Cottingham · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Cottingham workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Cottingham
Cottingham sits just north-west of Hull on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, and with around 17,000 residents it stakes a strong claim to be the largest village in England. Its medieval Church of St Mary the Virgin, raised between 1272 and 1370 and crowned by a fifteenth-century tower, still marks the crossroads where the two Victorian high streets of Hallgate and King Street meet.
Long a commuter village for Hull, Cottingham also carries its own working economy in the light-industrial units along Harland Way and Eppleworth Road, and it sits inside the wider Humber engineering, chemical and food cluster that runs down to Priory Park and the Bridgehead units toward the river.
Wherever a Cottingham 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 Harland Way units down to the smallest Cottingham 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 Cottingham employers and others across East Riding of Yorkshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on lathes and machining centres in the Harland Way and Eppleworth Road units, part of the Humber engineering supply chain that feeds Ideal Heating and the manufacturers clustered at Priory Park and Bridgehead.
Steam canopies, oven extraction and flour-dust control across Cottingham bakeries, butchers and the food producers that supply the village market and the wider Hull food trade.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Cottingham joinery shops and cabinet makers, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it can reach the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the village fabrication and repair units. Since the HSE reclassification in 2019, all welding fume, mild steel included, is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at bodyshops around Cottingham and neighbouring Willerby. 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 University of Hull science departments and for the pathology and oncology laboratories at Castle Hill Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Cottingham
We are out under Cottingham's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
The saws in a refurbished Cottingham school woodwork room had lost capture, the extraction hoods let down by a worn fan impeller. I ran a full thorough examination and test, taking velocity readings, smoke visualisation and a filter check. With the loose joint made good, every point passed on the re-test. Getting the kit in was awkward, so we brought it round the back to reach the far bench, and I finished with a signed report.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Cottingham 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 Harland Way 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 Cottingham 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 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.
For the great majority of Cottingham sites, from the Harland Way 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 Cottingham 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 Cottingham duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Priory 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.
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 Harland Way or a smaller Cottingham 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 Harland Way unit will ask to see.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Cottingham 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 Harland Way and Priory Park and across the wider East Riding of Yorkshire.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Harland Way and Priory Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider East Riding of Yorkshire.
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 Cottingham, but a Harland Way fabrication shop and a Finkle Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Local knowledge
Cottingham grew up around Baynard Castle, a moated stronghold whose owner William de Stuteville entertained King John here in 1200 and won a licence to fortify the site the following year. The village that spread out from it now mixes commuter housing with working units along Harland Way and Eppleworth Road, and every machine shop and fabricator among 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.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Stay compliant with COSHH and HSG258. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.