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Warning over 6m tonnes of asbestos in public buildings

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Comments

  1. Silly question
    If the think tank research identified 6m tonnes of asbestos over 1.5 million buildings why are they not producing the register ?
    They obviously have access to the expertise and presumably have had access to the buildings
    Is this just an extrapolation or worse still “scare mongering” ?

  2. I totally agree with Darren’s comment and would like to add the following:

    If building owners, for both public and private buildings, were compliant with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 then compiling a central register would be a very simple process. However, sadly many are failing to fulfil their legal duty (most notably under Regulation 4) and that does not seem to be recognised within the Think Tank’s recommendations and that is fundamental omission.

    Yes, the research highlights disparity between different countries but before ‘improving’ we (the UK) need to provide resource to fulfil the current standards. Current funding for LA’s makes this a near impossible task and non public sector bodies can sometimes be guilty of being ignorant on the matter.

    Also, in my opinion, the research seems to have unrealistic targets by saying that all asbestos should be removed. Many buildings have ACM’s within the structure so total building renewal would be the only option. This would be unaffordable and in many cases totally unnecessary. In addition I doubt that the HSE would support ‘removing all asbestos’ as removal creates a degree of risk so unnecessarily removing ACM’s creates unnecessary risk.

    The correct thing to do is to prioritise risk and only remove or encapsulate ACMs which present risk rather than creating an overreaction to a manageable problem.

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