Batley · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Batley workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Batley
Batley is a West Yorkshire town in Kirklees, around 45,000, home of Fox's Biscuits since 1853 and a centre of the Heavy Woollen District and modern bed manufacturing.
The signature trade is manufacturing - the food and biscuit manufacturing that scents the town, the bed and mattress making, and the textiles and metal fabrication - across the Grange Road and Carlinghow estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Every Batley process that gives off fume, dust, mist or vapour falls under COSHH, which requires the contamination held at source by local exhaust ventilation and that LEV thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test right across the site, from the Grange Road plant to the single-bench Batley units, logging capture and face-velocity figures and returning a clear pass-or-remedial outcome with each hood identified and labelled.
By sector
Where fume, dust, mist or vapour is pulled away at the point it is made, that is LEV - and for employers in Batley and across West Yorkshire it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Flour-dust, oven-fume and steam extraction across the biscuit and food-manufacturing lines, a trade the town has run since 1853, where organic dust is both a health and an explosion risk.
Foam-bonding vapour, fabric-fibre dust and adhesive-mist extraction across the bed and mattress lines, where fibre dust and solvent vapour need capture at source.
Fibre-dust, weld-fume and grinding extraction across the textile and fabrication units of the Heavy Woollen District, where fine fibre and metal fume need capture proven.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Grange Road and Carlinghow units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Batley 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 Kirklees College and Dewsbury and District Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Batley
We are out under Batley's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A biscuit-manufacturing bakery in Batley had a flour-dust and oven-fume extraction hood over a mixing bay pulling weak, letting fine flour dust drift off the line and settle on the beams. We cleared the choked hood filter, checked the collector had capacity and traversed the capture across the bay. It failed at first on the low face velocity and passed once cleared, the capture back at its design figure. Flour dust is both a respiratory and an explosion risk, so the dust housekeeping was checked alongside the airflow.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Batley system it has to establish three things - that the plant and ductwork are sound, that the hoods still capture, and that the capture still meets the figure the system was designed around.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Grange Road 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 a Batley line.
Where exposure is in question - a food and biscuit manufacturing process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
The duty is written into COSHH Regulation 9: where LEV controls a hazardous substance, the employer must have it thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months and keep the records for five years.
For most Batley sites - from the Grange Road units to the smaller workshops - the fourteen-month clock is the one that bites: miss it and the system is non-compliant the day it lapses, whatever its condition. We examine, label each hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer will ask to see. If something fails, you get the reading, the cause and the fix - not just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Batley 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 Batley duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Carlinghow 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 food and biscuit manufacturing bay, a bed and mattress manufacturing bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
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 Grange Road unit will ask to see.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Grange Road units, term-time access at the Batley university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
A dated report to the HSG258 method, the readings taken, a pass or remedial outcome for each hood, and system labelling - the evidence a duty-holder at Grange Road or a smaller Batley workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Grange Road production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Food and biscuit manufacturing, bed and mattress manufacturing, textiles and metal fabrication, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the college and hospital - the trades clustered around Grange Road and Carlinghow and across the wider West Yorkshire.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Grange Road and Carlinghow, the university and hospital labs, and the wider West Yorkshire.
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