Croydon · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Croydon workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Croydon
Croydon is one of London's largest boroughs, home to around 390,000 people, a high-rise office skyline and the Purley Way industrial corridor.
The work runs to engineering and fabrication, printing, and food manufacturing, plus the ventilation of the office towers - across the Factory Lane and Beddington Lane estates, with the bodyshops and trade units between them.
Every Croydon process that gives off fume, dust, mist or vapour falls under COSHH, which requires the contamination held at source by local exhaust ventilation and that LEV thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test right across the site, from the Factory Lane plant to the single-bench Croydon units, logging capture and face-velocity figures and returning a clear pass-or-remedial outcome with each hood identified and labelled.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Croydon and the wider Greater London it is your evidence under COSHH.
Grinding, machining and fume extraction across the engineering and fabrication units on the Purley Way corridor, where metal dust and mist need capture at source.
Solvent and ink-mist extraction across the print lines, where VOC vapour needs capture proven.
Steam, flour-dust and mist extraction across the food producers, where organic dust is both a health and a combustion risk.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Factory Lane and Beddington Lane units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Croydon 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 the Croydon university campus and Croydon University Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Croydon
We are out under Croydon's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A wholesale bakery in Croydon had the canopy hood over its flour silo loading bay caked in hardened dough and flour along the intake slots. We measured the slot inlet velocities and the duct transport velocity, and scraped the slot margins back to verify the original mechanical design limits. It passed conditionally on performance, but we issued an urgent remediation notice for a deep internal duct clean. It was an ATEX explosion-risk zone, so every piece of test gear used had to be certified intrinsically safe.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Croydon 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 Factory Lane 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 Croydon line.
Where exposure is in question - an engineering and metal fabrication 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.
Across most Croydon sites - the Factory Lane plant and the smaller units alike - it is the fourteen-month interval that trips people up, because a lapsed test leaves the system non-compliant from that date whatever its real condition. We run the examination, mark every hood with its result and next-due date, and produce the report your insurer or an HSE inspector will look for, and any failed point comes back with its reading, its cause and the fix rather than a bare red tag.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Croydon 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 Croydon duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Beddington 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. An engineering and metal fabrication bay, a printing bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Croydon 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.
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 Factory Lane production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Factory Lane or a smaller Croydon workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Factory Lane units, term-time access at the Croydon university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Croydon, but a Factory Lane fabrication shop and a South End canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Engineering and metal fabrication, printing, food manufacturing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the university campus and hospital - the trades clustered around Factory Lane and Beddington Lane and across the wider Greater London.
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