The HSE is carrying out asbestos management inspections – what information must be prepared to prove your school or trust is prepared to deal with asbestos safely?
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been carrying out a schedule of inspections focused on asbestos management in schools and trusts across the UK. The inspections, which have been running since September 2022, assess how schools manage the risks from asbestos on the school estate, and the effectiveness of the management arrangements and control measures in place across each school or trust.
What will be inspected?
The visits will require each school and trust to provide evidence that they have management arrangements and procedures in place to ensure asbestos risks are controlled. This could include:
Clearly-defined and understood roles and responsibilities linked to the school’s asbestos management plan.
Dynamic arrangements in place to manage and monitor the condition of asbestos-containing materials in affected buildings and premises.
Robust systems and processes to control the risks associated with foreseeable disturbances of all asbestos-containing materials.
Inspectors may request documentation ahead of their visit, such as your school or trust asbestos register and/or management plan.
How to prepare
Ahead of an asbestos management inspection your school and trust could choose to review their current asbestos arrangements and check that they are meeting the requirements set out in the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR). These requirements dictate that schools and trusts should:
Take reasonable steps to find out if there are asbestos-containing materials in the school premises and, if so, the amount, where it is and what condition it is in.
Presume materials contain asbestos unless there is evidence that they do not. Make, and keep up-to-date, a record of the location and condition of any asbestos-containing materials, or materials which are presumed to contain asbestos.
Assess the risk of anyone being exposed to the materials identified. Prepare an asbestos management plan that sets out in detail how the risks from these materials will be managed.
Take the necessary steps to put the plan into action.
Periodically review and monitor the plan, and the arrangements, and act on the findings, so that the plan and arrangements remain relevant and up-to-date.
Provide information on the location and condition of the materials to anyone who is liable to work on or disturb them.
Next steps
Following the inspection, the HSE can take any of the following actions:
Take no further action (NFA).
Offer advice, verbally or in writing, about improvements that can be made at your school or trust.
Impose a ‘Notice of Contravention’ (NoC) which will set out which health and safety laws have been broken.
Impose an ‘Enforcement Notice’ (of improvement or prohibition) that will indicate any serious risk of personal injury now, or in the future. A prohibition notice orders you to stop doing something until it has been made safe – and non-compliance is a criminal offence.
Consider prosecution for breaching health and safety laws.
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