News
You are here: Home : News : Asbestos – new consultation
Welcome to Health and Safety Direct
Health and Safety Direct provides a professional cost effective service spanning every area of the Health and Safety and Corporate risk exposure. Are you safe? Find out by clicking here
Asbestos – new consultation
1st Feb, 2006 to 1st Jun, 2006
The HSC has published a consultative document seeking comments on proposed amendments to its asbestos regulations and ACoP. The draft regulations include a single, tighter control limit for work with all types of asbestos; specific training requirements for those working with asbestos; and a clear hierarchy of controls that should be used to reduce exposure.
The HSC is taking this opportunity to simplify and rationalise the legislative regime by combining the three sets of current asbestos regulations – on control, licensing and prohibitions – into one.
In practice, most work that currently needs to be done under licence will remain licensable. However, following new research, the HSC proposes that work on textured decorative coatings containing asbestos will not need to be done by a licensed contractor. Risks from these materials are much lower than previously thought: they are estimated to be 1,000 times less than those from other licensable materials, and lower than those from work with asbestos cement, which does not currently require a licence. Giles Denham of the HSC said that the “HSC is not saying that work with asbestos containing textured coatings is safe: it still needs proper control measures.”