Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of the Health and Safety Executive strengthening regulation regarding the monitoring of air quality around clean-in-place systems in breweries.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) already has in place an effective regulatory regime to protect employees from substances hazardous to health in the workplace under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002. The regulations place duties on employers, including those running clean-in-place systems in a brewery, to assess the risk of exposure to substances hazardous to health arising from their activities. HSE publishes Workplace Exposure Limits to help employers define the standard they need to meet. Arising from this, employers are required to put in place appropriate controls to prevent or control exposure of employees to those substances hazardous to health by inhalation, ingestion etc. in the workplace.

The COSHH Regulations 2002 also set out a hierarchy of control measures that should be applied when assessing the effective prevention or control of exposure to substances hazardous to health. Any requirement for an individual brewery to use leakage detection devices should be identified in the risk assessment process and provided by the employer.