Oswestry · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Oswestry workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Oswestry
Oswestry is a market town of some seventeen thousand people in north Shropshire, hard against the Welsh border yet firmly in England, and a place that wears its history openly - from the vast Iron Age ramparts of Old Oswestry, once called the Stonehenge of the Iron Age, to the birthplace of the war poet Wilfred Owen at Plas Wilmot in 1893.
Its working economy still turns on engineering, food production and the fabrication trades, most of it grouped in the units at Maes-y-Clawdd and the Maesbury Road and Mile Oak estates off the A5 at Mile End.
Each of those Oswestry processes throws fume, dust, mist or vapour into the workplace air, and COSHH demands it is captured at source - that capture system is local exhaust ventilation, and it must be thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We cover the lot, from the Maes-y-Clawdd units to the one-bench Oswestry workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Oswestry employers and others across Shropshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and turning shops across Maes-y-Clawdd and the Maesbury Road estate, in a town whose Cambrian Railways works once erected and rebuilt locomotives by the score.
Steam canopies, oven extraction and flour-dust control in Oswestry's food factories and drinks businesses, from Oriental Food Express on the Maesbury Road estate to the wine and produce trades that supply the town's markets.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Oswestry cabinet shops and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it can reach the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the steel fabricators and galvanisers of Maes-y-Clawdd and Mile Oak. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Oswestry bodyshops and the agricultural engineering yards that serve the surrounding border farms. 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 and clinical departments at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital at Gobowen and the training workshops of Derwen College, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Oswestry
We are out under Oswestry's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Oswestry's family-owned bodyshop had lost control at the paint line, with debris building up in the ducting and dragging on the booth filter wall. I carried out a full thorough examination and test, taking velocity readings, smoke visualisation and a filter check throughout. Once the slipping belt was dealt with, every point passed on the re-test, and I logged the readings in a report for the file. The workshop manager took a short photo report for their health and safety folder.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For an Oswestry 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 Maes-y-Clawdd 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 Oswestry 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
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 Oswestry sites - the Maes-y-Clawdd 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 Oswestry 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 Oswestry duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Maesbury Road 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.
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 Maes-y-Clawdd and Maesbury Road Industrial Estate and across the wider Shropshire.
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 Maes-y-Clawdd or a smaller Oswestry workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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 Oswestry, but a Maes-y-Clawdd fabrication shop and a Bailey Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at an Oswestry 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 Maes-y-Clawdd and Maesbury Road Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Shropshire.
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 Maes-y-Clawdd 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 Cambrian Railways moved its headquarters to Oswestry in 1865 and built its locomotive and carriage works north of the station on Gobowen Road, driving the town's population from around 5,500 in 1861 to nearly 10,000 by 1901. Only a pair of locomotives were ever built there, but engines were rebuilt by the score, the machine shops thick with metal dust and cutting fume. That engineering instinct still runs through the machine shops of Maes-y-Clawdd and the Maesbury Road estate, and each one 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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