Whitby · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Whitby workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Whitby
Whitby is a North Yorkshire fishing harbour of around 13,000 people, wrapped around the mouth of the Esk where it meets the North Sea. Its clifftop abbey ruins, the 199 steps and the Dracula legend pull the tourists, but a working fleet and a seafood industry keep the quaysides busy the year round.
The trades that keep the town running - seafood processing, harbour boatyards, jet workshops and the vehicle and fabrication units out on Whitby Business Park and Enterprise Way - all put fume, dust or grease into the air their people breathe.
Each of those Whitby 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 Whitby Business Park units to the one-bench Whitby workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Whitby employers and others across North Yorkshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Whitby Seafoods runs what it calls the world's largest scampi factory in the town, alongside the cooking, coating and cold-store lines that feed it. Steam, cooking fume and cleaning-chemical vapour all need capture and extraction to hold the plant air inside workplace exposure limits.
Repair and refit work around the harbour and fish quay means welding, grinding and resin lay-up on hulls and deck gear. Portable and fixed extraction pulls the fume and dust off the job before it reaches the crew.
Whitby jet has been carved and polished here since Victorian mourning jewellery made the black gemstone famous, and the grinding and buffing still throws fine dust. Bench extraction and filtered downdraught keep that dust out of the workshop air.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Whitby Business Park and Enterprise Way units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Whitby 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 Caedmon College Whitby and Whitby Community Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Whitby
We are out under Whitby's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A nail bar in Whitby had face velocity across its downdraught benches reading low, traced to a filter well overdue for replacement. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the downdraught nail benches, cleared the blocked filter and freed the worn impeller, then re-checked each point. Capture came back within benchmark once the filter was cleared, and we issued a compliance report for the HSE file.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Whitby 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 Whitby Business 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 Whitby line.
Where exposure is in question - a seafood processing and cold stores process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
The duty is written into COSHH Regulation 9: where LEV controls a hazardous substance, the employer must have it thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months and keep the records for five years.
For most Whitby sites - from the Whitby Business Park 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 Whitby 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 Whitby duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Enterprise Way 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 seafood processing and cold stores bay, a marine and boatyards bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Whitby Business Park and Enterprise Way, the university and hospital labs, and the wider North Yorkshire.
seafood processing, marine and boatyards, jet workshops, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and college and hospital labs - the trades clustered around Whitby Business Park and Enterprise Way and across the wider North Yorkshire.
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 Whitby Business Park unit will ask to see.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Whitby 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 Whitby Business 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 Whitby Business Park units, term-time access at the Whitby university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Local knowledge
In 664 AD the Synod of Whitby met at the clifftop abbey to settle the date of Easter, fixing the town in English church history for good. Thirteen centuries on, the businesses below the East Cliff run extraction rather than scripture: the scampi lines, jet workshops and fabrication units of the harbour and the business park all lean on local exhaust ventilation to draw fume and dust away from the people beside it. We test that LEV to HSE standards and log every reading.
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