HSE’s Recent Inspection of Asbestos in School Buildings

HSE recently carried out 421 inspections in schools across Great Britain in 2022/2023, focussing on how schools meet their legal duties to manage asbestos effectively.

The result of these inspections concluded common areas for improvement, which schools are to consider when reviewing their own arrangements for asbestos management.

The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 place duties on people or organisations with the main responsibility for maintenance and repair of non-domestic premises to manage asbestos effectively.

Upon investigation, it was found that most schools were complying with their legal duties, with effective systems in place to manage and monitor the condition of asbestos-containing materials.

However, 7% of schools were found to have significant failings in their systems, meaning enforcement notices were required to address them. These failings were largely relating improvements within the schools’ management plans or surveys.
Out of all 420 visits, just one identified a risk or exposure to asbestos. This required prohibition notices to be served, resulting in a prevention of access until the asbestos had been safely removed from the area. The asbestos was identified within the boiler rooms that pupils and teaching-staff had no access to.
Following this inspection, letters were sent by inspectors to address these areas of non-compliance. These mainly required improvements to management systems, such as:

– Schools not having an up-to-date survey on site that shows the location of asbestos.
– Schools lacking a site specific, clear and easily understandable asbestos management plan.
– Schools failing to regularly monitor the condition of asbestos-containing materials.
– Schools not ensuring the contractors tendering for work provided appropriate risk assessments, method statements and asbestos awareness training.
– Asbestos management plans not containing incident procedures for dealing with an unplanned disturbance of asbestos-containing materials, as well as how to provide necessary information to emergency services who attend sites.

Despite the presence of failures in asbestos management systems in these schools, this doesn’t mean that there was an actual risk of exposure to asbestos.
The findings gathered from these inspections will be used to identify further areas of improvement for asbestos management within the education sector, and to inform future intervention approaches.

Find the full report here: https://www.hse.gov.uk/education/asbestos-management-report.pdf