Chesham · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Chesham workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Chesham
Chesham sits in a fold of the Chiltern Hills where the River Chess rises, a Buckinghamshire market town of around twenty-one thousand people best known for a curious railway record - it is the furthest London Underground station from the centre of the capital, the end of the Metropolitan line some twenty-five miles from Charing Cross. Its old prosperity was built on the four B's - boots, beer, brushes and Baptists - trades that filled Broad Street and the Waterside mills for two centuries.
That making-and-mending instinct still runs through the town's working economy, in precision engineering, food production and the fabrication and woodworking trades grouped in the light-industrial units along Asheridge Road at the north-west edge and around the historic mill sites at Waterside.
Wherever a Chesham 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 Asheridge Road Industrial Estate units down to the smallest Chesham 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 Chesham employers and others across Buckinghamshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC and turning centres across the machine shops in the Asheridge Road units and along Chartridge Lane, where fine metalworking has replaced the town's old bootmaking benches.
Steam canopies, flour-dust control and cold-store ventilation in Chesham's bakeries, kitchens and drinks producers, heir to the Nash family's Chesham Brewery that traded its Trident beers from Church Street until the middle of the last century.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Chesham cabinet shops and joinery works - the town has turned the beech of the surrounding Chiltern woods since the sixteenth century, and hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches in the fabrication units off Asheridge Road and at Waterside. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Chesham bodyshops and MOT premises. 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 the schools, clinics and small research and testing firms scattered through the Asheridge Vale and town-centre units, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Chesham
We are out under Chesham's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Capture at the sanders in a well-known Chesham cabinet maker's had fallen away, with a filter well overdue for change sitting behind it. We logged benchmark readings, visualised the pull at each of the saw and sander hoods and cleared debris out of the ducting. Once a leaking connection was made good the system met its control standard, written up in a thorough examination and test certificate. We set the workshop up on a recurring quarterly clean to stay ahead of it.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Chesham system it has to establish three things - that the plant and ductwork are sound, that the hoods still capture, and that the capture still meets the figure the system was designed around.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Asheridge Road Industrial Estate 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 Chesham 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.
On most Chesham sites - the Asheridge Road Industrial Estate 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 Chesham 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 Chesham duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Aerial Park 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. We plan testing around production shifts at the Asheridge Road Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Chesham university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 an Asheridge Road Industrial Estate production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Asheridge Road Industrial Estate and Aerial Park and across the wider Buckinghamshire.
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 Chesham, but an Asheridge Road Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Broad Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Asheridge Road Industrial Estate and Aerial Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Buckinghamshire.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Chesham 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.
Local knowledge
Chesham grew rich on the four B's - boots, beer, brushes and Baptists - and by the early twentieth century the town had ten brush factories turning beech offcuts into everything from paintbrushes and brooms to brushes for scrubbing barnacles off ships' hulls. That woodworking and light-manufacturing instinct still runs through the machine shops and workshops off Asheridge Road, and every one of them carries a duty to control the mist, fume and dust its work throws off. We test and certify local exhaust ventilation to the standard COSHH sets, so the extraction reads true against its design figures. The trades have changed, but the obligation to keep the air clean has not.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Stay compliant with COSHH and HSG258. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.