Companies submitted 450 UK REACH registration dossiers in 2021, with 303 passing basic checks and in receipt of a registration number by the end of the year, according to a report from Britain’s Health & Safety Executive.
There are ongoing checks for 94 dossiers (21%), while the remaining 53 have failed, so far corresponding to 15% of the total.
The numbers come in the agency’s consolidated report on its REACH activities in 2021, published on 30 June.
The 303 successful dossiers include 279 for substances that were registered in the EU prior to the end of the Brexit transition period on 1 January 2021, but not covered by the grandfathering process, so requiring registration in the UK. The HSE has dubbed these ‘new registration of an existing substance’ (NRES) dossiers.
The remaining 24 successful dossiers are for substances not registered in the EU prior to the end of the transition period, called ‘novel’.
Companies intending to register a substance under UK REACH must first file an Article 26 enquiry. The HSE received and processed over 4,000 of these in 2021.
The agency also processed:
- 3,800 UK REACH helpdesk enquiries;
- 9,269 notifications for grandfathered registrations, covering about 4,000 substances; and
- 5,496 downstream user import notifications (Duins).
The year 2021 was the first the UK’s post-Brexit chemicals legislation was in force.