Tonbridge · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Tonbridge workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Tonbridge
Tonbridge is a Kent market town of around 40,000 people on the River Medway, grown up around the ancient river crossing that Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare fortified soon after 1066 with a Norman motte-and-bailey castle whose fine thirteenth-century gatehouse still stands. It is a town of real making history too, one of the places where the world's cricket balls were hand-stitched, and it should never be confused with neighbouring Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Its working economy runs on precision engineering, food production and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the trade-counter and industrial units off Vale Road at Deacon Trading Estate and Postern Trading Estate.
Each of those Tonbridge processes throws fume, dust, mist or vapour into the workplace air, and COSHH demands it is captured at source - that capture system is local exhaust ventilation, and it must be thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We cover the lot, from the Deacon Trading Estate units to the one-bench Tonbridge workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Tonbridge and the wider Kent it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC and machining work in the engineering shops off Vale Road, heir to the fine hand-work that once made Tonbridge a centre of cricket-ball manufacture.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries, kitchens and food units that supply the town's High Street and the wider Medway trade.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Tonbridge cabinet shops, timber merchants and joinery works around Deacon Trading Estate, 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 Deacon and Postern trading estates. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Tonbridge 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 science departments at West Kent College and Tonbridge School, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Tonbridge
We are out under Tonbridge's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
An upholstery workshop in Tonbridge had airflow at its tool capture hoods dropping off since the last test, which pointed to a partly blocked filter on the unit. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the hoods, cleared the debris from the ducting and re-checked each point. One failed at first on a loose joint and passed after remedial work, leaving a compliance report for the HSE file. We timed the visit for the Christmas shutdown while the shop was quiet.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Tonbridge 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 Deacon Trading 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 Tonbridge 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 puts a hard duty on the employer: any LEV controlling a hazardous substance must have a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, with records kept for five years.
For most Tonbridge sites - from the Deacon Trading Estate 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 Tonbridge 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 Tonbridge duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Postern Trading Estate 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.
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 Deacon Trading Estate and Postern Trading Estate and across the wider Kent.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Tonbridge 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 - the industrial estates and workshops around Deacon Trading Estate and Postern Trading Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Kent.
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 Deacon Trading Estate or a smaller Tonbridge workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Deacon Trading Estate units, term-time access at the Tonbridge university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Deacon Trading 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
By the 1911 census around 180 men in Tonbridge - a town of some 16,000 people - worked in cricket-ball manufacture, with Wisden's, Ives' and Duke's the dominant employers, hand-stitching leather over cork and quilted worsted. That instinct for exacting made work still runs through the town's machine shops and engineering units, 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.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Stay compliant with COSHH and HSG258. No-obligation quote, UK-wide.