Stansted Airport

How London Stansted Airport transformed its COSHH Management with EcoOnline.

London Stansted is the UK’s fourth largest airport, with a complex year-round operation. The airport supports more than 13,000 jobs across the site and is responsible for getting almost 30 million passengers a year to and from their destinations as smoothly as possible. With such a massive responsibility, keeping things running efficiently and safely is no small task.  

In 2019 as part of London Stansted’s health and safety reviews, the airport identified the need to change its existing Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) processes. The existing system was complex and difficult to scale across such a vast and varied workforce and needed updating. 

Stansted decided to streamline its hazardous substance management across a workforce of more than 13,000 using EcoOnline. 

EcoOnline’s COSHH Management Software, powered by Sypol, provided a better solution for the airport, ensuring that it was COSHH compliant. The airport implemented EcoOnline to ensure that COSHH risk assessments were fast, accurate, and easy to manage at scale. Since introducing the software, Stansted has raised the bar on chemical safety and compliance, keeping its people safe and its operations running smoothly.

When London Stansted Airport reviewed its software in 2019, it became clear that its existing COSHH management processes needed updating. With more than 13,000 people working across the site and more than 500 materials requiring risk assessments, the systems in place were too complicated and difficult to scale. There was widespread confusion about what actually counted as COSHH compliance. Some teams believed that simply printing off an SDS and storing it was enough! On top of that, patchy data coverage across parts of the site meant some staff didn’t always have access to the documents they needed. 

These issues were flagged in a series of external audits, prompting the team to take action. Liz Brassington, Health and Safety Business Partner at London Stansted Airport, was part of the group tasked with finding a better solution. Liz looks after the Assets area of the business, where workers often come into contact with hazardous substances. She knew first-hand how urgent the upgrade was needed, and pushed for a faster, safer, and more user-friendly solution. Having previously used Sypol, Liz recognised that it could help get things back on track. EcoOnline handled the roll out across the site, making integration frictionless. 

From digital access to risk assessments with printable options to user-friendly features like “read and understood” tracking and built-in audit support, EcoOnline has helped simplify day-to-day processes at Stansted, improving compliance and supporting standards accreditation, including ISO 45001 and ISO 14001. Staff find the system easy to navigate, and if any questions do come up, the EcoOnline helpdesk is quick to respond. Providing information to auditors is now as simple as clicking a button. Writing and maintaining over 500 assessments manually would have taken hundreds of hours, often by people who weren’t COSHH experts. Instead, Liz and her team were able to get everything in one place and start seeing results fast.        

EcoOnline’s COSHH management software, powered by Sypol, transforms how organisations handle hazardous substances. Users can create COSHH risk assessments in minutes using a database of over 900,000 pre-written templates, with new ones added every month. 

Staff get instant, easy access to risk information from anywhere, helping to boost awareness, reduce exposure, and improve safety. The system also tracks all assessments, Safety Data Sheets, and reports, while offering smarter substance suggestions based on the COSHH hierarchy of control. 

EcoOnline’s COSHH management software has compliance monitoring and built-in reporting tools so organisations can easily meet COSHH, REACH, CLP and other regulatory requirements while staying audit-ready, always. Expert-written assessments, automatic updates to align with legislative changes, and on-demand support from the experienced EcoOnline team mean you’ll always be able to keep your people safe and stay ahead of risk.