Colchester · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Colchester workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Colchester
Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town and the first Roman capital of Britain, a garrison city of around 130,000.
The work is engineering and the garrison - the machine-tool and lathe engineering heritage, the garrison vehicle workshops, and the food and fabrication units - across the Severalls estate and the Stanway commercial area, with the bodyshops and labs of the University of Essex between them.
Wherever a Colchester 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 Severalls units down to the smallest Colchester 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 Colchester and the wider Essex it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist, grinding and weld-fume extraction on the machine-tool and engineering lines, where metal dust and mist need capture at source.
Exhaust, weld-fume and paint extraction on the garrison vehicle-maintenance workshops, where engine fume and coating vapour need capture proven.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Severalls and Stanway units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Colchester bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Dust, steam and solvent extraction across the food and print producers, where organic dust and vapour need capture at source.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the University of Essex and Colchester Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Colchester
We are out under Colchester's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A secondary school design-and-technology block in Colchester had its main wood-dust extraction pulling zero suction - the emergency-stop button on the panel had jammed in the off position. We freed the e-stop, reset the control-panel breaker and ran a full pitot-tube traverse. It passed once the power was back, with the transport velocity at 21 metres per second to keep the dust from dropping out. We tested over the summer holidays with the school empty.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Colchester 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 Severalls 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 Colchester line.
Where exposure is in question - a machine-tool and engineering process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
Under Regulation 9 of COSHH the obligation sits squarely with the employer - any LEV that controls a hazardous substance needs a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, and the records held for five years.
For the great majority of Colchester sites, from the Severalls units to the one-man workshops, the fourteen-month deadline is what catches people out: once it passes the system is non-compliant regardless of its actual state. We carry out the examination, label every hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer expects to see - and if a point fails, you get the number, the cause and the fix rather than a bare fail.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Colchester 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 Colchester duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Stanway 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 machine-tool and engineering bay, a garrison vehicle workshops bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
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 Severalls unit will ask to see.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Colchester 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.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Severalls and Stanway, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Essex.
Machine-tool and engineering, garrison vehicle workshops, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, food manufacturing and print, and the labs of the university and hospital - the trades clustered around Severalls and Stanway and across the wider Essex.
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 Severalls 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 Severalls units, term-time access at the Colchester university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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