Health surveillance records must be kept for at least 40 years from the date of the last entry where the work involves substances hazardous to health, asbestos or lead. That period is written directly into the regulations.
It is not a single rule across all of health surveillance, though, and the exceptions catch people out. Noise and vibration set no retention period at all, and ionising radiation uses a different one entirely.
What triggered your health surveillance?
The retention period depends on which regulation applies
The retention periods
How long health records must be kept
| Exposure | Regulation | Retention period |
|---|---|---|
| Substances hazardous to health | COSHH 2002, reg 11(3) | At least 40 years from the last entry |
| Asbestos | Control of Asbestos Regs 2012, reg 22 | At least 40 years from the last entry |
| Lead | Control of Lead at Work Regs 2002, reg 10(5) | At least 40 years from the last entry |
| Ionising radiation | IRR 2017, reg 25(2) | Until age 75, and at least 30 years |
| Noise | Control of Noise at Work Regs 2005, reg 9(2) | No period specified |
| Vibration | Control of Vibration at Work Regs 2005, reg 7(3) | No period specified |
The 40 years runs from the date of the last entry in the record, not from the date the employee left. Someone who was under surveillance for fifteen years and then left generates a record you must hold for 40 years after that final entry — fifty-five years of involvement in total.
Why 40 years
The period is not arbitrary. It reflects how long occupational disease takes to appear.
Mesothelioma commonly presents 30 to 40 years after asbestos exposure. Occupational cancers linked to substances covered by COSHH have similarly long latency. Someone exposed at 25 may not become ill until they are in their sixties, long after the employer has forgotten the job existed.
By that point the health record may be the only evidence of what a person was exposed to, at what level, and for how long. It matters to the individual making a claim, and it matters to the employer defending one.
Destroying records early is not a neutral act. If a former employee brings a claim and you cannot produce the surveillance record you were legally required to keep, you have lost the evidence that might have shown your controls were adequate — and you have breached the regulation that required you to keep it.
Noise and vibration: the gap people miss
This is where most guidance is imprecise, so it is worth being exact.
Regulation 9(2) of the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 and regulation 7(3) of the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 both require the employer to ensure a health record "is made and maintained and that the record or a copy thereof is kept available in a suitable form."
Neither states a retention period.
"No period specified" is not the same as "you can throw them away." Noise-induced hearing loss and hand-arm vibration syndrome are exactly the kind of gradual, irreversible conditions that surface years later and generate civil claims. An employer who destroyed a HAVS record after five years has no answer when a claim arrives at year twelve.
The practical position is to apply the 40-year standard across all health surveillance regardless of which regulation triggered it. It is simpler to administer one rule than five, and it leaves you holding the evidence in the cases where you are most likely to need it.
Health record or medical record?
These are two different documents, and confusing them causes real problems — usually an employer asking for clinical information they are not entitled to see.
Health record
- •Held by the employer
- •Kept for 40 years (COSHH, asbestos, lead)
- •Contains identifying details, job, exposure and dates of surveillance
- •Records the outcome: fit, fit with restrictions, or unfit
- •Contains no clinical or diagnostic detail
Medical record
- •Held by the occupational health provider or doctor
- •Confidential clinical record
- •Contains examination findings and test results
- •Not disclosed to the employer without consent
- •Employer receives the fitness outcome, not the detail
You are entitled to know whether someone is fit for the work. You are not entitled to know their audiogram results, their diagnosis, or what the doctor found. If your health records contain clinical detail, you are almost certainly holding data you should not have.
What the health record should contain
The particulars are approved by the HSE, but in practice a compliant record covers:
- Full name, date of birth, permanent address and National Insurance number
- Date of the current employment and job title
- The specific hazard the surveillance relates to
- Dates and outcomes of each health surveillance check
- Any restrictions on the work the person may do
- The date the person left, where applicable
It should not contain examination findings, test results, or anything else clinical.
What happens when the business closes
If you cease trading, the records do not simply stop mattering — the people they relate to may still develop disease.
Offer them to the Health and Safety Executive. Where a business is sold or transfers, the records should pass to the new employer along with the undertaking. What you should not do is destroy them because the company has been dissolved.
This is not the same as ordinary employment records
A common error is applying a general retention schedule — often six years, sometimes two — to health surveillance because it looks like HR paperwork.
It is not. Ordinary employment records are kept for limitation and tax reasons. Health surveillance records are kept because a disease may take four decades to appear. The two have nothing to do with each other, and the shorter period does not override the regulation.
Health surveillance records are special category data under UK GDPR. Holding them for 40 years is lawful precisely because a legal obligation requires it — that is your basis for keeping them. It also means you should hold what the regulations require and no more, which is another reason clinical detail does not belong in the employer's file.
Common mistakes
Counting 40 years from the leaving date. The clock runs from the last entry in the record.
Destroying noise and vibration records early because no period is stated. The absence of a stated period is not permission.
Keeping clinical detail in the employer's record. You are entitled to the fitness outcome, not the findings behind it.
Applying an HR retention schedule. Six years is for employment records, not health surveillance.
Losing records in a system migration. Forty years spans several changes of payroll or HR software. Records held only in a system nobody has logged into since 2014 are, in practice, already gone.
Where this fits
Health surveillance is only required where a risk to health remains after your controls — it checks whether those controls are working, and it never replaces them. Our occupational health topic page covers when surveillance is triggered and what each exposure requires.
For the underlying duty to assess, see risk assessment. For substances specifically, see COSHH and the Approved Code of Practice at L5. Workplace exposure limits are published in EH40.