Redhill · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Redhill workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Redhill
Redhill is a Surrey railway town of around 30,000 people on the eastern edge of Reigate, and a place that owes its very existence to the line. It grew from almost open country after engineers pushed the London to Brighton railway through the Redstone gap in the North Downs, and when the London-Brighton and South Eastern companies met at a combined junction station here in April 1844, a town assembled around the platforms.
Its working economy today runs on precision engineering, the trade counters and the fabrication and vehicle shops grouped in the units north of the centre, much of it on the Holmethorpe Industrial Estate off Trowers Way and the Kingsfield Business Centre.
Each of those Redhill 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 Holmethorpe Industrial Estate units to the one-bench Redhill workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
Any system that draws fume, dust, mist or vapour off at source counts as LEV, and across Redhill and the rest of Surrey it is the evidence COSHH expects you to hold.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and the mechanical power transmission and engineering firms clustered on Trowers Way and across the Holmethorpe Industrial Estate.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries, food producers and trade kitchens working out of the Holmethorpe units and the town's larger caterers.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Redhill joinery works and the timber and kitchen trade counters on Holmethorpe, 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 Holmethorpe Industrial Estate and Kingsfield units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Redhill bodyshops and the long-established vehicle service trades off Trowers Way. 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 East Surrey Hospital and the water and utility laboratories serving the town, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Redhill
We are out under Redhill's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A school woodwork room in Redhill had face velocity across the saw and sander hoods reading low, traced to a filter well overdue for replacement. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter. One point failed initially on an unsealed joint and passed after remedial work, with a full LEV report for the COSHH file. We squeezed the job into a quiet closed day to suit the foreman.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Redhill 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 Holmethorpe 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 Redhill 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 makes it plain: any LEV controlling exposure to a hazardous substance has to be thoroughly examined and tested at intervals no greater than fourteen months, and the resulting records kept for at least five years.
On most Redhill sites - the Holmethorpe 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 Redhill 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 Redhill duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Kingsfield Business Centre 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. 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 Holmethorpe Industrial Estate unit will ask to see.
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 Holmethorpe Industrial Estate or a smaller Redhill 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 Holmethorpe 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.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Holmethorpe Industrial Estate and Kingsfield Business Centre, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Surrey.
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 Holmethorpe Industrial Estate and Kingsfield Business Centre and across the wider Surrey.
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 Redhill, but a Holmethorpe Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Brighton Road canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Local knowledge
The Copyhold Works of the Fuller's Earth Union opened on the Redhill deposit around the 1860s, quarrying the pale clay that the wool trade and later the chemical industry prized. By 1954 the chemical company Laporte had bought the works and employed some 780 men there, running kilns, granulators, blungers and silos until fuller's earth production finally stopped in 1997. That heavy chemical and processing instinct still runs through the town's engineering 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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