Breath Testing and Lung Function Reports for Solicitors

YPC Health is a private clinic in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. We carry out breath alcohol testing and lung function testing for solicitors, and we provide a signed clinical report you can put in front of a court, a tribunal or the other side.

Fees are fixed and published on this page. There are no hourly rates and no surprises on the invoice.

What we provide, and what it costs

Evidential Breath Alcohol Test with signed statement — £150

A breath alcohol reading taken at our Ilkley clinic on a Home Office approved analyser that is calibrated every six months. You receive a signed statement recording the reading, the date and time it was taken, the device used, and the date of its last calibration. Takes 30 minutes.

Solicitors instruct this for family proceedings, employment and disciplinary matters, licensing, professional regulatory work, and anywhere a client’s sobriety at a given moment needs to be documented by a clinician rather than self-reported.

An important limit. This is a privately conducted test. It records what the analyser read at the time we took it. It is not a specimen taken by a constable under the Road Traffic Act and it does not substitute for one. We say so on the face of the statement.

Book an Evidential Breath Alcohol Test — £150

Fitness to Provide a Breath Specimen — spirometry and GP report — £295

Full spirometry with reversibility testing where clinically indicated, carried out by a trained clinician, followed by a signed GP report addressing whether your client’s measured lung function falls within the range the published research associates with an inability to operate an evidential breath alcohol analyser. Takes 45 minutes.

Book a Fitness to Provide a Breath Specimen assessment — £295

Respiratory Function Report for personal injury — £395

Full spirometry with reversibility where clinically indicated, plus a detailed written report covering the results, predicted values, interpretation and clinical opinion. Used in personal injury, industrial disease and occupational lung claims. Fixed fee agreed before we start. Takes 45 minutes.

Book a Respiratory Function Report — £395

Drug and alcohol screening — from £40

• Breath Alcohol Test — £40, 15 minutes

• Urine Drug Screen — £70, 20 minutes

• Drug and Alcohol Screen, both together — £90, 30 minutes

• Chain of Custody Drug Test with laboratory confirmation — £195, 30 minutes. The sample is witnessed, sealed and documented at collection, then confirmed at a UKAS-accredited laboratory. Covers confirmation of one substance group; additional substances £50 each.

Where a longer look-back matters, hair alcohol (EtG) and blood PEth testing cover months rather than minutes. Email us and we will quote.

Failure to provide a specimen of breath — could your client physically do it?

Failing to provide a specimen of breath is an offence in its own right. Where the defence is that the client was physically unable to deliver a sample, the court is being asked to accept a medical proposition, and it will want objective evidence rather than assertion.

The relevant evidence is lung function. UK evidential breath analysers require both a minimum expired volume and a minimum continuous flow rate, sustained for long enough to produce an end-expiratory sample. A client can have enough air in their chest and still be unable to deliver it fast enough, for long enough.

What the published research shows

Even healthy adults are affected. Ives, Sbaffi and Bath analysed a spirometry database of 281,210 healthy UK adults — people with known lung disease were excluded — and found that 1.13% of them, 3,176 people, had lung function below the threshold associated with being unable to use current evidential breath analysers. The study used the combined criteria of an actual FEV1 below 1.5 litres and a predicted FEV1 of 60% or less, adjusted for age, sex and height. Medico-Legal Journal, 2023

It is not evenly distributed. In the same study, 0.54% of men fell below the threshold against 1.64% of women, roughly three times the rate. It rose steeply with age, from 0.43% of people in their 40s to 2.7% of those in their 70s. Among people below the 2nd percentile for height it was 2.6% of men and 3.8% of women, and in elderly short women it approached 10%. Among people aged 50 and over, smokers were around twice as likely to fall below the threshold as non-smokers.

