St Austell · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for St Austell workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
St Austell
St Austell is the largest town in Cornwall, a place of some twenty thousand people that the world knows as the capital of china clay - the white kaolin that William Cookworthy identified on the Hensbarrow downs above the town in 1746. The waste from two and a half centuries of digging raised the sharp white spoil peaks locals call the Cornish Alps, and the industry still shapes the skyline and the economy alike.
Its working economy runs on minerals processing, food and drink and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the units at Holmbush Industrial Estate, Carluddon Technology Park and the Imerys works at Par Moor.
Every St Austell 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 Holmbush Industrial Estate plant to the single-bench St Austell 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 St Austell and the wider Cornwall it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres, from the advanced-manufacturing workshops at Carluddon Technology Park to the engineering firms that grew up servicing the china clay dries and driers.
Steam canopies, mash-tun vapour and flour-dust control across the town's producers, above all St Austell Brewery, which has brewed on the same site since 1851 and today sends Tribute and Proper Job out from its Trevarthian Road plant.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at St Austell 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 Holmbush and Carluddon units. Since the HSE reclassification in 2019, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at St Austell 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 Imerys technology centre at Par Moor and for the college and clinical laboratories in the town, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in St Austell
We are out under St Austell's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Airflow at the saw and sander hoods in a small St Austell school woodwork room had dropped since the last test, pointing to a worn fan impeller. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter. All points passed on re-test once the impeller was replaced and a leaking connection sealed, and we issued a full LEV report for the COSHH file. We worked around morning lessons so the team weren't disturbed.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a St Austell 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 Holmbush 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 St Austell 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.
For the great majority of St Austell sites, from the Holmbush Industrial Estate units to the one-man workshops, the fourteen-month deadline is what catches people out: once it passes the system is non-compliant regardless of its actual state. We carry out the examination, label every hood with its status and next-due date, and issue the report an HSE inspector or your insurer expects to see - and if a point fails, you get the number, the cause and the fix rather than a bare fail.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the St Austell 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 Austell duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Carluddon Technology 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.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Holmbush Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the St Austell university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Holmbush Industrial Estate and Carluddon Technology Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Cornwall.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a St Austell 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.
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 Holmbush 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.
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 Austell, but a Holmbush Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Fore Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Holmbush Industrial Estate or a smaller St Austell workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Local knowledge
When William Cookworthy identified china clay on the downs above St Austell in 1746, he set off an industrial boom that made Cornwall home to the largest kaolin deposits in the world. Imerys still works the ground today, employing around a thousand people across the mid-Cornwall clay area and refining some nine hundred thousand tonnes of clay a year from its Par Moor plant. That minerals-and-engineering instinct runs through the town's machine shops and processing lines, 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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