Asbestos compliance for commercial properties and facilities managers

Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR 2012) places a legal duty on anyone who owns, occupies, or manages a non-domestic building built before 2000 to manage asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) within it. The duty applies regardless of whether you know asbestos is present — if the building was constructed before 2000, you must find out.

In practice, the duty to manage requires four things: a survey to identify ACMs; a risk assessment for each ACM found; a written asbestos management plan (AMP) documenting how each ACM will be managed; and a programme of periodic re-inspections to monitor condition changes. The AMP must be shared with anyone who might disturb the ACMs — including maintenance contractors, cleaning staff, and building services engineers.

Failure to comply with the duty to manage is a criminal offence under CAR 2012. The HSE can issue improvement notices, prohibition notices, and prosecute. In practice, the most common enforcement trigger is a contractor discovering asbestos during work that was not identified in a survey — because no survey had been carried out.

The most common compliance failure we encounter in commercial properties is not the absence of a management survey — it is the absence of a refurbishment and demolition (R&D) survey before building work begins. A management survey identifies ACMs in the building as it stands; it does not authorise work that will disturb the fabric of the building. For that, an R&D survey is required.

The R&D survey is fully intrusive. The surveyor will access above suspended ceilings, inside ducts and service voids, behind linings and panelling, and within any other area that will be disturbed by the planned work. The survey must be completed — and the results reviewed — before work begins. Commissioning it the week before a fit-out starts is not sufficient if the results require remediation work.

The practical consequence of not commissioning an R&D survey is a project stop. If a contractor discovers asbestos during work, they are legally required to stop immediately, seal the area, and notify the HSE. The project cannot restart until the asbestos has been assessed and — if necessary — removed by a qualified contractor. In a commercial fit-out, this can mean weeks of delay and significant additional cost.

A facilities manager at a mid-sized office building in Bermondsey contacted us after a contractor carrying out a ceiling replacement discovered what appeared to be asbestos insulation board (AIB) above a suspended ceiling grid. The contractor had stopped work immediately and sealed the area. The building had a management survey from 2019, but the survey had not identified AIB in that location — because the surveyor had not accessed above the suspended ceiling, which was outside the scope of a management survey.

We attended within 24 hours, took samples, and confirmed the material was AIB — a higher-risk ACM that requires licensed removal. We referred the removal to a licensed contractor, arranged the air clearance, and the ceiling replacement was completed approximately three weeks later than planned.

The facilities manager asked us afterwards why the management survey had not identified the AIB. The answer is that it was not supposed to: a management survey is designed for buildings in normal use, and surveyors do not routinely access above suspended ceilings because doing so requires the ceiling to be partially dismantled. That is precisely what an R&D survey is for — and it should have been commissioned before the ceiling replacement began.

We now include this scenario in our pre-survey briefing to commercial clients: if you are planning any work above a suspended ceiling, inside a duct, or behind a lining — even in a building with a current management survey — an R&D survey is required for the areas to be disturbed. The management survey does not cover it.