Wilmslow · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Wilmslow workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Wilmslow
Wilmslow sits at the heart of Cheshire's Golden Triangle, one of the most affluent commuter towns in England, its wooded lanes and gated drives long the address of choice for Manchester's professionals, footballers and executives. It is a place with a remarkable back story: the codebreaker Alan Turing lived and died here at Adlington Road, the Iron Age Lindow Man was pulled from a peat bog at Lindow Moss on the town's edge, and Samuel Greg's Quarry Bank Mill still turns beside the Bollin at Styal.
Behind the commuter-town gloss sits a working economy of science, engineering and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the units around Handforth Dean and the business parks on the town's northern fringe close to Manchester Airport.
Every Wilmslow 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 Stanley Green Business Park plant to the single-bench Wilmslow 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 Wilmslow and the wider Cheshire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and precision shops across the Stanley Green and Kingsgate units, feeding the science and aerospace supply chains clustered around Manchester Airport and the Alderley Park bioscience campus nearby.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries, delis and food producers that stock Wilmslow's affluent food halls and independent kitchens along Grove Street and Water Lane.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at the cabinet shops and bespoke joinery works that fit out the town's large period homes, 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 Handforth Dean and Stanley Green workshops. Since the HSE reclassification in 2019, all welding fume, mild steel included, is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at the bodyshops serving the Golden Triangle's prestige car trade. 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 laboratories, science suites and corporate research spaces around Wilmslow and the Alderley Park campus, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Wilmslow
We are out under Wilmslow's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A dental laboratory in Wilmslow had seen the airflow at its dust extraction hoods fall since the last test, which pointed to a filter well overdue for replacement. We checked the static pressure, dealt with the worn impeller and re-tested each point against benchmark. Every point passed on re-test once the loose joint was tightened, with a signed HSG258 report to close it out. We fitted the visit around the mid-afternoon lull so technicians weren't disturbed.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Wilmslow 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 Stanley Green 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 Wilmslow 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.
For the great majority of Wilmslow sites, from the Stanley Green Business Park 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 Wilmslow 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 Wilmslow duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Kingsgate 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 Stanley Green Business Park units, term-time access at the Wilmslow university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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 Wilmslow, but a Stanley Green Business Park fabrication shop and a Grove Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Wilmslow 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 Stanley Green Business Park unit will ask to see.
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 Stanley Green Business Park and Kingsgate and across the wider Cheshire.
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 Stanley Green Business Park or a smaller Wilmslow workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Local knowledge
In 1950 Alan Turing bought a house at 43 Adlington Road in Wilmslow, and it was there, four years later, that the man who broke the Enigma cipher and laid the foundations of the computer died. That legacy of precision and applied science still runs through the town's engineering shops, laboratories and the bioscience campus at nearby Alderley Park, 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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