Having enough air is not the same as being able to deliver it. Honeybourne and colleagues tested 40 subjects on the Lion Intoxilyzer 6000 UK. Nine failed to produce an evidential sample even after four attempts — two with asthma, four with COPD and three with restrictive lung disease. Eight of those nine had a forced vital capacity above 1.5 litres, comfortably more than the 1.2 litres the device required. Seven of the nine had an FEV1 below 1.0 litre. The limiting factor was the rate at which they could move air, not the total amount of it. Respiratory Medicine, 2000

The same pattern appears at the roadside. The same group tested the roadside Lion Alcolmeter SL-400, which requires a minimum continuous flow of 25 litres per minute and a minimum expired volume of 1.5 litres. Nine subjects with lung disease failed to activate it despite repeated attempts, and all nine produced an adequate volume of breath. Seven of the nine had an FEV1 below 1.1 litres. Medicine, Science and the Law, 1999

The issue is current, not historical. A 2025 case series set out seven individuals who could not meet the minimum breath volume requirement on an evidential analyser despite genuine effort, and who faced refusal charges regardless. The author identifies a one-size-fits-all volume requirement, equipment problems, measurement uncertainty, anxiety and operator bias as contributing factors. That paper concerns a device used in the United States rather than the UK, but the underlying physiology is the same. Forensic Science International: Synergy, 2025

What our report contains

• The measured values — FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC ratio and peak flow — in litres and as a percentage of predicted, adjusted for age, sex, height and ethnicity

• Whether reversibility testing was indicated and, if so, the post-bronchodilator figures

• How those values compare with the thresholds used in the published literature set out above

• The clinician’s opinion on whether the client’s lung function is consistent with an inability to operate an evidential breath alcohol analyser

• Relevant history, current medication, and any factors affecting test quality or effort

• The full references, so the other side and the court can check them

The report states what we measured and the clinician’s opinion on it. It does not tell the court what to conclude, and we will not write an opinion the measurements do not support.

How to instruct us

Book online in the client’s name, not the firm’s

The booking creates the clinical record for the person being tested, so it needs their name, date of birth, address and contact details. If the appointment is booked in the firm’s name we have to re-register the client on arrival, which eats into their appointment time. Please use the client’s details at the booking stage, and put your matter reference in the notes field.

If you would rather we invoiced the firm than took payment at the time of booking, email us before you book and we will arrange it.

Tell us what the report needs to address

A one-line instruction — the charge, the issue, the question you want answered — makes the report far more useful than no instruction at all. Send it to us with the client’s name and appointment time.

What to tell your client before they attend

• Bring photographic ID

• Bring a list of current medication, including inhalers

• Bring inhalers to the appointment, but avoid a short-acting reliever in the four hours beforehand unless they need it — and tell us if they did

• No heavy meal, vigorous exercise or smoking in the hour before

• Allow the full appointment time

Fees, turnaround and scope

Fees are fixed and shown above. Reports are normally issued within three working days of the appointment, and we will tell you at the time if something is going to take longer.

On expert reports

Our reports are clinical reports written by the examining clinician. They are not, by default, expert reports compliant with Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules or Part 19 of the Criminal Procedure Rules, which carry their own declarations and duties. If your matter requires a compliant expert report, tell us when you instruct and we will quote separately, or tell you plainly if it is outside our scope. We would rather say that up front than hand you something that gets refused.

Where we are

YPC Health, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, LS29 9EH. Every appointment on this page is carried out in clinic — none of them can be done by video. We are within easy reach of Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate, Skipton, Keighley and the wider West and North Yorkshire courts.

Common questions

Can you see a client at short notice?

Often, yes. Book the first available slot online and contact us if you need something sooner.

Can you test a client who is already unwell?

Spirometry requires maximal effort and is not appropriate in every circumstance, including recent heart attack, recent eye, chest or abdominal surgery, recent pneumothorax, unstable angina or a current chest infection. Tell us the history when you instruct and we will advise.

What if the results do not help my client?

You get the report either way, and the fee is the same. We report what we measure.

Do you attend court?

Not as standard. Ask us and we will discuss it separately.

References

1. Ives G, Sbaffi L, Bath PA. Can all healthy adults use the current evidential breath alcohol analysers? An investigation using a large spirometry database. Medico-Legal Journal 2023;91(4):180–185. View the study

2. Honeybourne D, Moore AJ, Butterfield AK, Azzan L. A study to investigate the ability of subjects with chronic lung diseases to provide evidential breath samples using the Lion Intoxilyzer 6000 UK breath alcohol testing device. Respiratory Medicine 2000;94:684–688. View the study

3. Honeybourne D, Moore AJ, Butterfield K, Azzan L. A study to investigate the ability of subjects with chronic lung diseases to activate the roadside Lion Alcolmeter SL-400. Medicine, Science and the Law 1999;39(4):337–341. View the study

4. Olson A. Small samples, big problems — the inability to provide a sample in breath alcohol testing: case reports. Forensic Science International: Synergy 2025. View the study

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