Macclesfield · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Macclesfield workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Macclesfield
Macclesfield is the Silk Town of Cheshire, around 52,000 on the western edge of the Peak District, home to the UK's largest pharmaceutical manufacturing campus at AstraZeneca.
The signature trade is pharmaceuticals - the medicine manufacturing and packing of the AstraZeneca campus, the fine chemicals and advanced materials, and the precision engineering - across the Hurdsfield Industrial Estate and Lyme Green estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Every Macclesfield 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 Hurdsfield Industrial Estate plant to the single-bench Macclesfield 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 Macclesfield and the wider Cheshire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Dust, solvent-vapour and fume extraction across the medicine manufacturing and packing lines of the pharmaceutical campus, the defining trade of the town, where process dust and vapour need capture at source under containment.
Vapour, mist and fume extraction across the fine-chemical and advanced-materials units, where process vapour needs capture proven.
Machining, grinding and mist extraction across the precision-engineering units, where metal dust and mist need capture at source.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Hurdsfield Industrial Estate and Lyme Green units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Macclesfield 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 local college and Macclesfield District General Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Macclesfield
We are out under Macclesfield's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A pharmaceutical packing hall in Macclesfield had a dust-extraction hood over a tablet-coating line failing its capture check because a damper in the branch had seized part-shut. We freed the damper, re-ran the face-velocity traverse at the hood and checked the branch flow. It failed at first on the low capture and passed once the damper was freed, the containment back at its design figure. The line handled active pharmaceutical ingredient, so the test was run under the site's containment and gowning controls.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Macclesfield 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 Hurdsfield 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 Macclesfield line.
Where exposure is in question - a pharmaceutical 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 Macclesfield sites - the Hurdsfield 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 Macclesfield 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 Macclesfield duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Lyme Green Business 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 pharmaceutical manufacturing bay, a fine chemicals and advanced materials bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Hurdsfield Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Macclesfield university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Hurdsfield Industrial Estate and Lyme Green Business Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Cheshire.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Macclesfield 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.
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 Macclesfield, but a Hurdsfield Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Chestergate canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Hurdsfield Industrial Estate or a smaller Macclesfield 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 Hurdsfield 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.
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