Darlington · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Darlington workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Darlington
Darlington is a County Durham town of around 107,000, the birthplace of the modern railway, where the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in 1825.
The work is rail and advanced engineering - the diesel-engine and advanced manufacturing, the heavy engineering and fabrication rooted in the town's railway heritage, and the food manufacturing - across the Faverdale Industrial Estate and Yarm Road estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Every Darlington 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 Faverdale Industrial Estate plant to the single-bench Darlington 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 Darlington and the wider County Durham it is your evidence under COSHH.
Machining, weld-fume and paint extraction across the engine and advanced-manufacturing lines, a trade rooted in Darlington's railway heritage, where metal dust and fume need capture at source.
Grinding, machining and fume extraction across the heavy-engineering and fabrication units, where metal dust and mist need capture proven.
Steam, 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 Faverdale Industrial Estate and Yarm Road units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Darlington 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 Darlington College and Darlington Memorial Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Darlington
We are out under Darlington's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A bridge-fabrication yard in Darlington had the inline water-trap bottles on its high-vacuum welding-torch extraction full to the brim, so water was being pulled into the suction lines. We drained the trap reservoirs, cleared the lines and tested the high-vacuum suction at the torch heads. It passed once the traps were drained, with the suction back to the required 12 kilopascals for the integrated torch capture. It was a huge steel yard fabricating railway bridge spans, so metatarsal boots and side-shield glasses were the rule.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Darlington 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 Faverdale 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 Darlington line.
Where exposure is in question - a rail and advanced engineering 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.
Across most Darlington sites - the Faverdale Industrial Estate 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 Darlington 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 Darlington duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Yarm Road 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 rail and advanced engineering bay, a heavy engineering and fabrication 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 Faverdale Industrial Estate and Yarm Road, the university and hospital labs, and the wider County Durham.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Darlington 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.
Rail and advanced engineering, heavy engineering and fabrication, food manufacturing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the college and hospital - the trades clustered around Faverdale Industrial Estate and Yarm Road and across the wider County Durham.
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 Faverdale 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.
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 Faverdale Industrial Estate or a smaller Darlington workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Faverdale Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Darlington university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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