Burntwood · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Burntwood workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Burntwood
Burntwood is a large town of around 26,000 people on the north-eastern edge of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, grown from the coal-mining villages of Chasetown and Chase Terrace and wrapped around Chasewater, the largest canal-feeder reservoir in the West Midlands. Its pits are long gone, but the reservoir, the country park and the heritage railway that runs the old colliery line still mark where the Cannock Chase coalfield began.
Its working economy now centres on the industrial and warehousing units at Burntwood Business Park and the yards along Coppice Lane, set between Cannock and Lichfield with quick access to the M6 Toll and the A5. The trades there - machining, fabrication, spray-finishing, food and timber - each throw a different contaminant into the air, and each carries the same duty to draw it off at source.
Every one of those Burntwood 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 Burntwood Business Park units to the smaller Burntwood workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Burntwood employers and others across Staffordshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist capture over the CNC machining centres, turning shops and grinders on Burntwood Business Park and the Coppice Lane yards, drawing off at the spindle the fine aerosol a full day of cutting throws into the air of a Chase-edge workshop.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries and food producers working out of the Zone units at Burntwood Business Park, where the extraction has to satisfy a hygiene inspector as squarely as it satisfies an airflow reading off the anemometer.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at the cabinet makers and joinery shops around Chasetown and Coppice Lane, where hardwood and MDF dust off the saw and sander is pulled clear of the bench before a lungful is ever taken in.
On-torch extraction, movable fume arms and downdraught benches across the fabrication bays on Burntwood Business Park and the Coppice Lane units, sized to the weld the shop actually runs. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at the bodyshops off Cannock Road and Chase Terrace. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined against its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the science departments at Chase Terrace Academy and the quality-control benches on Burntwood Business Park, held to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Burntwood
We are out under Burntwood's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A machine shop in Burntwood was seeing low face velocity across its coolant-mist enclosures, which we traced to debris packed into the ducting. We logged benchmark readings, visualised capture at each hood and cleared an unsealed joint before re-checking every point. Everything passed on re-test once the ducting was sorted, and we left a compliance report for the HSE file. The foreman booked a standing six-monthly visit on the spot.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Burntwood 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 Burntwood Business Park 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 Burntwood line.
Where exposure is in question - a precision engineering and manufacturing process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
COSHH Regulation 9 makes it plain: any LEV controlling exposure to a hazardous substance has to be thoroughly examined and tested at intervals no greater than fourteen months, and the resulting records kept for at least five years.
For most Burntwood sites - from the Burntwood Business Park 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 Burntwood 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 Burntwood duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Coppice 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 precision engineering and manufacturing bay, a food and drink production 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 Burntwood Business Park and Coppice Lane, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Staffordshire.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Burntwood 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.
precision engineering and manufacturing, food and drink production, woodworking and joinery, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and laboratory fume cupboards - the trades clustered around Burntwood Business Park and Coppice Lane and across the wider Staffordshire.
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 Burntwood Business Park or a smaller Burntwood workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Burntwood, but a Burntwood Business Park fabrication shop and a Chasetown canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Burntwood Business Park unit will ask to see.
Local knowledge
The Marquess of Anglesey sank the Marquess Pit here in 1849 and opened the Hammerwich Colliery at the toe of the Chasewater dam the same year, driving the Cannock Chase coalfield that built Chasetown and Chase Terrace before the last local pit closed in 1959. The Cannock Chase Colliery Company worked seams that ran under Chasewater itself, the reservoir the canal engineers had dammed in 1797 to feed the Wyrley and Essington cut, and St Anne's Church at Chasetown was among the first buildings in the world lit throughout by electricity, in 1883, wired to the colliery's own dynamo. That heavy-industry inheritance now lives on in the machine shops and fabrication units of Burntwood Business Park, where cutting oil, weld fume and grinding dust hang in the air the colliery ventilation once fought to clear. Each of those Burntwood workshops has to draw that contamination off at the tool before it reaches a fitter's lungs. We measure the capture at each hood and certify the local exhaust ventilation against the readings COSHH demands, so nothing about the airflow is taken on trust.
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