Bridport · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Bridport workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Bridport
Bridport is a west Dorset market town of around 12,300 people, a mile inland from the Jurassic Coast at West Bay. It made rope, net and twine for the Royal Navy for seven centuries and still manufactures engineered netting and textiles today.
Its signature trades - netting, engineered textiles, precision engineering and joinery - cluster on the Gore Cross and Dreadnought estates, and every extraction system among them has to be tested to prove it works.
Wherever a Bridport 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 Gore Cross units down to the smallest Bridport workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Bridport and the wider Dorset it is your evidence under COSHH.
AmSafe Bridport and Gundry Bridport still weave and coat industrial netting and engineered textiles in the town. Coating lines, cutting and heat-sealing throw off polymer fume and fibre dust that on-machine LEV has to capture at source.
CNC machining and metal cutting on the Dreadnought and Gore Cross estates generate oil mist and fine swarf. Enclosure extraction and mist collectors are tested to prove they keep operators clear of the breathing zone.
Cabinet shops and furniture restorers around St Michael's Trading Estate produce fine wood dust, a known carcinogen. We test the LEV on saws, sanders and collection bins to confirm capture right at the tool.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Gore Cross and Dreadnought units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Bridport 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 Weymouth College and Bridport Community Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Bridport
We are out under Bridport's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A bakery in Bridport had capture velocity at some of its flour-handling extraction dropping below benchmark, with a partly blocked filter on the unit. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the dough-mixer hoods, cleared the filter and sealed an open joint, then re-checked each point. All points passed on re-test once the joint was sealed, and we logged and reported the benchmark readings.
The test
A statutory LEV test to HSG258 is far more than a look round. On a Bridport 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 Gore Cross 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 Bridport line.
Where exposure is in question - a net and textile 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.
On most Bridport sites - the Gore Cross units and the smaller workshops alike - it is the fourteen-month clock that bites: let it lapse and the system is non-compliant that day, however well it seems to run. We examine it, tag each hood with its status and next-due date, and hand over the report an HSE inspector or insurer will want. Where something fails you get the reading, the cause and the remedy - never just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Bridport 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 Bridport duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Dreadnought 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 net and textile manufacturing bay, a precision engineering and cnc 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 Gore Cross and Dreadnought, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Dorset.
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 Bridport, but a Gore Cross fabrication shop and an East Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Gore Cross or a smaller Bridport workshop needs for their COSHH file.
net and textile manufacturing, precision engineering, woodwork and joinery, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and laboratory fume cupboards - the trades clustered around Gore Cross and Dreadnought and across the wider Dorset.
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 Gore Cross production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Gore Cross units, term-time access at the Bridport university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Local knowledge
Bridport has spun rope and twine since the thirteenth century, and in 1211 King John ordered ships' ropes and cables made here for the Crown - a trade so vital that Henry VIII later required all cordage for the English Navy to be made in the town or within five miles of it. Rope gave way to engineered textiles and netting, but the manufacturing stayed. Those working benches now need the local exhaust ventilation testing that keeps fume and dust off the people running them.
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