Leominster · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Leominster workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Leominster
Leominster - pronounced Lemster - is the largest of Herefordshire's five market towns, with a population of around 12,000 at the confluence of the Lugg and the Kenwater. A former wool town, it is now known across the Marches as a centre for antiques.
The workshops on Southern Avenue and Leominster Enterprise Park carry the town's engineering, steel-fabrication and joinery trades, from long-established guttering and louvre makers to bespoke oak-frame and worktop shops.
Every one of those Leominster processes puts fume, dust, mist or vapour into the air, and COSHH requires it controlled at source - which means local exhaust ventilation, thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test the LEV across all of it - from the Southern Avenue units to the smaller Leominster workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
Where fume, dust, mist or vapour is pulled away at the point it is made, that is LEV - and for employers in Leominster and across Herefordshire it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Downdraught benches and dust extraction for the worktop makers and oak-frame joiners around Southern Avenue and the Enterprise Park. Hardwood dust is a Schedule 1 carcinogen, so capture is tested at the tool and at the cyclone.
LEV for the farm-machinery and steel-frame workshops that serve the surrounding Marches farms. Grinding, cutting and welding bays each need extraction at source before dust and fume reach the operator.
Booth and dry-back extraction for the furniture and worktop finishers on the estates. Solvent lacquers and two-pack finishes need airflow that holds vapour below the workshop exposure limit.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Southern Avenue and Leominster Enterprise Park units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Leominster 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 Herefordshire, Ludlow and North Shropshire College and Leominster Community Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Leominster
We are out under Leominster's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
An upholstery workshop in Leominster had face velocity across its saw and sander hoods reading low, traced to a slipping fan drive belt. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter, then replaced the belt. One point failed at first on an unsealed joint and passed after remedial work, and we issued the certificate with the readings.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Leominster 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 Southern Avenue 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 Leominster line.
Where exposure is in question - a joinery and woodworking 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 Leominster sites - the Southern Avenue 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 Leominster 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 Leominster duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Leominster Enterprise Park 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 joinery and woodworking bay, an agricultural engineering bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
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 Southern Avenue or a smaller Leominster workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Southern Avenue production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Southern Avenue units, term-time access at the Leominster university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Southern Avenue unit will ask to see.
joinery and woodworking, agricultural engineering, worktop finishing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and laboratory fume cupboards - the trades clustered around Southern Avenue and Leominster Enterprise Park and across the wider Herefordshire.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Southern Avenue and Leominster Enterprise Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Herefordshire.
Local knowledge
In the Middle Ages Leominster grew rich on Lemster Ore - the fine fleece of the local Ryeland sheep, reckoned the best wool in England and prized by merchants across Europe. That trade built Broad Street and much of the town's early wealth. The industry that keeps Leominster working today is a different one, but it still turns raw material into finished goods, and the workshops that do it need local exhaust ventilation tested and certified to keep the air fit to breathe.
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