Hazards and control measures
Asbestos hazards and control measures
Asbestos hazards in buildings built or refurbished before 2000: where it is found, why disturbing it kills, the duty to manage, surveys before work, licensed and non-licensed work, and the stop and report rule. With a worked example from a completed RAMS.
What are the hazards of asbestos in buildings?
Any building built or refurbished before 2000 may contain asbestos, in materials such as insulating board, ceiling tiles, textured coatings, pipe lagging, cement roofing sheets and floor tiles. It becomes a hazard when it is disturbed: the fibres released can cause mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer and asbestosis, and HSE puts asbestos-related deaths at around 5,000 a year. The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 expect you to find out what is there before work starts, plan the work to avoid it, use a licensed contractor for the higher-risk work and stop if you find anything unexpected.
Last updated . Facts checked by the SiteSurvey team on 24 October 2026 against HSE: Worker's guide to asbestos safety, HSE: Locations of asbestos and taking the right action, HSE: Asbestos-related disease statistics, Great Britain 2026 and The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012.
Where asbestos is found
Asbestos may be present in any building built or refurbished before the year 2000, and HSE tells employers to check the age of the building before work starts. Asbestos insulating board was used for fire protection in partition walls, bulkheads above ceilings, ceiling tiles and external soffits. Asbestos cement was used for profiled roofing sheets, wall cladding, gutters, downpipes and flues. Textured decorative coatings on ceilings and walls can contain it, and so can vinyl and thermoplastic floor tiles and the bitumen adhesive under them. Pipe lagging, loose fill insulation and sprayed coatings are among the higher-risk materials.
The work most likely to meet it is the work that breaks into the building fabric: maintenance and repair, refurbishment and retrofitting, demolition, and installation work. That takes in the electrician or data installer drilling through a ceiling board, the heating engineer near old lagging or a cement flue, the roofer on a cement sheet roof and the facilities team doing day-to-day repairs. Even where a survey has been done, it might not have found every location, so asbestos can still be hidden.
Who is harmed, and how
Asbestos in good condition and left alone is low risk. The harm comes when it is disturbed. Drilling, cutting, breaking or sweeping releases fibres you cannot see, smell or feel, and breathing them in can cause mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer, asbestosis and pleural thickening. These diseases typically take decades to develop and cannot be cured, so the person exposed today will not know for many years.
HSE describes exposure to asbestos as the greatest cause of work-related deaths in Great Britain, with around 5,000 asbestos-related deaths a year. There were 2,146 mesothelioma deaths in 2024, a similar estimated number of lung cancer deaths linked to past asbestos exposure, and 503 deaths in 2024 with asbestosis on the death certificate. Today's deaths reflect past working conditions, largely in the building industry. The people who add to future figures are the ones who drill an unrecorded board or carry on after finding lagging nobody mentioned.
What the law expects
Whoever has a duty to maintain or repair non-domestic premises, or has control of them, must manage the asbestos in them: assess whether it is present, keep a written plan of where it is and what condition it is in, review it, and give that information to anyone liable to disturb it. Before any maintenance, refurbishment or demolition work, an employer must know what asbestos is present, in what material and condition, or assume it is present and work to the regulations. Where the work breaks into the building fabric, a refurbishment survey that finds asbestos hidden within the fabric may be needed, and no work should start until it is done.
Then the order of controls. First plan the job to avoid disturbing the materials the survey names. Where that is not possible, decide who can do the work. Higher-risk work, such as pipe lagging, sprayed coatings and most work on insulating board, must be done by a contractor licensed by HSE. Lower-risk tasks, such as drilling through a textured coating, can be done by non-licensed workers trained for that task, with dust controls on power tools and a Type H vacuum, never a brush. Everyone whose work could disturb asbestos needs training, repeated at regular intervals, and anyone who finds a material they think may contain asbestos stops work and reports it. In SiteSurvey, the RAMS template asks for the asbestos survey or register reference for the area and warns when it is left blank, and the Suggested controls list follows the same order.
Suggested controls
Asbestos: control measures, most effective first
These are the 5 controls the SiteSurvey RAMS and risk assessment forms offer for this hazard as a tick list, grouped by their level in the hierarchy of controls. They are a starting point from HSE guidance, not an assessment of your job: tick what applies and say how it works on your site. If only personal protective equipment is ticked, the form says so. How suggested controls work and the hierarchy of controls explained.
Take the hazard away altogether, usually by doing the job a different way or from a different place.
- Work planned to avoid disturbing the materials the survey names
Change the way the work is done: a permit, a check, training, supervision, timing.
