The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has announced that it will be visiting a range of businesses and organisations to check how asbestos is managed, ensuring that those responsible for managing asbestos have the correct arrangements in place.
The latest HSE campaign Asbestos: Your Duty launched on 15th January 2024, and will target those responsible for managing asbestos in buildings, in order to improve understanding and will emphasise the legal duty to manage asbestos.
The legal duty to manage asbestos includes a range of buildings such as workplaces, for example, offices, retail, and factories, as well as public buildings, museums, schools, hospitals, and places of worship.
The legal responsibility of managing asbestos typically falls to the 'duty holder'. The role of duty holders must be identified within your organisation, but typically is the person who is the building owner, business owner, the landlord of the premises or the persons/organisation with responsibility for the building’s maintenance or repair.
The 'duty holder' must protect people from the risks of exposure to asbestos. This includes people who:
- Work in their buildings
- Use them in other ways
The aim of this campaign is to highlight to those with the responsibility for all workplace buildings, to do everything they must to comply to the law (The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012) and prevent exposure to this dangerous substance, which has been completely banned since 1999, however for many buildings in the UK that were built or refurbished before 2000, they may still contain the dangerous material and the necessary checks and inspections must be carried out.
Sarah Albon, HSE’s chief executive said: “To keep people safe from the harms of asbestos, a culture of safely managing asbestos is needed in our building industry and among those responsible for buildings.
“Asbestos exposure in the United Kingdom is still the single greatest cause of work-related deaths due to exposures decades ago. Together, we must protect people in the workplace and reduce future work-related ill health.”
This HSE video which explains the essential steps to the Duty to Manage Asbestos in Buildings.
What can we do to help?
Bradley Environmental Consultants s one of the leading Asbestos Consultants in the UK offering a whole range of Asbestos Risk Management Services. Our outstanding team are multi-disciplined, making Bradley Environmental Consultants uniquely positioned to offer the full spectrum of asbestos compliance services.
As a market leader in the innovation of effective and efficient asbestos management, our team works alongside businesses, authorities, schools, hospitals and individuals to assure safe and secure premises free from the health risks of deadly asbestos. We advise our clients on the most efficient and economically advantageous way to manage asbestos, without compromising on safety issues.
With our extensive asbestos consultancy capacity, the Bradley Environmental team conduct thorough asbestos inspections and surveys, definitive asbestos sample testing, asbestos air monitoring, asbestos management plans and asbestos removal project management across all business and organisation sectors.
Go to our Five Steps to Asbestos Compliance for a simple and effective guide to asbestos compliance.
Being wholly independent and with our testing laboratories allows us to leverage the fastest services, the highest quality testing and the scope to manage every project of every size.
We also offer a range of Asbestos Management courses and Asbestos Awareness training at our many sites across the UK.
Let us know what asbestos support you need, and our expert team will contact your to discuss your requirements and our tailored solution.
