Birkenhead · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Birkenhead workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a Wirral town on the Mersey opposite Liverpool, in a borough of around 320,000, home to the Cammell Laird shipyard and the world's first publicly funded park.
The heavy work is shipbuilding and marine - the Cammell Laird shipyard - alongside heavy engineering and fabrication and offshore and energy, across the Twelve Quays and Cambeltown Road estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Every Birkenhead 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 Twelve Quays plant to the single-bench Birkenhead units, logging capture and face-velocity figures and returning a clear pass-or-remedial outcome with each hood identified and labelled.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Birkenhead employers and others across Merseyside it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Weld-fume, grinding and paint extraction across the Cammell Laird shipbuilding and marine-engineering halls, where heavy metal fume and coating vapour need capture at source.
Grinding, machining and fume extraction across the heavy-engineering and fabrication units, where metal dust and mist need capture proven.
Weld-fume and grinding extraction across the offshore and energy fabrication shops, where heavy metal fume needs capture at source.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Twelve Quays and Cambeltown Road units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Birkenhead 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 Wirral Metropolitan College and Arrowe Park Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Birkenhead
We are out under Birkenhead's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A shipyard engineering workshop in Birkenhead had a plasma-cutter table extraction fan losing power to severe drive-belt slippage and wear. We adjusted the belt tension, checked the pulley alignment and ran pitot-tube traverse lines inside the main exhaust stack. It passed once the belt was tuned, with the face velocity back to the required 1.2 metres per second for the hot metallurgical cutting fume. The yard was restoring an old iron-hulled paddle steamer right next to the workshop bay.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Birkenhead system it has to answer three things - whether the system is sound, whether it still draws at the hood, and whether that draw holds to what it was designed to deliver.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Twelve Quays 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 Birkenhead line.
Where exposure is in question - a shipbuilding and marine process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
COSHH Regulation 9 puts a hard duty on the employer: any LEV controlling a hazardous substance must have a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, with records kept for five years.
Across most Birkenhead sites - the Twelve Quays plant and the smaller units alike - it is the fourteen-month interval that trips people up, because a lapsed test leaves the system non-compliant from that date whatever its real condition. We run the examination, mark every hood with its result and next-due date, and produce the report your insurer or an HSE inspector will look for, and any failed point comes back with its reading, its cause and the fix rather than a bare red tag.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Birkenhead 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 Birkenhead duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Cambeltown Road 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 shipbuilding and marine bay, a heavy engineering and fabrication bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Twelve Quays and Cambeltown Road, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Merseyside.
No. LEV testing is a statutory examination of fume and dust control to COSHH and HSG258, with capture and face-velocity readings; TR19 is kitchen grease and fire risk. We do both across Birkenhead, but a Twelve Quays fabrication shop and a Grange Road canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Birkenhead 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.
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 Twelve Quays or a smaller Birkenhead 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 Twelve Quays production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Twelve Quays unit will ask to see.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
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