- Asbestos survey or register for the area checked before work starts
- Stop and report if any unexpected board, lagging or cement sheet is found
- Work on known materials only by licensed or trained people under their own plan of work
- Asbestos awareness training current for everyone on the job
Offered to: Construction and building work, Electrical and M&E, AV, IT and data cabling installation, Roofing, scaffolding and work at height, Facilities, cleaning and maintenance.
Try it
Build the controls for asbestos
Tick the controls you would put in place, see which levels of the hierarchy they reach, and score the risk before and after. Or fill in the example from a completed RAMS to see how one crew did it.
Interactive
Try it: asbestos
Works the same way as the RAMS form. Nothing you tick is saved or sent anywhere.
Your controls, by level
- Eliminatenot ticked
- Substituteno control at this level for this hazard
- Engineeringno control at this level for this hazard
- Adminnot ticked
- PPEno control at this level for this hazard
Nothing ticked yet.
3. Score the risk with these controls
What the law says
- Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, regulation 4
- The duty to manage asbestos in non-domestic premises: assess whether it is present, keep a written plan, review it and tell anyone liable to disturb it. HSE's Approved Code of Practice L143 explains how to comply.
- Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, regulations 5 and 8
- No demolition, maintenance or other work that could expose employees until the asbestos is identified or presumed present; licensable work only by an employer holding an HSE licence.
- Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, regulation 10
- Adequate information, instruction and training for anyone liable to be exposed and their supervisors, given at regular intervals.
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 3
- The suitable and sufficient risk assessment that identifies the asbestos hazard and the controls for the job.
Worked example
Asbestos in a completed RAMS
The hazard entry exactly as it was recorded in one of our completed example RAMS: the controls ticked from the list, how they apply on that job, and the score before and after the further action.
Roofing, scaffolding and work at height
Ashcombe Academy sports hall: felt roof renewal
- Hazard
- Asbestos: Old felt layers and the soffit boards at the eaves
- What could happen, and to whom
- Disturbing asbestos if the old covering or soffits contained it. The crew.
- Controls ticked
- Asbestos survey or register for the area checked before work starts
- Work planned to avoid disturbing the materials the survey names
- Stop and report if any unexpected board, lagging or cement sheet is found
- Asbestos awareness training current for everyone on the job
- How they apply on this job
- Refurbishment survey ASB-2024-117 covers the roof and soffits and found no asbestos. Stop and report any board or cement sheet not described in the survey.
- Risk with these controls (likelihood x severity)
- 1 x 5 = 5 (Medium)
- Further action
- None beyond the survey check. The stop and report rule is in the briefing. Owner: D. Hale.
- Residual risk
- 1 x 4 = 4 (Low)
A fictional job, filled in as a worked example. The form and the report are real.
It also appears in distribution board replacement in an occupied office and clearing and deep cleaning a void flat. All eleven completed RAMS.
Asbestos: common questions
Does the duty to manage asbestos apply to houses?
The duty to manage in regulation 4 covers non-domestic premises. It does not stop at the front door of a home, though. An employer must still identify or presume asbestos before work in any premises, and workers in an owner-occupied home must still be protected from exposure. Treat a house built or refurbished before 2000 the same way: ask what is known, and assume asbestos where nobody knows.
What should happen if we find something that might be asbestos?
Stop work straight away and speak to your employer or the building owner. They should check the asbestos register or survey covers that material, and arrange a survey or sample if it does not. Nobody restarts until the answer is known. In the worked example the roof survey found no asbestos, but the stop and report rule is still part of the briefing because a survey might not find everything.
Which asbestos work needs a licensed contractor?
Higher-risk work: loose fill insulation, sprayed coatings, pipe lagging, most repair or removal of asbestos insulation, most work on asbestos insulating board, and large amounts of asbestos debris. Lower-risk tasks, such as drilling through a textured coating or cleaning a weathered cement roof, can be done by trained non-licensed workers. If in doubt, HSE's advice is to assume the work is licensed and stop until you are told otherwise.
Is asbestos awareness training enough?
Not for work on asbestos. Regulation 10 requires training for anyone liable to be exposed, covering the health effects, the materials likely to contain asbestos and the operations that could cause exposure, repeated at regular intervals. Workers doing non-licensed work need further training for the specific tasks they will carry out. Licensable work is for licensed contractors only.
Last updated . See every hazard in the library.
Write the RAMS with these controls already listed.
Pick the hazard, tick its controls, score it and brief the crew, on a phone or laptop. The report goes to the client as one PDF.