Windsor · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Windsor workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Windsor
Windsor sits on the Berkshire bank of the Thames beneath the walls of Windsor Castle, the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world and a royal residence for close to a thousand years. The reigning house took its very name from the town in 1917, and today around 32,000 people live in its shadow while millions more pass through as visitors each year.
Behind the tourist streets the working town runs on hospitality, light manufacturing and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in the workshop units of the Vansittart Estate off Arthur Road and the nearby Windsor Business Centre, a short run from Junction 6 of the M4.
Wherever a Windsor process releases fume, dust, mist or vapour, COSHH puts the duty on you to control it at source, and the extraction that does so is LEV - subject to a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months. We work across the range, from the Vansittart Estate units down to the smallest Windsor workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
Any system that draws fume, dust, mist or vapour off at source counts as LEV, and across Windsor and the rest of Berkshire it is the evidence COSHH expects you to hold.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on the machining and CNC work carried out in the light-industrial units of the Vansittart Estate off Arthur Road, where fine metalworking mist is captured at the tool before it reaches the operator.
Steam canopies and process extraction at the Windsor and Eton Brewery on the Vansittart Estate, which revived brewing in the town in 2010 after an eighty-year gap, and in the bakeries and kitchens that feed a visitor economy running all year.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at the cabinet and joinery workshops around the Vansittart Estate, where hardwood and MDF dust is drawn off at source before it can hang in the air.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Windsor trade units. 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 serving Windsor and Dedworth. 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 laboratories of Eton College across the river and the secondary schools of the royal borough, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Windsor
We are out under Windsor's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
An established machine shop in Windsor found the extraction on its lathe wasn't pulling as it should, traced to a fan that wasn't reaching its rated speed. We took benchmark readings, visualised capture at each hood and dealt with a loose joint. Capture came back within benchmark once the tired filter was sorted, and we provided full test documentation. We slotted the job into a quiet Sunday to suit the supervisor.
The test
A statutory LEV test to HSG258 is far more than a look round. On a Windsor system it settles three questions: is the ductwork and plant intact, does it still capture at the hood, and does that capture still match the design.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Vansittart 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 Windsor 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 Windsor sites - the Vansittart Estate 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 Windsor 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 Windsor duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Windsor Business Centre 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 Vansittart Estate production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Vansittart Estate and Windsor Business Centre, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Berkshire.
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 Windsor, but a Vansittart Estate fabrication shop and a Peascod 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 Vansittart Estate and Windsor Business Centre and across the wider Berkshire.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Vansittart Estate units, term-time access at the Windsor university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Windsor 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.
Local knowledge
When the railways raced each other to Windsor in 1849, Brunel carried the Great Western line across the flood plain on a wrought-iron bowstring bridge that still stands as one of the oldest of its kind in the world. That engineering instinct survives in the machine and fabrication shops tucked into the town's trade 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.
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