Check your asbestos duty to manage

If you are responsible for maintaining a building built before 2000, you almost certainly have a legal duty to manage the asbestos in it. This checker works through the duties in Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and tells you which apply to you, where the gaps are, and what to do about them.

Note:

Asbestos in good condition and left undisturbed is generally not a danger. The risk comes from disturbing it — which is precisely why the law focuses on knowing where it is and telling people before they start work.

How it works

Tell us about the building — type, age, and who is responsible for repairs
Answer questions about what is already in place — survey, register, plan, training
Get your findings — every duty checked, ranked by priority, with the specific next step for each

What you'll learn

Whether the duty to manage applies to you at all, and if not, why not
Which of you and your landlord holds the duty, where a lease is involved
Whether you need a survey, and which type
What your register and management plan must actually contain
Whether the people working on your building need asbestos awareness training
What to do first if material is already damaged

Key Point

The duty to manage is not discharged by having a survey. Regulation 4 requires you to find out what is there, record it, assess the risk, write a plan, act on it, review it, and give the information to anyone liable to disturb it. A survey is the first step of seven, not the whole job.

Who this is for

The duty to manage applies to non-domestic premises — offices, shops, warehouses, factories, schools, healthcare and public buildings — and to the common parts of domestic buildings such as blocks of flats and HMOs.

It does not apply inside a single private dwelling. Asbestos in a pre-2000 home is still hazardous if disturbed, but Regulation 4 is not the reason why.

Where the duty falls

The duty sits with whoever is responsible for maintenance and repair. In practice that usually means:

Owner-occupiers — the duty is yours
Landlords — normally yours, depending on the terms of the lease
Tenants with a repairing lease — the duty may be yours, not your landlord's
Tenants without repairing obligations — the duty is normally your landlord's, but you must co-operate with them
Managing agents — you may hold it on the owner's behalf

Where a lease is involved, the lease decides. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood points in the regulations, and the checker asks about it directly.

Surveys: the difference matters

A management survey locates asbestos for normal day-to-day occupation. It is what most buildings need most of the time.

A refurbishment and demolition survey is required before work that will disturb the fabric of the building. It is fully intrusive, and the area must be unoccupied while it is carried out. A management survey is not an acceptable substitute — this is a frequent and serious mistake, and a common cause of both uncontrolled exposure and enforcement action.

Warning:

Starting refurbishment or demolition on a pre-2000 building without a refurbishment and demolition survey is one of the most common ways people are exposed to asbestos at work. If work is planned, arrange the survey at the planning stage — it takes time and the area has to be vacated.

Before you start

Have to hand, if you can:

The approximate age of the building
Any existing survey report, and roughly when it was done
Whether an asbestos register and written management plan exist
Who carries out maintenance — your own staff, contractors, or both
Details of any refurbishment or demolition being considered

You do not need any of this to get useful results. "I don't know" is a valid answer throughout, and in several cases it is itself the finding.

After the checker

Your results are emailed to you as a summary you can keep, with each finding ranked by priority and linked to fuller guidance. If anything is flagged as damaged material, deal with that first — do not wait for the email.