Stourport-on-Severn · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Stourport-on-Severn workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Stourport-on-Severn
Stourport-on-Severn is the only town in Britain that the canal age created from nothing - a place of around 20,000 people that grew out of Mr Acton's fields in the parish of Mitton after James Brindley's Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal met the River Severn here in 1771. Its Georgian canal basins, the Tontine Hotel and the riverside amusements are the marks of an inland port that, after Birmingham, became the busiest in the Midlands.
Its working economy still turns on engineering, food production and the fabrication and automotive trades, much of it grouped in the units off Severn Road and Sandy Lane on the southern edge of the town.
Every one of those Stourport-on-Severn 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 Sandy Lane Industrial Estate units to the smaller Stourport-on-Severn workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
Any system that draws fume, dust, mist or vapour off at source counts as LEV, and across Stourport-on-Severn and the rest of Worcestershire it is the evidence COSHH expects you to hold.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC and turning centres at Stourport engineering shops such as Sandfield Engineering on Sandy Lane, where machined swarf and airborne mist are captured at the tool before they reach the lungs.
Steam canopies, flour-dust control and washdown extraction in the town bakeries, kitchens and food units that feed a town built as a trans-shipment port on the Severn.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Stourport cabinet shops and joinery works, a fitting trade for a district whose carpet and textile links to neighbouring Kidderminster ran on the canal.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Severnside Business Park and Sandy Lane units. Since the HSE reclassification in 2019, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Stourport bodyshops and chassis specialists like D.E.P Chassis Engineering. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is checked to its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the science labs at Stourport High School and Sixth Form Centre and the local technical units, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Stourport-on-Severn
We are out under Stourport-on-Severn's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
At a much-loved Stourport-on-Severn print shop, the solvent extraction over the wash-up bay simply wasn't drawing the way it needed to, and the culprit turned out to be a slipping fan drive belt. We checked static pressure, sealed the joint that had opened up, and worked our way round each point testing against benchmark. One point failed at first on a tired filter but came good after we swapped it out, and every reading went into the logged report. We slotted the visit into a quiet Monday to suit the foreman.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Stourport-on-Severn 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 Sandy Lane 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 Stourport-on-Severn 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 Stourport-on-Severn sites, from the Sandy Lane 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 Stourport-on-Severn 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 Stourport-on-Severn duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Severnside 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.
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 Stourport-on-Severn, but a Sandy Lane Industrial Estate fabrication shop and a Lichfield Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Sandy Lane Industrial Estate and Severnside Business Park and across the wider Worcestershire.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Stourport-on-Severn 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.
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 Sandy Lane Industrial Estate or a smaller Stourport-on-Severn workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Sandy Lane Industrial Estate and Severnside Business Park, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Worcestershire.
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 Sandy Lane 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
When Brindley built his canal basins at Stourport in 1771 he raised the Upper Basin some thirty feet above the Severn so boats could ride out a flood, and goods were craned between wide river barges and narrowboats in a working port that hummed with engineering. That instinct for handling machinery still runs through the town's engineering and fabrication shops off Severn Road and Sandy Lane, 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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