Hastings · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Hastings workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Hastings
Hastings is an East Sussex seaside town of around 91,000, famous for 1066, its clifftop castle and the tall black net huts of the Stade fishing quarter.
The work is engineering and coastal trades - the engineering and electronics, the fishing and food processing of the Stade beach-launched fleet, and the print - across the Castleham Industrial Estate and Ponswood estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Wherever a Hastings 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 Castleham Industrial Estate units down to the smallest Hastings workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Hastings employers and others across East Sussex it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Machining, grinding and fume extraction across the engineering and manufacturing units, where metal dust and mist need capture at source.
Solder-fume, solvent and conformal-coating extraction across the electronics lines, a long-standing local sector, where fume needs capture proven.
Steam, dust and mist extraction across the Stade fish and food-processing trades, where organic dust and vapour need capture at source.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Castleham Industrial Estate and Ponswood units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Hastings 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 East Sussex College and the Conquest Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Hastings
We are out under Hastings's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A boatyard and fibreglass repair shed in Hastings had the extract hood used during hull resin curing blocked at its external discharge by a nesting bird colony. We safely cleared the debris, fitted a temporary bird-guard mesh on the terminal cowl and measured the fan discharge flow. It passed once the obstruction was gone, with the face velocity back to its 0.55 metres per second design target. Reaching the terminal meant climbing an external cat-ladder onto an old slate roof.
The test
A statutory LEV test to HSG258 is far more than a look round. On a Hastings system it settles three questions: is the ductwork and plant intact, does it still capture at the hood, and does that capture still match the design.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Castleham 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 Hastings line.
Where exposure is in question - an 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.
On most Hastings sites - the Castleham Industrial Estate units and the smaller workshops alike - it is the fourteen-month clock that bites: let it lapse and the system is non-compliant that day, however well it seems to run. We examine it, tag each hood with its status and next-due date, and hand over the report an HSE inspector or insurer will want. Where something fails you get the reading, the cause and the remedy - never just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Hastings 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 Hastings duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Ponswood 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 manufacturing bay, an electronics 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 Hastings 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 Castleham 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.
Engineering and manufacturing, electronics, fishing and food processing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the college and hospital - the trades clustered around Castleham Industrial Estate and Ponswood and across the wider East Sussex.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Castleham Industrial Estate and Ponswood, the university and hospital labs, and the wider East Sussex.
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 Castleham Industrial Estate unit will ask to see.
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 Hastings, but a Castleham Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Stade canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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