Ormskirk · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Ormskirk workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Ormskirk
Ormskirk is a West Lancashire market town of around twenty-four thousand people, famous for its Ormskirk gingerbread and for the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, the only church in England to carry both a tower and a separate spire at the same end. Edward I granted the town its market charter in 1286, and the Stanley Earls of Derby, one of whom unseated Richard III at Bosworth, lie in its Derby Chapel.
Its working economy runs on food production, precision engineering and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the units on Old Boundary Way in the town and the Burscough Industrial Estate a short way north, with the salad and vegetable growers of the surrounding moss feeding a chain of packing houses.
Wherever an Ormskirk 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 Old Boundary Way units down to the smallest Ormskirk workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
Where fume, dust, mist or vapour is pulled away at the point it is made, that is LEV - and for employers in Ormskirk and across Lancashire it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres in the engineering units on Old Boundary Way and the Burscough estates that supply the region manufacturers.
Steam canopies, dust control and refrigeration in the salad and vegetable packing houses of the West Lancashire moss, where growers around Scarisbrick pack the produce this fertile plain is built on.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Ormskirk cabinet shops and joinery works, 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 Old Boundary Way and Burscough Industrial Estate units. Since the HSE 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Ormskirk 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 laboratories of Edge Hill University and Ormskirk District General Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Ormskirk
We are out under Ormskirk's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Airflow at the tool capture hoods of a small Ormskirk upholstery workshop had fallen away since the last test, pointing to a partly blocked filter. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter. Capture returned within benchmark once the unsealed joint was sorted, and we issued a full LEV report for the COSHH file. The job went in on a quiet Monday to suit the workshop manager.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On an Ormskirk 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 Old Boundary Way 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 an Ormskirk 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 most Ormskirk sites - from the Old Boundary Way units to the smaller workshops - the fourteen-month clock is the one that bites: miss it and the system is non-compliant the day it lapses, whatever its condition. We examine, label each hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer will ask to see. If something fails, you get the reading, the cause and the fix - not just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Ormskirk 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 Ormskirk duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Burscough 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. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at an Ormskirk 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.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Old Boundary Way and Burscough Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Lancashire.
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 Old Boundary Way and Burscough Industrial Estate and across the wider Lancashire.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Old Boundary Way units, term-time access at the Ormskirk 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 an Old Boundary Way unit will ask to see.
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 an Old Boundary Way production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Local knowledge
The flat peat mosslands around Ormskirk were near-useless farmland until Thomas Eccleston of Scarisbrick Hall drained Martin Mere in 1774, an act of engineering that turned the West Lancashire plain into some of the most productive vegetable ground in England. The salad, potato and carrot crops that followed built a chain of packing houses, cold stores and engineering shops across Old Boundary Way and the estates around the town. Every machine shop, blade grinder and refrigeration plant on that land carries a duty to control the mist, dust and fume 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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