What UK Government regulations on asbestos and home retrofits should I be aware of?

There has been ever-greater discussion in recent years of the role that retrofitting can play in bringing UK domestic properties to the higher standards of energy efficiency that will be so crucial for lowering energy bills and reducing carbon emissions over the decades ahead.

However, if you are considering overseeing or undertaking retrofitting work – such as the installation of new roof, wall, or floor insulation, or the fitting of a more efficient heating system – at your residential property, you might have wondered about the legal aspects of this.

One particular issue for older UK homes – in other words, the very homes that are likely to be in most urgent need of retrofitting – is that many of them contain the dangerous mineral known as asbestos.

Today, asbestos is subject to stringent regulatory requirements. Any retrofitting work carried out in a UK home could present a high risk of asbestos being disturbed. This could result in the release of loose asbestos fibres, posing severe dangers to the health of anyone nearby who may breathe in or swallow them.

In this article, then, we will set out how crucial it is to understand the UK’s current asbestos regulations for those who intend to carry out retrofits in this country.

What is asbestos and why is it a concern in home retrofits?

The term “asbestos” is used in reference to a group of seven naturally occurring fibrous minerals that have crystallised into fibres. This group, in turn, can be divided into the two subgroups of serpentine and amphibole asbestos.

With commercial mining of the substance having begun during the 19^th century, asbestos went on to be incorporated into thousands of building products. This was on the basis of such qualities as its relatively easy availability, physical strength, fire resistance, and effectiveness as an insulator.

Examples of common asbestos products included:

• Asbestos insulating board (AIB)
• Asbestos cement roof tiles
• Lagging around pipes and boilers
• Loose asbestos cavity insulation
• Textured decorative coatings
• Asbestos vinyl floor tiles

Asbestos was particularly extensively used as a construction material, including for residential properties, from around the 1950s until the 1980s.

By the end of that period, public awareness was growing of the increasingly obvious health risks of asbestos. A link had been established between asbestos exposure and a heightened likelihood of the exposed individual going on to develop a potentially fatal asbestos-related health condition, such as mesothelioma or asbestos-related lung cancer, in later life.

As political pressure intensified, the UK Government finally banned the importation and use of asbestos in late 1999. However, much of the asbestos that had been installed in UK homes prior to this date remained in place. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as 1.5 million buildings across the UK might still contain asbestos.

With common home retrofitting projects such as the installation of new windows, solar panels, and heat pumps inevitably causing a certain amount of disruption to a building’s fabric, there can also be scope for asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) to be accidentally disturbed.

So, proper asbestos management is essential during retrofits in order to minimise health risks and ensure compliance with the UK’s strict asbestos regulations.

What are the key UK Government regulations on asbestos?

When you see mentions of the “UK asbestos regulations” in articles like this one, this tends to be in reference to the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012.

Sometimes referred to as “CAR 2012”, this is the overarching asbestos legislation in the UK. It sets out in-depth information on who has the “duty to manage” asbestos in a property, as well as such matters as the identification of asbestos, plans of work in relation to asbestos, the prevention or reduction of asbestos exposure, appropriate control measures, and much more.

However, when it comes to the retrofitting of UK homes, confusion can often arise about the role of CAR 2012, given that these regulations are largely directed at non-domestic premises, such as schools, hospitals, and office buildings.

It isn’t quite the case, however, that CAR 2012 is only applicable to non-domestic buildings. It can apply, for instance, to some common areas of domestic properties, such as the foyers, lifts, stairs, boiler rooms, and external outbuildings of blocks of flats. Other examples of such “common areas” include the entrance halls, staircases, and roof spaces of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), as well as hotels, guest houses, and halls of residence.

If you are looking to have retrofitting work carried out at a residential property that you know or suspect contains asbestos, your exact legal obligations under CAR 2012 will depend on your exact “status” in relation to the property, and who will be carrying out the work:

• If you own and live in the same domestic property that you would like to have retrofitted, and you won’t be undertaking any work activity yourself, you won’t be legally responsible for any asbestos risks that visiting contractors face. Instead, it will be the contractors themselves that are responsible for protecting themselves and the homeowner from asbestos when they undertake work at your domestic property
• Alternatively, you may be the landlord of the given residential building. If so, maintaining the building’s structure will be your responsibility, which means you will have the “duty to manage” asbestos as set out by Regulation 4 of CAR 2012. As a landlord, you have a duty to protect tenants, visitors, and contractors who may undertake maintenance, repairs, and/or retrofitting projects at your building.

When is an asbestos survey required in home retrofits?

