Ask most workshop managers how often their extraction needs testing and you get the same answer: every 14 months. It is on the certificate, it is what the last engineer said, and it is what the diary reminder is set to.
For a lot of sheet metal and fabrication workshops, that answer is wrong. Not by a little. By eight months. Fabora explains more
What COSHH actually says
The duty sits in regulation 9 of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. It requires local exhaust ventilation plant to be thoroughly examined and tested:
“at least once every 14 months, or for local exhaust ventilation plant used in conjunction with a process specified in Column 1 of Schedule 4, at not more than the interval specified in the corresponding entry in Column 2 of that Schedule”
The 14 months is the default. It is the answer when nothing else applies. The second half of that sentence is the part that catches people out.
Schedule 4, and the one line that matters
Schedule 4 lists four processes with shorter intervals. One of them describes a large share of the sheet metal trade:
“Processes, other than wet processes, in which metal articles (other than of gold, platinum or iridium) are ground, abraded or polished using mechanical power, in any room for more than 12 hours in any week”
Interval: six months.
Read that again with your own shop in mind. Grinding, linishing, fettling, deburring, abrasive belt work, mechanical polishing. Not welding fume, which sits under the 14 month default unless something else applies. This is specifically metal being ground or abraded using mechanical power, in one room, for more than 12 hours in any week.
Twelve hours a week is a day and a half. Two operators on a linisher for a morning each, plus deburring through the afternoon, and you are past it.
The other three Schedule 4 entries:
- Blasting carried out in or incidental to the cleaning of metal castings, in connection with their manufacture: one month
- Processes giving off dust or fume in which non-ferrous metal castings are produced: six months
- Jute cloth manufacture: one month
If you run a blast cabinet on castings, that is monthly. Most people are surprised by that one too.
How to work out whether it applies to you
The test is per room, not per machine, and it is measured in hours of process, not hours of extraction running.
Three questions:
- Is metal being ground, abraded or polished using mechanical power? Hand files and wet processes are out.
- Does it happen in that room for more than 12 hours in any week? Any week. Not an average across the year. One busy week puts you in scope.
- Is the LEV used in conjunction with that process?
If the answer to all three is yes, that LEV is on a six month interval, and a 14 month certificate does not cover you.
Worth being honest about the grey area: “more than 12 hours in any week” is not something most workshops measure. If you are genuinely near the line, the safe position is to treat it as in scope and test at six months. That costs less than being wrong.
What a thorough examination is, and what it is not
A thorough examination and test is not a visual check and it is not a filter change.
HSE’s position is that the person carrying it out must be competent to do so, which it defines as a combination of knowledge, skills and application experience. In practice most UK examiners hold BOHS P601. That is not a legal requirement in itself, but it is what a decent client, insurer or inspector expects to see, and it is the qualification the industry has settled on.
Your own weekly and monthly checks sit underneath the thorough examination and do not replace it. Regulation 9 expects the system to be kept in efficient working order between examinations, not certified once and forgotten.
The bit that actually goes wrong
Here is the uncomfortable part. The thorough examination is rarely the failure. Workshops book it, the engineer comes, the system passes.
What fails is everything around it:
- The report is in a drawer, or in somebody’s email, and nobody can find it when a client audit lands
- Nobody tracked the corrective actions from the last report, so the same defect appears on the next one
- Half the extraction assets are not on any list, so nothing tells you when they are due
- Records get thrown out before five years
That last one is a direct breach. Regulation 9 requires the record, or a suitable summary of it, to be “kept available for at least 5 years from the date on which it was made.”
Five years of examination reports, for every extraction asset, plus the repairs carried out as a result of them. That is a filing problem, and it is the one most workshops lose. We have written separately about what belongs in an LEV logbook at faboraplatform.com/resources/lev-logbook if you want the detail on that.
A practical starting point
You do not need software to fix this. You need three things, in this order:
- A complete asset register. Every extraction unit, every hood, every capture point, with a location against it. You cannot schedule what you have not listed.
- The correct interval against each one. Default 14 months, six months where Schedule 4 applies, one month for blasting on castings. Write down which rule you applied and why, so the next person does not have to guess.
- One place for the evidence. Examination reports, service history, routine checks, corrective actions and their close-out, held for five years.
A spreadsheet will do all three. It stops doing them at about the point where you have more than one site, or more than one person updating it.
About the author
This article was written by Fabora (faboraplatform.com), which builds practical software for UK fabricators, welding and steelwork businesses.
LEV Ready is our extraction asset records product: asset register, routine checks, thorough examination records, corrective action tracking, QR labels on the asset itself, and PDF reports. It organises LEV records. It does not perform LEV testing and it does not make you compliant, and any supplier worth dealing with will tell you the same. Competent examination stays with a competent examiner. More at faboraplatform.com/lev-ready
We also publish Fabora RAMS for risk assessments and method statements (faboraplatform.com/fabora-raFms), and Fabora Steel Tools, a free set of 21 offline fabrication and welding calculators for iPhone, Android and browser (faboraplatform.com/steel-tools).
