Fulwood · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Fulwood workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Fulwood
Fulwood is Preston's most affluent township, a leafy suburb on the northern edge of the city that grew through the second half of the nineteenth century out of the old Forest of Fulwood as prosperous Preston families moved out to its villas. It governed itself as a separate urban district until 1974, and it is best known for Fulwood Barracks - the great infantry barracks of 1848 that remains the North West's principal military depot and home of the Lancashire Infantry Museum.
Its working economy today runs on offices, healthcare and the engineering and fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the units of the North Preston employment area at Fulwood Business Park and Eastway Business Village off Caxton Road and Oliver's Place.
Wherever a Fulwood 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 Fulwood Business Park units down to the smallest Fulwood workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Fulwood and the wider Lancashire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres in the North Preston employment area, in the machine shops that feed the BAE Systems aerospace supply chain built on Preston's long aircraft-making history.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in Fulwood's bakeries, catering kitchens and the food units around the Preston employment estates, where extraction keeps heat, moisture and dust off the shop floor.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Fulwood cabinet shops and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Fulwood Business Park and Eastway units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at the bodyshops around Garstang Road and Black Bull Lane. 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 research laboratories of the Royal Preston Hospital and the science departments of the University of Central Lancashire, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Fulwood
We are out under Fulwood's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Airflow at the fume extraction arms of a town-centre Fulwood agricultural engineering workshop had fallen since the last test, pointing to a build-up of debris in the ducting. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the welding bench extract arms, replaced the worn impeller and re-checked. The LEV passed on re-test across the arms, and we issued the certificate and readings. We timed the job for the Christmas shutdown while the unit was quiet.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Fulwood system it answers three things: is the system intact, does it still capture, and does that capture match what it was designed to do.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Fulwood Business Park 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 Fulwood 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 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.
For most Fulwood sites - from the Fulwood Business Park units to the smaller workshops - the fourteen-month clock is the one that bites: miss it and the system is non-compliant the day it lapses, whatever its condition. We examine, label each hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer will ask to see. If something fails, you get the reading, the cause and the fix - not just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Fulwood 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 Fulwood duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Eastway Business Village 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.
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 Fulwood Business Park production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Fulwood, but a Fulwood Business Park fabrication shop and a Watling Street Road canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Fulwood Business Park and Eastway Business Village and across the wider Lancashire.
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 Fulwood Business Park unit will ask to see.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Fulwood Business Park and Eastway Business Village, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Lancashire.
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 Fulwood Business Park or a smaller Fulwood workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Local knowledge
Preston built aircraft for a living - from 1947 the English Electric works turned out the Canberra jet bomber and then the supersonic Lightning, and that aerospace instinct still runs through the engineering shops and BAE Systems supply chain of the North Preston employment area. Fulwood's own machine and fabrication units carry the modern version of that duty, pulling the oil mist, weld fume and grinding dust off at the tool before it reaches a fitter's lungs. We measure the capture hood by hood and certify the local exhaust ventilation against the readings COSHH demands, so a Fulwood workshop knows its air is cleaned to the number and not by eye. The instinct that built Canberras at Samlesbury and Lightnings at Warton still shapes how the Preston trades treat the air they work in. Fulwood Barracks, raised in the 1840s and one of the last working barracks of its kind in the North West, still anchors the district, and the garrison workshops and the BAE supply shops share the same duty to keep the air they work in clean.
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