Horsforth · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Horsforth workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Horsforth
Horsforth sits on the wooded slopes above the River Aire in north-west Leeds, a place that grew from a farming township into one of the largest suburbs in the city and still counts itself among the biggest old villages in England, with around 19,000 people. Its stone came out of the ground here: Golden Bank Quarry sent sandstone as far as Egypt and paved Scarborough's seafront, and the medieval quarries supplied Kirkstall Abbey with its building stone and millstones.
Today the working economy runs on light engineering, joinery and the trade and support businesses clustered in the units at Low Hall Business Park off Low Hall Road and the Leeds Bradford Airport Industrial Estate a short way north, where aviation and maintenance trades sit alongside general manufacturing.
Every Horsforth 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 Low Hall Business Park plant to the single-bench Horsforth 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 Horsforth and the wider West Yorkshire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and turning shops in the Low Hall Business Park units and the airport support trades north of Horsforth, where metalworking fluids atomise off the tool and must be captured at source.
Steam canopies, oven extraction and flour-dust control in the bakeries, kitchens and small food producers serving Horsforth, where airborne flour is a recognised cause of occupational asthma and needs proper capture.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at the cabinet makers and joinery workshops around Low Hall Road, where hardwood and MDF dust is drawn off at the saw and sander before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Horsforth trade units and the airport engineering shops. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume, mild steel included, is treated as carcinogenic and must be controlled.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at the bodyshops and MOT and repair units around Horsforth. Two-pack paints release isocyanates, the leading cause of occupational asthma, so booth airflow is examined against its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the science and teaching laboratories at Leeds Trinity University on Brownberrie Lane, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Horsforth
We are out under Horsforth's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
At a family-owned bakery in Horsforth, the flour-dust extraction was struggling, with capture velocity at several of the flour-handling hoods slipping under the benchmark and one filter on the unit partly clogged. Working a single overnight shift so the shop could open as usual, I logged benchmark readings, visualised the capture at each hood and re-seated the loose joint that had been leaking. With the unsealed connection sorted, every point came back a pass on the re-test. I left a compliance report for their HSE file.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Horsforth 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 Low Hall 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 Horsforth 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
The duty is written into COSHH Regulation 9: where LEV controls a hazardous substance, the employer must have it thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months and keep the records for five years.
For the great majority of Horsforth sites, from the Low Hall Business Park 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 Horsforth 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 Horsforth duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Leeds Bradford Airport 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. 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 Low Hall Business Park unit will ask to see.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Low Hall Business Park and Leeds Bradford Airport Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider West Yorkshire.
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 Low Hall Business Park or a smaller Horsforth workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Low Hall Business Park and Leeds Bradford Airport Industrial Estate and across the wider West Yorkshire.
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 Low Hall 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 Horsforth, but a Low Hall Business Park fabrication shop and a Town Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Local knowledge
The aerodrome that became Leeds Bradford Airport opened on the moorland edge above Horsforth in 1931, and during the war Avro built a shadow factory at Yeadon that turned out Ansons and Lancasters for the RAF. That precision-engineering instinct still runs through the machine shops and maintenance trades north of the town, 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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