Ensuring asbestos management compliance as a dutyholder

The legal duty to manage asbestos applies to non-domestic and multi-occupancy premises including offices, shops and factories, and the responsibility falls to the dutyholder. This could be the building owner, landlord, or person responsible for maintenance and repair of buildings built before the year 2000, as asbestos was banned in the UK after 1999.

Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations (CAR) 2012, the dutyholder is required to know if asbestos containing materials (ACMs) are present in the building. This is executed by arranging an asbestos survey or reviewing the existing ones, creating a register and assessing the risk, ensuring anyone managing the register is competent to do so, writing an asbestos management plan, creating an action plan for identified asbestos, and putting the plan into action and review the plan every 12 months.

Asbestos management is a common pitfall found in HSE inspections. HSE inspectors visit premises and construction sites without warning to ensure that asbestos is correctly managed in compliance with the law and workers are kept safe. Where asbestos management is found to be lacking, enforcement action can be taken to ensure appropriate asbestos risk management measures are implemented, with non-compliance often resulting in prosecution, fines, and criminal records.

Insufficient asbestos management is often due to inadequate staff training, a lack of plans for monitoring asbestos, or inadequate arrangements for managing work liable to disturb assumed asbestos-containing materials (ACMs).

When in good condition and managed properly, the risk from asbestos is low. It is critical for law compliance that the relevant individuals know how to keep ACMs safe in buildings.

Workers in construction and building trades are at particular risk of disturbing asbestos. When removal, refurbishment, maintenance, or repair work is required, these works need to be carried out safely and in accordance with regulations.

These workers should receive asbestos awareness training (as a minimum requirement) to help ensure they do not carry out tasks that could disturb asbestos. Any materials that may contain asbestos must be properly identified before destructive works are carried out to any structure and work begins through a suitably intrusive refurbishment or demolition survey.

All work on ACMs requires specific training – it is illegal to carry out work without the correct training and controls. The HSE provides plenty of guidance for those who need to manage asbestos in their buildings and for those who may encounter asbestos at work, so ignorance is not a defence in court.

Duty holders who fail to manage asbestos risks may face prosecution.