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LEV testing - the stakes
Testing extraction can feel like a grudging cost. Set it against the cost of a worker developing an occupational disease your controls should have prevented, and the comparison is not close.
The short answer
When a worker develops an occupational disease - asthma, lung disease, dermatitis - from exposure that better-controlled extraction would have prevented, the cost to the employer can be severe: a civil compensation claim, the legal costs of defending or settling it, likely enforcement from the HSE, higher insurance, and reputational damage. Against all that, a proper LEV testing programme that keeps exposure controlled is a small, predictable cost. Prevention is the cheap side.
What the claim is
An occupational health claim arises when a worker develops a disease caused by their exposure at work - conditions like occupational asthma, chronic lung disease, or dermatitis, resulting from breathing or contacting substances that adequate control should have kept away from them. Where the exposure that caused the illness could have been prevented by properly controlled and tested extraction, the employer's failure to control it is at the heart of the claim.
These are not abstract risks. Occupational diseases from workplace exposure are real, common, and often serious and lasting - and when one is traced to an employer's inadequate control, the worker can bring a civil claim for the harm done. That claim is the mechanism by which the cost of a failure to control exposure lands back on the employer who should have controlled it.
The direct cost
The most direct cost of a successful occupational health claim is compensation for the harm - and for a serious, lasting disease that affects a person's health and ability to work, that can be substantial. On top of the compensation sit the legal costs of the process, whether the claim is defended or settled, which add significantly to the total. A single serious claim can run to a large sum before anything else is counted.
And a failure of control that harmed one worker may have exposed others, raising the prospect of more than one claim from the same underlying failing. So the direct financial exposure from inadequate exposure control is not necessarily a single claim but potentially several - a scale of cost that dwarfs the modest, predictable expense of the testing and control that would have prevented the harm.
The costs alongside
A claim rarely comes alone. An occupational disease traced to inadequate control is likely to draw HSE attention, and enforcement - notices, Fee for Intervention, potentially prosecution for the underlying failure to control exposure - can follow, with its own costs and penalties. So the same failing can produce both a civil claim from the worker and enforcement action from the regulator, on separate tracks at once.
There are quieter costs too. Employers liability insurance responds to these claims, but a history of them affects future premiums and cover. And the reputational damage of being known to have harmed a worker through neglected controls follows a business - with customers, with recruitment, with its standing. The cost of an occupational health failure spreads well beyond the compensation into enforcement, insurance and reputation.
Against the cost of prevention
Now set all of that against the cost of preventing it. A proper LEV testing programme - thorough examinations on the cycle, maintenance between them, acting on the findings - is a modest, predictable, recurring cost that keeps exposure controlled and catches a failing system before it harms anyone. It is precisely the control that stops the exposure that leads to the disease that leads to the claim.
The comparison is stark. The whole cost of keeping extraction tested and working, over years, is typically a small fraction of a single serious occupational health claim and the enforcement, insurance and reputational costs that come with it. Prevention is not just the right thing; it is overwhelmingly the cheaper thing - which is the plain business case for keeping LEV properly tested, quite apart from the duty to do so.
The takeaway
The real cost of an occupational health claim - compensation, legal costs, enforcement, insurance, reputation, and above all the harm to a person - is what a failure to control exposure ultimately risks. Weighed against the modest, predictable cost of the testing and control that prevents that exposure, the case for prevention is not a close call. The claim is the expensive end of neglecting the control; the testing is the cheap end of protecting people.
So LEV testing should be seen not as a grudging compliance cost but as prevention of a far larger one - and, more importantly, of the harm to a worker that sits behind it. Keeping extraction tested and working stops the exposure, prevents the disease, and avoids the claim and everything that comes with it. Against the real cost of getting it wrong, that is money well spent, every time.
Questions
A civil claim by a worker who has developed a disease caused by their exposure at work - such as occupational asthma, lung disease or dermatitis - where adequate control, including properly tested extraction, should have prevented the exposure that caused it.
Potentially a great deal. Compensation for a serious, lasting disease can be substantial, plus the legal costs of the process - and a failure that harmed one worker may have exposed others, raising the prospect of several claims from the same failing.
Yes. An occupational disease traced to inadequate control is likely to draw HSE enforcement - notices, Fee for Intervention, possible prosecution - and affects insurance premiums and cover, and the business's reputation with customers and recruits.
Starkly. The whole cost of keeping extraction tested and working over years is typically a small fraction of a single serious claim and the enforcement, insurance and reputational costs around it. Prevention is far cheaper than the claim.
Because it keeps exposure controlled and catches a failing system before it harms anyone - stopping the exposure that leads to the disease that leads to the claim. Testing is the control that prevents the harm at the root of the claim.
No - it is prevention of a far larger cost, and of harm to a worker. Keeping extraction tested and working stops the exposure, prevents the disease, and avoids the claim and everything that comes with it. Against the cost of getting it wrong, it is money well spent.
We keep your extraction tested and working - preventing the exposure, the disease, and the far larger cost of a claim that follows a failure to control it.
