further questions to check their understanding, the research found that "there is a hard core of 15-20% who are largely ignorant."

Although not directly comparable, the results for the safety reps found that only 11% admitted they had never heard of COSHH, or did not know what it was about, and 69% of reps claimed they knew what an OEL was. According to the survey, "trade union reps aware of OELs demonstrated a better understanding of them than their counterparts in the user [manager] survey."

Commenting on the results, Murray Devine, Head of HSE's Chemicals Policy Division said, "OELs are a pillar of the COSHH regulations and ... I am concerned that OELs are not better understood and used."

These surveys all suggest that there is a hard core of employers who are just not getting the message on chemicals, or if they are, they are ignoring it. All the evidence suggests that these are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), precisely the businesses which employ most of the UK workforce, and where trade union membership is most patchy.

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