Asbestos Removal in Cranleigh

Cranleigh is about eight miles south-east of Guildford, down the A281 through Shalford, Bramley and Wonersh. It is often described as one of the largest villages in England, and whatever the merits of that claim, the shape of the place is genuinely village rather than town.

That shape is what makes the asbestos work here different.

More outbuildings than anywhere else we cover

Cranleigh has large plots. The 2011 census recorded 4,779 households across 3,278 hectares, with over two thousand detached houses in the civil parish. Detached houses on generous plots come with detached garages, and out here they frequently come with a workshop, a stable, a store and a shed as well.

Beyond the village itself the land is agricultural. Ewhurst, Alfold, Dunsfold, Rudgwick and the smallholdings between them are full of buildings put up between the 1950s and the 1970s and roofed in corrugated cement because it was cheap, fireproof and did not rot.

So the mix of work here skews away from the domestic garage roof and towards larger areas. That changes how it is priced: by the square metre at around £50 rather than per building, with access and disposal quoted separately. Our agricultural page covers that properly, and the roof page covers the workshops and larger outbuildings.

Access, which is the whole conversation out here

In a town, access means whether a van can park near the garage. Around Cranleigh it means whether a lorry can get down the track at all.

A building beside a hard yard with room to turn is one job. The same building four hundred metres down a soft track, reachable only by telehandler and only in dry weather, is a considerably longer one, because every load has to be brought out to a hard standing before it goes anywhere.

Season matters here in a way it does not in Woking or Camberley. A track that is fine in July is a different proposition in February, and on a lot of holdings the sensible answer is to plan the work for dry ground rather than fight the conditions.

When you ask for a price, tell us where a lorry can actually stand in wet weather. That single piece of information changes the quote more than the size of the roof does.

What is usually already on the ground

Farm and stable roofs that have been failing for years shed material, and the fragments end up in the yard, in the gutters, in the grass along the eaves and sometimes out into a field.

Collecting that is slower than taking the roof off, because each piece has to be found rather than lifted. It should be a line on the quote either way, because a price that covers only the sheets still on the frame is a price for half the job.

The same goes for the stack of old sheets behind the barn, left over from a repair in about 1998. That is waste collection and it is cheap to add to a visit that is already happening.

The village itself

Cranleigh proper is a mix. St Nicolas Church dates from around 1170 and the drinking fountain in Fountain Square from 1874, both well before anything we deal with. Winterfold House, built in 1886 and used by the Special Operations Executive during the war, is Victorian.

The housing that matters is what came after. The railway closed in 1965 and the line is now the Downs Link path, and much of the post-war development in the village dates from either side of that. The obelisk marking the opening of the turnpike road in 1818 sits at one end of a High Street that has been extended and infilled repeatedly since.

Textured ceilings across that post-war stock are our second most common enquiry here after outbuildings, and the usual answer is that sealing at around £30 per square metre beats stripping a 20 square metre ceiling for £2,750 to £6,000.

Where the waste goes

Cranleigh Community Recycling Centre does not accept asbestos. In the whole of Surrey only Epsom, Guildford and Shepperton do, and Guildford is the nearest at about eight miles back up the A281.

The conditions are the same as everywhere in the county. Six sheets of asbestos cement maximum, sprayed with water and double wrapped in heavy duty polythene before arrival, a van permit for a van, pickup or trailer, no mixing with other DIY waste, a phone call first to check container space, a declaration on arrival, and evidence of Surrey residency.

Six sheets is not a barn roof, and it is not a garage roof either. Check the Surrey County Council page for the current rules, and assume collection for anything larger.

Equestrian property in particular

There is a lot of it around Cranleigh, and stable work has its own considerations that a garage roof does not.

Horses cannot be under or immediately beside a roof being stripped, so the programme works around turnout rather than the other way round. Feed and bedding have to be moved or properly covered, since sheeting a hay store is a different proposition from sheeting a garage. And the work is normally phased so that stabling stays available at one end of a block while the other is done.

None of that is difficult. All of it goes wrong if nobody mentions it until the morning, which is why it is worth saying at the quoting stage how many boxes are in use and when the horses are out.

The other thing specific to stable blocks is roof lights. The translucent corrugated panels let into most of them are usually GRP or polycarbonate rather than asbestos, so they are ordinary waste, but they are fragile and they are the commonest thing somebody puts a foot through. They should be a separate line on the quote.

Councils

Waverley Borough Council today, with Cranleigh Parish Council beneath it. From 1 April 2027 Waverley is abolished along with every other Surrey district and the county council, and becomes part of West Surrey Council. Shadow councils have been running since the May 2026 elections.

We also cover Ewhurst, Alfold, Dunsfold, Bramley, Wonersh and Shalford from the same direction. The full list is on the areas we cover page and the ranges are on the cost page.