Business tools guide

LEV testing: finding a competent examiner and keeping COSHH Regulation 9 records

Published 25 September 2026 8 minute read

Where the rules come from

Every claim about LEV testing traces back to one place: Regulation 9 of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. Most pages about LEV testing paraphrase it. This guide quotes it, because the wording matters when you are deciding what to do.

We fetched the regulation from legislation.gov.uk and HSE's LEV pages on 25 September 2026. The quotations below are from those pages.

Regulation 9(1) puts the maintenance duty on the employer. Where a control measure is provided to meet Regulation 7, the employer must ensure that plant and equipment, "including engineering controls and personal protective equipment", is "maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order, in good repair and in a clean condition".

Regulation 9(2)(a) sets the interval. For engineering controls, thorough examination and testing must be carried out "in the case of local exhaust ventilation plant, 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".

Regulation 9(4) is the record-keeping duty. "Every employer shall keep a suitable record of the examinations and tests carried out in accordance with paragraphs (2) and (3) and of repairs carried out as a result of those examinations and tests, and that record or a suitable summary thereof shall be kept available for at least 5 years from the date on which it was made."

Three numbers, then: 14 months as the normal maximum, shorter for Schedule 4 processes, and five years for the record. Everything else is guidance.

Why 14 months and not a year

The interval is 14 months, not 12. That is deliberate. It gives an employer two months of slack to get an examiner on site after the anniversary.

The trap is treating it as annual. Several of the commercial pages we read make the same point in their own words: a business that books "the yearly LEV test" without tracking the actual date drifts past 14 months without noticing. The date that matters is the date of the last thorough examination and test, not the calendar year.

Put the last test date and the 14-month deadline on the same line in whatever you use to track it. Then the deadline is a fact, not a calculation.

Schedule 4: the shorter intervals

Schedule 4 of COSHH lists processes with a shorter minimum frequency. From the legislation.gov.uk page:

Process	Minimum frequency
Blasting carried out in or incidental to the cleaning of metal castings, in connection with their manufacture	1 month
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	6 months
Processes giving off dust or fume in which non-ferrous metal castings are produced	6 months
Jute cloth manufacture	1 month

If your workplace does any of these, the 14-month figure does not apply to that plant. Check the schedule against your process description, not against what a supplier tells you.

What HSE says about the record

HSE's LEV FAQ page states the employer's position in one paragraph. You "must maintain the LEV in efficient working order so it continues to provide the necessary protection", you "should also have a periodic thorough examination and test (at least every 14 months) and must keep this record for at least 5 years", and you "should have information on the installed LEV system to confirm it provides adequate protection, which should be kept for the life of the equipment".

That last sentence is the one most workplaces miss. The test report is not the only record. The commissioning information, which says what the system was designed to do, should be kept for as long as the equipment exists. Without it, the examiner has nothing to test against. HSE's FAQ says the examiner "ideally needs to know what it was originally intended to do", and that this may be in a commissioning report, in the supplier's standard operating data, or in recognised guidance for simple systems.

On what the report should contain, HSE says the law requires a record to be kept and that the Approved Code of Practice "gives practical advice on what the report should contain, which includes details of the system's intended operating performance". It adds that if you get a report that follows that guidance "you will probably be doing enough to comply with the legal requirement to keep a record".

HSE also recommends that examiners label each hood with a test record, or place the label near the system's on-off switch, visible to the supervisor and operators.

What a record needs to hold

HSE's FAQ includes an outline of the information to collect for an on-tool extraction test. It is a reasonable minimum for any LEV record:

name and address of the employer responsible;
date of the current thorough examination and test, and date of the last one;
the equipment examined, including identifying markings such as serial numbers;
location of the equipment and the substances involved;
results of the visual examination, with any critical action and preventative maintenance recommended before the next test;
results from measuring technical performance, including the operating performance it is judged against, the method of measurement and the airflow readings;
the name, job title and employer of the person carrying out the test, with a signature.

Add to that the repairs carried out as a result, because Regulation 9(4) requires the record to cover those as well.

Finding a competent examiner

The regulation does not name a qualification. HSE's FAQ is direct about it: "HSE mentions certain training courses in its guidance, as examples, but does not require suppliers to have these qualifications." And on training: "A training course by itself will not make a person competent. Competence comes from a combination of knowledge, skills and experience."

So what does HSE tell you to do? Its advice, from the same page:

Competent people "have the right mix of skills, knowledge and experience to do a good job".
"Ask about relevant qualifications and training, experience and previous work."
"A competent supplier will be able to supply references or testimonials - ask for them."
"Prepare a simple description of the work you want the person to do and give it to them."
"Ask them what qualifications, experience and types of LEV system they have designed or supplied before."
"Always get more than one quote."

That last line is the one to act on. Getting more than one quote is not only about price. It is how you find out which examiners understand your kind of extraction and which will send someone who has never seen a spray booth.

HSE's page points to trade associations that keep lists of members claiming LEV competence, and its related content links to the Institute of Local Exhaust Ventilation Engineers, the Building Engineering Services Association and the British Occupational Hygiene Society. The commercial pages we read often mention the BOHS P601 course. HSE's own wording is that no course is required, so treat P601 as useful evidence of training, not as the whole test of competence.

Reading the report

HSE lists three things to do once the report arrives: read and understand it, ask the examiner about anything you do not understand, and act on the recommendations. A report that says the system failed, filed unread, is worse than no report, because it proves the employer knew.

HSE's FAQ also describes the follow-up: once a failed hood or system has been repaired, "a competent person needs to check that it is effective and adequately controls exposure" before the failed label is removed.

A record routine that works

Here is a routine that satisfies Regulation 9(4) and gives you something to show an inspector.

Keep one register of LEV systems, one line per system or hood, with its location, the process it serves and its identifying number.
Against each line, record the date of the last thorough examination and test and the date 14 months later (or the Schedule 4 interval if it applies).
File the commissioning or design information with the register, and keep it for the life of the equipment.
File each test report against its line, with the examiner's name and employer.
Log every repair that came from a report, with the date and what was done.
Keep all of it for at least five years from the date of each record. A summary is acceptable under the regulation, but the full report is easier to defend.
Review the register monthly and book the next examination when a line is within three months of its deadline.

Paper works. A spreadsheet works. What does not work is a folder of PDFs with no register on top, because nobody can see which deadline is next.

Where LevHQ fits

LevHQ is a directory of LEV testing companies. Search by workplace postcode, look at the companies listed nearby, and send a quote request describing the site, the systems and the work to up to three testers at once. That maps onto HSE's advice: describe the work, ask about experience with your kind of system, and get more than one quote.

Be clear about what it is not. LevHQ does not carry out the examination. Qualifications shown on a listing are the company's own claims, which LevHQ does not verify, so ask the examiner directly for evidence of training and experience before appointing them. A report builder for testing companies is in development and is not released, and paid listing plans are not open. The directory is live at levhq.app.

Sources

Read in full on 25 September 2026:

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