Staines · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Staines workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Staines
Staines-upon-Thames stands where the River Colne meets the River Thames on the northwest edge of Surrey, some seventeen miles up the river from the City of London. It is a town whose name once travelled the world on the back of its floors - the linoleum first made here by Frederick Walton in the 1860s - and whose London Stone has marked the old upstream limit of the City's authority over the Thames since 1285.
Today its working economy runs on the corporate campuses and light-industrial units strung along The Causeway and around the Crooked Billet, home to names like Bupa, IFS and Samsung, alongside the engineering, food and fabrication trades grouped in the business parks at Causeway Park and Watermans Business Park.
Every one of those Staines 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 Causeway Park units to the smaller Staines workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Staines employers and others across Surrey it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and the light-engineering and trade units around the Crooked Billet and The Causeway, where swarf, mist and metal dust are drawn off at the tool.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries and food-production units of Spelthorne that supply the town's restaurants and the staff messes of its larger employers.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Staines and Ashford cabinet shops and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the trade units around the Crooked Billet and out toward Stanwell and Heathrow. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at the bodyshops along London Road and around Ashford. 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 research, technology and clinical facilities of the corporate campuses along The Causeway, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Staines
We are out under Staines's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
At a monumental mason's in Staines, face velocity across the dust capture hoods was reading low, and we traced it to a leaking flexible connection. We ran a full thorough examination and test, taking velocity readings, visualising capture with smoke and checking the filter. Once the debris in the ducting was cleared the capture came back within benchmark, and we signed off a report to match. The workshop manager kept us fuelled with tea through the morning.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Staines 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 Causeway Park 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 Staines 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
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 Staines sites - the Causeway Park 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 Staines 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 Staines duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Watermans 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 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.
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 Causeway Park production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Causeway Park units, term-time access at the Staines university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Causeway Park and Watermans Business Park 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 Staines, but a Causeway Park fabrication shop and a High Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Staines 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 Causeway Park unit will ask to see.
Local knowledge
Frederick Walton, the chemist who patented linoleum in 1860, built his great works beside the Thames at Staines from 1864, on the site of the medieval Hale Mill, and by 1930 the plant sprawled across some forty-five acres and shipped its floors around the world. Making linoleum meant oxidising linseed oil and milling cork and wood flour on an industrial scale, exactly the kind of dust and fume a modern factory must capture at source. That manufacturing instinct still runs through the engineering and fabrication units around the Crooked Billet and The Causeway, and each 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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