Access to documents: Biocidal active substances and products

Under Article 67 of the GB Biocidal Products Regulation (GB BPR), HSE must make publicly available certain information on active substances and products, where held by HSE, from the date on which an approval or authorisation decision is made in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).

This means that from the date that an active substance is approved, or a product is authorised, in Great Britain a non-confidential version of the Competent Authority Report (CAR) or Product Assessment Report (PAR) will be made available to the public.

Action for active substance supporters and product authorisation holders

At the end of the approval / authorisation process, HSE will ask active substance supporters and product authorisation holders to consider, against the guidelines in Articles 66 (2) and (3) of GB BPR, which elements or sections of the CAR / PAR you would wish to be kept confidential (redacted).

To prevent the process from becoming too time consuming, it is important that active substance supporters and product authorisation holders follow the instructions provided by HSE. HSE has software to securely redact the documents and will complete this on your behalf.

You will need to consider that:

Justifications must:

Redaction is only possible where HSE accepts that the provided justifications are valid. CAR and PAR documents are owned by HSE and active substance supporters and product authorisation holders do not have the right to prevent their publication.

Examples of what might be kept confidential

Things that may be kept confidential could include:

Things that may not be kept confidential could include:

Published documents

The GB List of Active Substances and list of UK authorised biocidal products indicate where documents are held by HSE and how you can access them.

Updated 2022-10-18