Saltash · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Saltash workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Saltash
Saltash calls itself the Gateway to Cornwall, a town of around 16,000 on the west bank of the Tamar where Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge of 1859 and the 1961 Tamar road bridge carry the railway and the A38 into the county.
Its working trades cluster on the town's estates rather than in heavy industry - vehicle workshops, joinery and light engineering on the Tamar View Industrial Estate and Gwel Avon Business Park - though many residents commute across the bridge to Plymouth for work.
Every one of those Saltash processes puts fume, dust, mist or vapour into the air, and COSHH requires it controlled at source - which means local exhaust ventilation, thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test the LEV across all of it - from the Tamar View Industrial Estate units to the smaller Saltash workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Saltash and the wider Cornwall it is your evidence under COSHH.
Fine wood-dust extraction on saws and sanders at the joinery and cabinet units on the Tamar View estate, where hardwood dust is a recognised respiratory sensitiser.
Local exhaust ventilation over nail-bar stations and treatment rooms in the Fore Street salons, where acrylic and solvent vapours build up fast in small back rooms.
Flour-dust extraction at the town's bakeries and pasty shops, since flour is one of the commonest causes of occupational asthma in the trade.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Tamar View Industrial Estate and Gwel Avon 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 Saltash 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 Cornwall College Saltash and Derriford Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Saltash
We are out under Saltash's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A school science lab in Saltash had the airflow at its fume cupboards fall since the last test, traced to a poorly sealed duct joint. We took benchmark readings, visualised the capture at each hood and re-sealed the joint, and the LEV passed on re-test across the fume cupboards, with full documentation. We worked early mornings before the students arrived so teaching was undisturbed.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Saltash system it answers three things: is the system intact, does it still capture, and does that capture match what it was designed to do.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Tamar View 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 Saltash line.
Where exposure is in question - a joinery and woodworking 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 Saltash sites - the Tamar View 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 Saltash 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 Saltash duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Gwel Avon 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 joinery and woodworking bay, a hair and beauty salons bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Tamar View Industrial Estate and Gwel Avon Business Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Cornwall.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Tamar View Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Saltash 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 a Tamar View Industrial Estate unit will ask to see.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Saltash 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.
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 Saltash, but a Tamar View Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Fore Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Tamar View 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.
Local knowledge
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge was opened by Prince Albert on 2 May 1859, carrying the Cornwall Railway across the Tamar on two great wrought-iron spans that still take trains into the county today. Brunel understood that a structure is only as sound as its unseen stresses. Local exhaust ventilation is the same: an LEV system does its work out of sight, in hoods and ducting, and only a thorough examination proves it is drawing contaminated air away exactly as it was designed to.
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