Asbestos surveys before demolition or refurbishment

Any building put up or refurbished before 2000 should be assumed to contain asbestos until a survey says otherwise, and before demolition or intrusive refurbishment the survey you need is a refurbishment and demolition survey rather than a management survey. The duty comes from the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, not from planning, so no planning officer will tell you to do it. The consequences of missing it are a stopped site, a Health and Safety Executive investigation and a demolition contractor's claim.

Asbestos rarely appears in a planning decision. It appears in the programme, in the demolition method, in the waste budget and, on a bad day, in the ground.

Which survey applies at which stage

The Health and Safety Executive's survey guide separates two types, and the distinction is about intrusiveness rather than about paperwork.

A management survey locates asbestos containing materials that could be disturbed during normal occupation and maintenance. It is non-intrusive, it is what the duty holder keeps on file, and it is not sufficient for demolition or for intrusive refurbishment.

A refurbishment and demolition survey is fully intrusive within the area of work. Floors are lifted, ceilings opened, ducts and risers entered, and destructive inspection is expected. It is carried out in vacant, unoccupied space, because the surveyor is deliberately disturbing materials. That is why it cannot be squeezed in while a tenant is still trading.

The practical error is buying a management survey because it is on the file, then discovering at week two of the demolition that nobody looked behind the plant room wall.

The duty to manage and where it comes from

Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 places a duty to manage asbestos on whoever has responsibility for maintenance of non-domestic premises. That duty covers finding out whether asbestos is present, assessing the risk, keeping a written record, and making the information available to anyone liable to disturb it.

For a purchaser, the asbestos register is a document to ask for at heads of terms rather than at completion. A register that is fifteen years old and describes a building that has since been reconfigured twice is worth very little.

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 then bite on the project side. Pre-construction information provided to designers and contractors has to include information about asbestos, and a principal designer who has not asked for the survey has not discharged that duty. Where a scheme is being tendered on a demolish and rebuild basis, the survey belongs in the tender pack. Contractors who price without it price a risk allowance, and that allowance is always larger than the survey would have cost.

Timing the survey against the application

Planning does not require the survey, so the temptation is to leave it until after permission. On a straightforward building that is defensible. On three categories of building it is not.

The first is any building where the structure itself may be the problem, such as a sprayed coating to a steel frame, because removal of a sprayed coating is licensed work with its own programme and it can make retention cost less than demolition. The second is any building where retention or facade retention is one of the options, since the asbestos position changes the comparison. The third is anywhere a pre-redevelopment audit is being prepared for circular economy or reuse reasons, because the audit and the asbestos survey cover the same building at the same time and commissioning them separately wastes access.

Where demolition is proposed in a conservation area, or where a building is being taken down under the prior notification route, the survey also feeds the method statement that the council will want to see.

What findings do to a scheme

Asbestos changes design decisions more often than people expect.

• Sprayed coatings and lagging make a steel frame expensive to strip, which sometimes tips a scheme from retention towards demolition, and sometimes the opposite.
• Asbestos insulating board in ceilings and risers means licensed removal, with enclosures, negative pressure units and clearance testing, all of which need programme and floor space.
• Asbestos cement sheeting on a roof is usually non-licensed work, quicker and far less costly, but it still cannot be broken up on site.
• Textured coatings on walls and ceilings across an entire building can be the single largest line in a soft strip budget.

Licensed work has to be done by a contractor holding a licence from the Health and Safety Executive, and most licensed work requires notification to the enforcing authority before it starts. Build that notification period into the programme rather than discovering it on the Friday before the strip out.

Waste classification and disposal

Asbestos waste is hazardous waste. It has to be double bagged or wrapped and labelled, moved under a consignment note, and taken to a site permitted to accept it. Not every landfill is.

Two things routinely go wrong on the paperwork. The first is treating mixed demolition arisings containing small quantities of asbestos cement as ordinary construction waste, which is an offence and which a site waste record will expose. The second is failing to keep consignment notes, which are the only evidence you will have that the material went where you say it went.

Where a Site Waste Management Plan is prepared for the scheme, the asbestos stream should appear in it as a separate line with its own destination, even though the plan is not itself the regulatory document for hazardous waste.

Asbestos in the ground

This is the one that catches developers on brownfield land, and it is the most common late surprise on a demolition site.

Asbestos fibres and fragments in made ground behave as a contamination issue and a health and safety issue at once. The investigation belongs with the contaminated land assessment rather than with the building survey, and the analysis has to be asked for specifically. A standard suite of determinands will not find it.

Where a site has had asbestos cement buildings demolished on it previously, assume fragments in the made ground and sample for them at Phase 2 stage. Discovering asbestos in soil after a planning condition on contamination has been discharged means going back to the council with a revised remediation strategy, and that is a six week problem at best. Land contamination reports are work the council expects from suitably qualified and experienced persons in line with the relevant British Standard, and a draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

Cost, programme and where the design changes

An illustrative sequence for a two storey 1970s office building being taken down for housing. Survey commissioned once the building is vacant and access is available, four weeks including laboratory analysis and reporting. Licensed removal of insulating board to risers and the plant room, three weeks including enclosure, clearance testing and certification. Soft strip and non-licensed removal of cement sheeting and textured coatings, three weeks. Demolition follows. That is ten weeks before a demolition contractor swings anything, on a building nobody thought was complicated.

Sequence it like this and it costs weeks. Sequence it badly and it costs months, because the demolition contractor is standing down while a licensed contractor is found, and the demolition method statement has to be rewritten around the enclosures.

The survey itself is a small number against a demolition budget. The reason to do it early is not the survey cost. It is that everything downstream of it is priced on what it says.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Duties under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 are enforced by the Health and Safety Executive, and specialist advice should be taken before any work that may disturb asbestos.

Browse the PlanScope report types to see which construction and waste documents your application will need alongside the survey work. Reports should be reviewed before submission, and we do not guarantee planning approval.