Melksham · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Melksham workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Melksham
Melksham sits on the River Avon in west Wiltshire, midway between Bath and Chippenham, and grew from a wool-cloth town into one of the most industrialised places in the county. For well over a century its name meant rubber: the Avon Rubber works by the river turned out one and a half million tyres a year at its peak and, as Avon Protection, became a world maker of gas masks and respirators before the tyre plant finally closed at the end of 2023.
The town still runs on manufacturing and the fabrication trades, most of it grouped in the large units of the Bowerhill Industrial Estate off the A350 and the newer offices and workshops at Hampton Park.
Wherever a Melksham 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 Bowerhill Industrial Estate units down to the smallest Melksham 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 Melksham and the wider Wiltshire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and press lines at Bowerhill, from Knorr-Bremse rail braking systems to the furniture manufacturing Herman Miller brought to the estate, and the machine shops feeding them.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in Melksham's bakeries and food plants, in a district whose Bowyers pork-pie and sausage heritage and the Nestle cereal works nearby at Staverton built its name in food.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Melksham cabinet shops, furniture works and joinery units, 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 Bowerhill Industrial Estate units, heir to the town's rubber-works engineering trade. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Melksham 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 materials and quality-control laboratories that grew up around Melksham's rubber, respirator and precision-manufacturing work, to the containment that testing demands.
On the ground in Melksham
We are out under Melksham's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
At a refurbished furniture workshop in Melksham, the router-table extraction had lost its pull because the fan wasn't reaching its rated speed. We checked static pressure across the system, made good an unsealed joint and re-tested each capture point against benchmark. One point failed initially on that loose joint but passed cleanly once it was fixed, and the full test record was issued. The one-way street made parking tricky, so we brought our hoses round from the rear yard.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Melksham 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 Bowerhill 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 Melksham 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
Under Regulation 9 of COSHH the obligation sits squarely with the employer - any LEV that controls a hazardous substance needs a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, and the records held for five years.
For the great majority of Melksham sites, from the Bowerhill Industrial Estate 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 Melksham 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 Melksham duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Hampton 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 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. We plan testing around production shifts at the Bowerhill Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Melksham university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Bowerhill Industrial Estate and Hampton Park and across the wider Wiltshire.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Bowerhill Industrial Estate and Hampton Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Wiltshire.
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 Bowerhill 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 Melksham, but a Bowerhill Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Union Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Melksham 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.
Local knowledge
Rubber came to Melksham in 1889, when the business that became the Avon Rubber Company moved into a disused cloth mill by the river and turned from railway parts to pneumatic tyres. By the 1960s the Melksham plant was making a million and a half tyres a year, and as Avon Protection the works went on to build gas masks and respirators for the world. That instinct for compounding, curing and precision manufacture still runs through the town's shops, 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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