Annex VIII to CLP inadvertently brought into UK law – update May 2023

May 2023 update

DHSC have informed CBA that Annex VIII to CLP will be removed from UK law by the end of 2023.  Well done to Doug Leech of CBA who has been very active in reminding DHSC about this issue and has finally got the answer industry wanted for GB.  In the meantime, HSE will be dealing with GB Poison Centre Notifications with a “light touch”.

Of course, Northern Ireland will continue to operate under EU PCN rules, with the requirement to notify the local Poison Centre fully using an IUCLID6 PCN file. However, as the local Poison Centre is NPIS, this means that the Portal can’t be used, and instead the files must be emailed to NPIS as per their guidance here: https://www.npis.org/Industrysubmit.html .

Annex VIII to CLP Retained in the UK

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Thanks to Steven Marks of Airedale Chemical, we broke the news that Annex VIII to CLP had been inadvertently retained in UK law (not just once, but in 3 separate places).

Earlier in the year, the Department of Health and Social Care, who are responsible for PCN in the UK, announced that there would be a 12 week public consultation period on whether Annex VIII should be removed from UK law, or retained.  At the time of writing, November 2022, there is no sign of this starting, although there has been a certain amount of political turmoil (3 Prime Ministers, 2 Monarchs, ministerial reshuffles etc).

There is currently conflict between the advice on the .gov.uk website, which refers to the “old” system of sending SDSs to NPIS on a voluntary basis, and the fact that legally we should be compliant with Annex VIII, that is using a UFI on the label, and providing all of the information required as per the EU portal.

The most important thing is don’t panic – there are options around this, and you don’t want to take an action which may be expensive (in terms of time and workload) which may not turn out to be necessary.

• if you have notified to NPIS for Northern Ireland, by sending them an IUCLID6 PCN file, that is deemed to be notified to the UK under Annex VIII already
• if you have sent in SDSs voluntarily, you have notified these mixtures under the old system

For more advice and practical tips on what your options are, see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/annex-viii-clp-uk-1st-july-2022-tt-environmental-ltd/

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