Alnwick · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Alnwick workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Alnwick
Alnwick is a Northumberland market town of around 8,000 people, dominated by Alnwick Castle - the second-largest inhabited castle in England and seat of the Percy family - and the neighbouring Alnwick Garden with its Grand Cascade.
The workshops that keep the town working sit out along the Lionheart Enterprise Park and the Willowburn Industrial Estate, where fabricators, vehicle bays and trade counters share the same duty to control what their processes put into the air.
Wherever an Alnwick process releases fume, dust, mist or vapour, COSHH puts the duty on you to control it at source, and the extraction that does so is LEV - subject to a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months. We work across the range, from the Lionheart Enterprise Park units down to the smallest Alnwick workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Alnwick employers and others across Northumberland it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Bench joiners and cabinet shops around Alnwick cut hardwood and softwood daily, and both dusts carry a workplace exposure limit. Extraction on saws, sanders and the collection hall holds airborne wood dust below the 3 mg/m3 hardwood ceiling.
Cutting and dressing the sandstone this town is largely built from releases respirable crystalline silica. On-tool extraction and booth ventilation are tested to keep operators clear of the 0.1 mg/m3 silica limit.
Flour dust is one of the commonest causes of occupational asthma, and Alnwick keeps working bakeries and food producers such as Turnbull's. Extraction over tipping, sieving and dough lines captures the dust at source.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Lionheart Enterprise Park and Willowburn Industrial Estate units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Alnwick bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for Northumberland College's Kirkley Hall campus and Alnwick Infirmary, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Alnwick
We are out under Alnwick's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A furniture workshop in Alnwick had the extraction on its router table pulling poorly, down to a slipping fan drive belt. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter, then replaced the belt. One point failed at first on a tired filter and passed after remedial work, and we logged and reported the benchmark readings.
The test
A statutory LEV test to HSG258 is far more than a look round. On an Alnwick system it settles three questions: is the ductwork and plant intact, does it still capture at the hood, and does that capture still match the design.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Lionheart Enterprise Park units - the faults that quietly kill capture.
Face and capture velocities, static pressures and airflows measured at each hood with calibrated instruments - numbers, not opinion.
Readings compared to the system's commissioning figures, so drift from as-designed is caught before it becomes a failure on an Alnwick line.
Where exposure is in question - a joinery and woodworking process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
COSHH Regulation 9 makes it plain: any LEV controlling exposure to a hazardous substance has to be thoroughly examined and tested at intervals no greater than fourteen months, and the resulting records kept for at least five years.
For the great majority of Alnwick sites, from the Lionheart Enterprise Park units to the one-man workshops, the fourteen-month deadline is what catches people out: once it passes the system is non-compliant regardless of its actual state. We carry out the examination, label every hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer expects to see - and if a point fails, you get the number, the cause and the fix rather than a bare fail.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Alnwick site.
Calibrated velocity, pressure and airflow readings at each extraction point.
A COSHH-compliant report: results against benchmark, clear pass or fail, and plain-English actions for the Alnwick duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Willowburn Industrial Estate floor.
Questions
Under COSHH Regulation 9, most local exhaust ventilation needs a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months, with higher-risk processes more often. A joinery and woodworking bay, a stone and monumental masonry bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
joinery, stonemasonry, bakeries and food production, welding and fabrication, vehicle bodyshops and fume-cupboard labs - the trades clustered around Lionheart Enterprise Park and Willowburn Industrial Estate and across the wider Northumberland.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at an Alnwick workshop needs a commissioning test to prove it performs to its design figures before it goes into service - we measure it and document the baseline the 14-month clock then runs from.
Yes. Each hood is labelled with its status and next-due date, and you get the HSG258 report and system schematic for your COSHH file - the record an HSE inspector visiting a Lionheart Enterprise Park unit will ask to see.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Lionheart Enterprise Park units, term-time access at the Alnwick university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Lionheart Enterprise Park and Willowburn Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Northumberland.
We record it as remedial and set out what is needed - airflow, ductwork, filtration or capture at the hood. You do the work and we re-test, and on a Lionheart Enterprise Park production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Local knowledge
Alnwick Castle has been the Percy family seat since 1309, and at its scale it stands as the second-largest inhabited castle in England - familiar to millions as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films and as Downton Abbey. A working estate that size runs joinery shops, vehicle bays and maintenance workshops, and every one of them needs local exhaust ventilation that is tested and holds. We survey LEV across Alnwick, measure it against its design figures and certify it to COSHH standards.
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