Faversham · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Faversham workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Faversham
Faversham is one of Kent's oldest market towns, a Domesday settlement on a tidal creek off the Swale whose medieval streets hold more than five hundred listed buildings. It is the home of Shepherd Neame, Britain's oldest brewer, which has been making beer in the town centre since 1698, and it was once the heart of the country's gunpowder industry, with the Chart Mills - the oldest surviving gunpowder works in the world - still standing off Stonebridge Pond.
Its working economy runs on brewing and food production, fruit and hop growing, and the engineering and fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the industrial units along Oare Road and the Bysing Wood estate on the north-western edge of town.
Each of those Faversham processes throws fume, dust, mist or vapour into the workplace air, and COSHH demands it is captured at source - that capture system is local exhaust ventilation, and it must be thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We cover the lot, from the Oare Road units to the one-bench Faversham workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Faversham and the wider Kent it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and turning shops in the Bysing Wood and Oare Road units, where fine airborne mist is drawn off at the machine before it reaches the operator.
Steam canopies, mash and boil vapour and packaging-line extraction at Shepherd Neame's town-centre brewery and the food producers and fruit-packing houses that trade on the Kentish orchards and hop gardens around the town.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Faversham cabinet and joinery workshops, 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 Oare Road and Bysing Wood workshops. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Faversham 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 laboratories, quality-control benches and technical workshops attached to the town's producers and engineering firms, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Faversham
We are out under Faversham's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A Faversham vehicle workshop had lost capture velocity across several weld-fume arms, with a fan not reaching its rated speed. We carried out a full thorough examination and test, taking velocity readings, running smoke visualisation and checking the filter. One point failed at first on a worn impeller and passed once remedied, backed by a signed HSG258 report. The staff were mid-service and happily worked around us throughout.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Faversham 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 Oare Road 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 Faversham 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.
Across most Faversham sites - the Oare Road 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 Faversham 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 Faversham duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Bysing Wood 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 - the industrial estates and workshops around Oare Road and Bysing Wood, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Kent.
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 Oare Road or a smaller Faversham workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Oare Road units, term-time access at the Faversham university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Oare Road and Bysing Wood and across the wider Kent.
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 Faversham, but an Oare Road fabrication shop and a Court Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Faversham 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.
Local knowledge
From 1573 until 1934 Faversham was the centre of the country's explosives trade, with six gunpowder and later cordite factories whose powder armed Nelson's ships at Trafalgar and Wellington's guns at Waterloo. It was dangerous work - the Uplees explosion at the Marsh Works in April 1916 killed more than a hundred men - and the trade left the town with a long instinct for controlling what its processes throw into the air. That same duty runs through Faversham's machine shops and fabricators today, each carrying an obligation to capture the mist, fume and dust its work gives 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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