Dorchester · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Dorchester workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Dorchester
Dorchester is the county town of Dorset, a market town of around 21,000 people built on the Roman town of Durnovaria and immortalised as Casterbridge in the novels of Thomas Hardy, who lived out his years at Max Gate on the town's south-eastern edge. Two miles south rises Maiden Castle, the largest Iron Age hillfort in Britain, and the town still carries its long history in the Roman Town House by County Hall, the only one visible in the country.
Its working economy runs on precision engineering, food and drink and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the units of the Grove Trading Estate and the Poundbury industrial estates on the western side of town.
Every Dorchester 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 Grove Trading Estate plant to the single-bench Dorchester 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 Dorchester and the wider Dorset it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and turning shops across the Grove Trading Estate and Casterbridge Industrial Estate, where swarf and mist are drawn off at the machine before they reach the operator.
Steam canopies, flour-dust control and bottling-hall extraction at the bakeries and drinks producers that carry on the trade the Eldridge Pope brewery built the town's name on before it became Brewery Square.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Dorchester cabinet shops, agricultural-building fabricators and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it can hang in the air.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Grove Trading Estate and Poundbury units, including the agricultural-engineering firms that serve the surrounding Dorset farms. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume, mild steel included, is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Dorchester bodyshops and the motor trade along the trading estates. 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 pathology and diagnostic laboratories at Dorset County Hospital and the town's teaching and testing facilities, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Dorchester
We are out under Dorchester's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
An independent Dorchester vehicle workshop had seen control drop off at the exhaust bay, with a leaking flexible connection dragging down the tailpipe extraction reels. We logged benchmark readings, visualised capture at each hood and dealt with the blocked filter that was holding things back. Once the leaking connection was made good the system met control standards, and the readings went into a report for the file. We set the workshop up with a recurring annual clean to stay ahead of it.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Dorchester 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 Grove Trading 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 Dorchester 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
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 Dorchester sites, from the Grove Trading Estate 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 Dorchester 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 Dorchester duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Poundbury West Industrial Estate 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 Grove Trading Estate units, term-time access at the Dorchester university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Grove Trading Estate and Poundbury West Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Dorset.
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 Grove Trading Estate and Poundbury West Industrial Estate and across the wider Dorset.
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 Grove Trading 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 Grove Trading Estate or a smaller Dorchester workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Dorchester, but a Grove Trading Estate fabrication shop and a High West Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Local knowledge
The Pope brothers bought four acres beside the railway in 1879 and opened their great brick brewery in 1881, and it stood as Dorchester's biggest employer for over a century until it closed in 2003 and was reborn as Brewery Square. That instinct for making and engineering still runs through the town's machine shops, food producers and agricultural firms, 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.
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