Asbestos Removal in Farnborough

Farnborough is about fourteen miles north-west of Guildford, along the A31 and then up the A331 Blackwater Valley road. Like neighbouring Aldershot it is in Hampshire, in the borough of Rushmoor, and that county line has real consequences for what you can do with the material yourself.

A town built almost entirely in the asbestos century

Most towns we cover have a medieval core with twentieth century growth around it. Farnborough is close to the opposite.

At Domesday it was a hamlet of somewhere between fifty and a hundred people. By 1830 it had around four hundred residents, and by 1850 a little over eight hundred. Then the railway arrived, and from 1905 the town's growth was driven by aviation and by what became the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

The practical result is that Farnborough's housing stock is overwhelmingly twentieth century, and a very large share of it was built or extended between the 1930s and the 1980s. That is the asbestos window almost exactly.

So the base rate here is higher than in a town like Godalming or Farnham, where a lot of the housing predates the material entirely. In Farnborough, if a house came with a garage, the garage roof is worth looking at.

The older landmarks are the exceptions that prove it. St Peter's Church has twelfth century origins. St Michael's Abbey, built in the late nineteenth century and holding the tomb of Napoleon III, is Victorian. Everything else, including the airport, the airshow site and the whole of Cove and Southwood, belongs to the century that used asbestos.

Where the waste can go, which is not far

Farnborough Household Waste Recycling Centre does not accept asbestos. Neither does Aldershot.

In Hampshire the only sites that take it are Andover, Basingstoke, Efford, Netley and Portsmouth. All five require pre-booking by telephone, all five take cement-bonded asbestos only, and none of them is a short journey from Rushmoor. Quantities above your household DIY waste allowance are charged per sheet.

The Surrey option is closed. Guildford Community Recycling Centre is one of only three Surrey sites that accepts asbestos, but it requires evidence of Surrey residency, and a Farnborough address does not provide it.

That leaves Farnborough, along with Aldershot, in the weakest position of the ten towns we cover for doing it yourself. Our collection service is generally the practical answer, and it is used more from these two towns than from anywhere else.

If you do plan a trip to one of the Hampshire sites, phone to book first, keep sheets whole and wrapped in plastic, double bag anything broken, and check the current rules on the Hampshire County Council page before you load anything.

The commercial side

Farnborough has more modern business park and light industrial property than most towns on our list, and a good deal of older industrial stock alongside it.

The units around the airport and on the former Royal Aircraft Establishment site include 1960s and 1970s buildings with cement roof sheeting and cement wall cladding. Those are priced by area at around £50 per square metre, with access and disposal quoted separately, and on a large roof the disposal line at £0.55 to £0.80 per kilogram frequently exceeds the labour.

Any of those buildings in non-domestic use carries a duty to manage under Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. That means a register, a plan and a way of getting the information to any contractor before they start work. It is covered properly on the commercial page.

Flats and maisonettes

Farnborough has proportionally more flats than most of the towns we cover, and that changes who we end up talking to.

In a block, the material is very often in the common parts rather than inside anyone's home. Ceiling tiles and panels in a stairwell, boxing round a service riser, a shared roof space with an old water tank in it. Those sit under Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, which puts a duty to manage on whoever is responsible for maintenance and repair of the common parts. That is usually the freeholder or the managing agent rather than the leaseholder.

So the useful first question from a leaseholder is not what it costs, it is who holds the duty. Frequently there is already a register for the building and nobody has looked at it. Our landlords page sets out where that duty falls.

Councils

Rushmoor Borough Council, within Hampshire. Rushmoor is not part of the Surrey local government reorganisation, so the abolition of the Surrey districts on 1 April 2027 does not touch it.

Worth knowing if you own property on both sides of the boundary, because from that date Farnham and Guildford will be dealing with a different authority and Farnborough will not.

What we get called out for

Garage roofs across Cove, Southwood and the older parts of the town, which is the largest single category by some distance.

Textured ceilings through the post-war housing, where the usual conversation is whether sealing at around £30 per square metre beats stripping a 20 square metre ceiling for £2,750 to £6,000.

Commercial roof and cladding work on the industrial stock, and the occasional insulating board job in flats and older institutional buildings, which is licensed work and goes to an HSE-licensed contractor.

We also cover Cove, Southwood, Mytchett, Frimley and Fleet from the same direction. The full list is on the areas we cover page and the ranges are on the cost page.