This is a slightly more complicated question to answer than you might think. This is for the simple reason that – as we explained in a previous article here at Oracle Solutions – the law doesn’t explicitly state that even dutyholders for a given property under CAR 2012 must have an asbestos survey carried out on their premises. So, it may be deduced from this that an asbestos survey isn’t strictly a legal requirement for any building.

However, what CAR 2012 does stipulate is that someone with the “duty to manage” asbestos for a particular building must take reasonable steps to determine whether ACMs are present in the building. Furthermore, if ACMs do turn out to exist in the property, information will need to be gathered about the location, amount, and condition of these materials.

The purpose of an asbestos survey is to find out this information for a particular property, as accurately as possible. When carried out by reputable asbestos professionals, a survey like this can provide you with thorough details about the asbestos situation in your property. Moreover, the resultant report will include photographs and recommendations on how to safely manage the ACMs in your building.

So, to return to the example of the landlord of a residential property cited above, it might not seem “technically” necessary for them to arrange an asbestos survey for their building prior to having retrofitting work carried out at it.

In practice, though, it is frequently extremely difficult to gather the aforementioned information about asbestos in a building in a safe and responsible way, unless an asbestos survey is undertaken. In practice, then, an asbestos survey will be effectively “mandatory” for many UK buildings dating to before the year 2000, including many landlords’ properties.

Two types of asbestos survey exist, with both likely to require sampling:

• Management surveys, which are aimed at helping a property owner or manager to produce an asbestos register and an asbestos management plan. They are designed to help with the management of ACMs during the normal occupation and use of the given building
• Refurbishment or demolition surveys, which – as suggested by the name – is the type of asbestos survey typically carried out prior to major disruptive work such as refurbishment or demolition at the given property. It is, accordingly, the more intrusive type of asbestos survey, involving destructive inspection.

Given that a refurbishment or demolition survey is the most thorough form of asbestos survey – penetrating a property’s structure to find and identify ACMs that may be hidden within the fabric – it can be an excellent way to uncover the most in-depth and accurate information about the asbestos situation in a domestic building.

This, in turn, can help provide the greatest possible peace of mind ahead of any retrofitting projects at the property, at the same time as ensuring legal compliance.

How should asbestos be managed during home retrofits?

Putting aside the matter of having an asbestos survey carried out, if you are indeed a “dutyholder” for your residential building in accordance with CAR 2012, you will also be subject to the other obligations laid out under Regulation 4.

So, you won’t merely be legally required to take reasonable steps to determine the asbestos situation in your property – you will also need to create an asbestos management plan, and to regularly review, monitor, and keep this plan up to date over time.

Furthermore, as a dutyholder, you will be expected to provide information on the location and condition of ACMs in the property to anyone – such as visiting retrofitting contractors – likely to work on or disturb such materials.

So, to summarise, there will be a legal obligation for ongoing asbestos management over time – it won’t be enough for you to merely identify and know about the substance being present.

As part of this, you will have decisions to make on the most suitable courses of action for managing the ACMs. It is not always the case that ACMs found in a residential building need to be removed, even if retrofitting work is to be undertaken at the property.

Your decisions in this regard will depend on such factors as the condition of the given materials, and the likelihood of those materials being disturbed in the future – including during any planned retrofitting work.

If, for instance, certain ACMs are in good condition and are in a part of the property where the likelihood of disturbance is relatively low, you might opt to have them “encapsulated”. This refers to the practice of “sealing off” materials to prevent the escape of asbestos fibres.

Who is qualified to remove asbestos from a UK home?

It isn’t always a strict legal requirement for someone removing ACMs from a building to hold a licence from the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE); in the case of some especially risky asbestos removal tasks, however, this will be a requirement.

Even in the case of asbestos removal projects that don’t legally need a HSE licence in order to be done, here at Oracle Solutions, we strongly recommend the use of a licensed asbestos removal contractor. We have previously written in depth about some of the aspects to look out for when choosing an asbestos removal company or contractor.

Conclusion: safety and legal compliance are of the greatest importance for home retrofits

We have sought to make clear in this article how important it is to familiarise yourself with, understand, and comply with the UK asbestos regulations, depending on the specifics of how they may apply to you as the owner or manager of a residential building.

By seeking out professional advice and guidance – such as that our own experts at Oracle Solutions can provide – you can help ensure a safe and legally compliant retrofit operation at your domestic property. Safety and compliance should be your uppermost priorities at every stage of such a potentially sensitive and specialised project.

Please reach out to our team today via phone or email to learn more about any of our asbestos services, and to request a free and fast quote.