St Albans · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for St Albans workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
St Albans
St Albans is a historic Hertfordshire cathedral city of around 148,000, built on the Roman city of Verulamium, with a medieval clock tower and famous brewing heritage.
The work is light industry and food - the light engineering and manufacturing, the printing and publishing, and the food and drink and brewing - across the Porters Wood and Soothouse Spring estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Wherever a St Albans 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 Porters Wood units down to the smallest St Albans 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 St Albans and across Hertfordshire it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Machining, grinding and fume extraction across the light-engineering and manufacturing units, where metal dust and mist need capture at source.
Solvent and ink-mist extraction across the print and publishing lines, a long-standing local trade, where VOC vapour needs capture proven.
Steam, dust and mist extraction across the food and drink producers and breweries, where organic dust is both a health and a combustion risk.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Porters Wood and Soothouse Spring units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at St Albans 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 Oaklands College and St Albans City Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in St Albans
We are out under St Albans's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A pharmaceutical formulation lab in St Albans had a benchtop powder-containment hood with fluctuating face velocities, caused by room air currents off a nearby unsealed fire door. We adjusted the room supply-air grille directions, sealed the fire door and ran the smoke-containment tracking. It passed once the drafts were gone, with the face velocity steady at 0.50 metres per second. It was a regulated clean space, so the anemometer probes were sanitised with isopropyl wipes before and after.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a St Albans 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 Porters Wood 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 St Albans line.
Where exposure is in question - a light engineering and manufacturing process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
The duty is written into COSHH Regulation 9: where LEV controls a hazardous substance, the employer must have it thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months and keep the records for five years.
For most St Albans sites - from the Porters Wood 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 St Albans 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 St Albans duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Soothouse Spring 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 light engineering and manufacturing bay, a printing and publishing bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Light engineering and manufacturing, printing and publishing, food and drink manufacturing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the college and hospital - the trades clustered around Porters Wood and Soothouse Spring and across the wider Hertfordshire.
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 Porters Wood unit will ask to see.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Porters Wood and Soothouse Spring, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Hertfordshire.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a St Albans 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. We plan testing around production shifts at the Porters Wood units, term-time access at the St Albans university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Porters Wood or a smaller St Albans workshop needs for their COSHH file.
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