Bradford · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Bradford workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Bradford
Bradford is the UK's youngest city, home to around 547,000 people, and it still works wool, chemicals and metal across the district.
The heritage trades hold on - the wool and worsted mills, the dye and chemical works with their corrosive fume - alongside the metal fabrication and welding, the electronics and precision shops, the printers and food producers, clustered on the Euroway and Staithgate Lane estates off the M606.
Wherever a Bradford 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 Euroway units down to the smallest Bradford 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 Bradford employers and others across West Yorkshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Dust and fibre extraction across the spinning, weaving and dyeing floors, where fine fibre blinds a filter and loads a duct.
Vapour and mist extraction on the dye and chemical process lines - reactive, corrosive fume that quietly eats a duct from the inside.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Euroway fabrication units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Solder-fume and fine-dust extraction on the electronics and precision-engineering benches, where capture at the tip is the whole control.
Solvent and mist extraction on the print and packaging lines - vapour a loaded filter stops holding.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the University of Bradford and the Bradford Royal Infirmary, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Bradford
We are out under Bradford's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A dye and chemical processing plant in Bradford had a pinhole corrosion leak on the exhaust ductwork near an elbow, above a powder-mixing vessel, and acidic vapour was escaping into the room. We ran static-pressure checks along the duct and measured the face velocity at the vessel-lip hood, marking the leak points for repair. It failed on structural leakage and low transport velocity - the pull had dropped to 11 metres per second. The dye agents were reactive enough that the whole test was done in Type 3 chemical suits and breathing apparatus.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Bradford 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 Euroway 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 Bradford line.
Where exposure is in question - a textiles and wool 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.
Across most Bradford sites - the Euroway 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 Bradford 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 Bradford duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Staithgate Lane 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 textiles and wool bay, a chemicals and dyestuffs 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 Bradford 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.
Textiles and wool, chemicals and dyestuffs, welding and fabrication, electronics and precision, printing and packaging, and the labs of the university and hospitals - the trades clustered around Euroway and Staithgate Lane and across the wider West Yorkshire.
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 Euroway production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Euroway or a smaller Bradford workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Euroway unit will ask to see.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Euroway units, term-time access at the Bradford university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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