Established 1986 - P402 Qualified Surveyors - HSE Licensed
47A Strand St, Sandwich, Kent CT139EU - - 29 St Lawrence Ave Ramsgate CT110HZ
Offices: 01304 614647 / 614453 (24hr) 01843 592243 - For a Prompt Service First Call Direct - 07712068424
Email for quote or specific help: asbestossurveys-kent@yahoo.co.uk
"But my mate said it wasn't asbestos"
The Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations / The Asbestos Licensing Regulations and the Asbestos Prohibition Regulations have been reformed into:
The Control Of Asbestos Regulations 2006
View the full text here
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20062739.htm
In Plain English
The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006 will affect you if you are responsible for a place of work or non-domestic premises, this includes, but is not limited to, building managers, landlords, business owners, maintenance managers, building control officers, business directors, duty holders of premises, senior management, commercial property owners and tenants, industrial property owners and tenants. Basically any building or premises that's not a domestic house will have a person (duty holder) who is responsible for the safety of the building, occupants and visitors in terms of general safety and specifically in this case, asbestos exposure.
Large Organisations
Sometimes the 'duty holder' is a clearly defined position within an organisation other times its just another part of someone's job description. With the revised regulations they have introduced an 'implicit duty' for these people to know where the asbestos is in the buildings they are responsible for and to manage the risks, ('Duty to Manage') from these materials in the form of an asbestos management plan.
Small Businesses
The small business owner will probably only need a decent asbestos survey, complete with recommendations to comply with the majority of the requirements in the regulations. The duty holder is usually the owner or manager and he is not really expected to be trained to any significant level, just enough to comply with the regulations in terms of preventing the release and spread of asbestos fibres. The basically means, find out where it is, keep it in good (sealed) condition, don't let anyone disturb it, and keep an eye on it.
"In addition to your existing
legal duty to prevent, whenever possible, the exposure of employees and others
in your premises to asbestos, a new 'duty to manage' asbestos will be added to the
Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2006.
This will require you to manage the risk from asbestos by:
Source: Managing Asbestos in Premises, published by Health & Safety Executive Sept 2001. Click the link to see the rest of the HSE page.
A good asbestos survey will help you to comply with these requirements without affecting your business in any significant way.
Prosecutions
If you do not have a suitable asbestos survey you may be served with an improvement notice by the HSE who will check to see if you have complied.
I don't believe in using scare tactics, I simply want you to realise the potential consequences of not complying with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006. The prosecution database contains details of many people and companies who had no idea they were breaking the law, they were simply carrying on their business.
If you look at the entries that relate to asbestos you will see cases where a company was prosecuted for accidental exposure/release of asbestos and the prime cause was traced back to the fact that the company didn't have a survey or the survey was not up to date or the survey was not made available to the right people (tradesmen etc)
Most of these companies are not hardened law breakers with little regard to safety, they are good safety conscious companies that find themselves the victims of circumstance, and its a sad fact that much of it was probably avoidable through proper application of an accurate asbestos survey.
