St Andrews · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for St Andrews workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
St Andrews
St Andrews is a historic university and golf town on the Fife coast, around 16,800 people, known worldwide as the home of golf and for the oldest university in Scotland.
The signature trades are food and craft - the brewing and bakery lines, the joinery and cabinet workshops, and the light manufacturing and oil-services R and D - across the Bassaguard and Eden Campus estates, with the bodyshops between them.
Every one of those St Andrews 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 Bassaguard units to the smaller St Andrews workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
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 Andrews and across Fife it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Steam, grain-dust and mist extraction across the brewing and bakery lines - St Andrews Brewing Company brews at Bassaguard - where organic dust is both a health and a combustion risk.
Wood-dust extraction at the joinery and cabinet workshops serving the town's golf hotels and university buildings, where fine wood dust needs capture at source.
Machining, grinding and fume extraction across the light-manufacturing and oil-services R and D units at Bassaguard, where metal dust and mist need capture proven.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Bassaguard and Eden Campus 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 Andrews 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 the University of St Andrews and St Andrews Community Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in St Andrews
We are out under St Andrews's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A pharmacy compounding unit in St Andrews had lost control at its fume cupboards, with the cabinet affected by a fan not reaching its rated speed. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the fume cabinet, sealed an open joint and changed a tired filter, then re-checked. Capture came back within benchmark once the filter was changed, and we issued the LEV report.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a St Andrews 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 Bassaguard 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 Andrews line.
Where exposure is in question - a food and drink production 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 St Andrews sites - the Bassaguard 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 St Andrews 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 Andrews duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Eden Campus 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 food and drink production bay, a joinery and woodworking bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a St Andrews 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. 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 Bassaguard unit will ask to see.
Food and drink production, joinery and woodworking, engineering and light manufacturing, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the university and hospital - the trades clustered around Bassaguard and Eden Campus and across the wider Fife.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Bassaguard units, term-time access at the St Andrews university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 St Andrews, but a Bassaguard fabrication shop and a Market 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 Bassaguard 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
Golf has been played on the links here since the fifteenth century, and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club was founded in 1754, making St Andrews the acknowledged home of the game and the seat of its rules for more than two centuries. The trades that keep a golf town running - the joinery, engineering and vehicle work behind the hotels and clubhouses - all throw off fume, dust and mist, and local exhaust ventilation has to capture that at source before it reaches a worker's lungs.
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