Prescot · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Prescot workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Prescot
Prescot is a market town of some fifteen thousand people in the Knowsley borough of Merseyside, a few miles east of Liverpool, and a place whose name the watch world once knew well. For roughly three hundred years it sat at the heart of England's watch and clock making trade, a town of little workshops turning out the finest movement parts and cutting tools in the land.
Its working economy now leans on manufacturing, distribution and the engineering trades, much of it grouped in the units of Knowsley Business Park and Image Business Park on the M57 corridor to the north of the town.
Every Prescot 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 Knowsley Business Park plant to the single-bench Prescot 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 Prescot and the wider Merseyside it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and grinders, in a town whose watch-tool and clock-movement makers gave England its finest precision workshops and whose machining units still feed the region's manufacturers.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries, food factories and cold-store kitchens across Knowsley Business Park, one of the largest employment sites in the Liverpool City Region.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Prescot 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 Knowsley Business Park and Image Business 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 local bodyshops feeding the Jaguar Land Rover plant at nearby Halewood. 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 Whiston Hospital and the borough's colleges and training labs, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Prescot
We are out under Prescot's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Capture velocity at the oil-mist hoods had dropped below the benchmark at a long-established Prescot engineering shop, with a filter well overdue for replacement. I measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter. Capture came back inside the benchmark once the tired filter was replaced, and I logged and reported the readings. The work went across two evenings after closing to keep disruption to a minimum.
The test
A statutory LEV test to HSG258 is far more than a look round. On a Prescot system it settles three questions: is the ductwork and plant intact, does it still capture at the hood, and does that capture still match the design.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Knowsley Business Park 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 Prescot 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.
On most Prescot sites - the Knowsley Business Park 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 Prescot 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 Prescot duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Image 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 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.
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 Knowsley Business Park production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Knowsley Business Park and Image Business Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Merseyside.
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 Knowsley Business Park unit will ask to see.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Prescot 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.
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 Knowsley Business Park and Image Business Park and across the wider Merseyside.
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 Knowsley Business Park or a smaller Prescot workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Local knowledge
From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Prescot was the most important centre in Europe for making watch and clock parts and the specialist tools that cut them, a town of little workshops where by 1860 more than a third of the population worked in the trade. Thomas Hewitt gathered those skills under one roof at the Lancashire Watch Company in 1889, one of the first English factories to make a complete watch in a single building. That instinct for fine, close-tolerance work still runs through the precision shops and machining units around the town, and every one of them carries a duty to control the oil mist, coolant mist and metal 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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