Blackpool · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Blackpool workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Blackpool
Blackpool is the UK's biggest seaside resort - some 20 million visitors a year - packing thousands of kitchens into a town of around 141,000.
The work is seaside and leisure - the mass catering and rock and confectionery makers, the amusement-park and ride engineering, and the fabrication and bodyshops - across the Squires Gate airport enterprise zone and the Whitehills business park, with the Fylde aerospace cluster alongside.
Every one of those Blackpool processes puts fume, dust, mist or vapour into the air, and COSHH requires it controlled at source - which means local exhaust ventilation, thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test the LEV across all of it - from the Squires Gate units to the smaller Blackpool workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Blackpool and the wider Lancashire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Boiling-sugar, dust and steam extraction over the rock and confectionery lines, where sugar dust and vapour need capture at source.
Welding, grinding and coating extraction on the ride-maintenance and fabrication lines, where metal fume and paint vapour need capture proven.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the fabrication units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Blackpool bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Machining and fume extraction on the Fylde aerospace supply-chain units, where fine dust and mist need capture at source.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for Blackpool and The Fylde College and Blackpool Victoria Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Blackpool
We are out under Blackpool's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
An amusement-park maintenance facility in Blackpool had a mobile welding-extraction unit running with its primary HEPA filter fitted backwards, so it was not seating or sealing. We turned the filter element the right way round, checked the rubber seals and ran a full volumetric flow check. It passed once corrected, with the face capture velocity settling at a solid 0.65 metres per second. The workshop was busy repairing roller-coaster chassis while we tested.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Blackpool system it answers three things: is the system intact, does it still capture, and does that capture match what it was designed to do.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Squires Gate 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 Blackpool line.
Where exposure is in question - a confectionery and food manufacturing 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 Blackpool sites - the Squires Gate 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 Blackpool 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 Blackpool duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Whitehills 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 confectionery and food manufacturing bay, an amusement and ride engineering bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Blackpool 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.
Confectionery and food manufacturing, amusement and ride engineering, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, aerospace supply chain, and the labs of the college and hospital - the trades clustered around Squires Gate and Whitehills and across the wider Lancashire.
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 Squires Gate production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Blackpool, but a Squires Gate fabrication shop and a Promenade canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Squires Gate units, term-time access at the Blackpool university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Squires Gate and Whitehills, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Lancashire.
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