Asbestos Removal in Farnham

Farnham is about fifteen miles west of Guildford, straight along the A31 over the Hog's Back. It is one of the easier runs we make, because the road is dual carriageway for most of it, and it means Farnham jobs are booked as readily as anything closer.

An old town with new problems attached

Farnham looks older than most of what we work on, and it is. Farnham Castle is a Norman fortress. Waverley Abbey, just outside the town, was the first Cistercian abbey in England, founded in 1128. Castle Street is one of the finest Georgian streets in the county.

None of that has asbestos in it.

What does is everything that arrived afterwards. The town expanded very fast in the post-war decades, growing from roughly twenty thousand people to nearly forty thousand by 2011, and it had become an early commuter town after the railway was electrified in 1937. That growth came as new estates on the edges, and as extensions, garages, outbuildings and re-roofings added to houses that were already a century or two old.

So the pattern here is more mixed than in a town built in one go. A Georgian frontage on Castle Street with a 1960s flat-roofed extension behind it. A Victorian cottage in Wrecclesham with an asbestos cement garage on the plot. A 1930s semi in Rowledge with a textured ceiling applied in 1974.

The 2011 census gives the civil parish as roughly 6,700 detached, 4,300 semi-detached and 2,600 terraced houses. That is a lot of detached and semi-detached property, and detached and semi-detached property is where garages live.

The tip will not take it

Farnham Community Recycling Centre does not accept asbestos.

In the whole of Surrey only three sites do: Epsom, Guildford and Shepperton. For Farnham that means Guildford, fifteen miles back east along the A31, and the same conditions apply as everywhere else in the county. Six sheets of asbestos cement maximum, sprayed with water and double wrapped in heavy duty polythene before you arrive, a van permit if you are bringing it in anything other than a car, no mixing with other DIY waste, a telephone call first to check there is space in the container, a declaration form on arrival, and evidence that you are a Surrey resident.

For most Farnham jobs the arithmetic does not work. A thirty mile round trip with a hazardous load, for a maximum of six sheets, is not a saving once you have hired anything or bought the wrapping. Collection is usually the better answer, and it is what most people here end up doing.

Check the Surrey County Council page for the current rules before you plan around any of this.

Listed buildings and conservation areas

Farnham has more of both than any other town we cover, and it is worth understanding what that does and does not affect.

It does not affect the asbestos removal. Taking a cement roof off a garage needs no consent from anyone, whatever the building it sits behind.

It can affect what happens next. Replacing that roof with something visibly different, altering an elevation, or demolishing an outbuilding within a conservation area may need permission, and on a listed building the threshold is lower than people expect. That is a Waverley question and it is worth asking before the old material comes off rather than after, because the gap between stripping a roof and being allowed to replace it is a gap with weather in it.

We do not advise on consent. We will happily sequence the work around whatever the answer turns out to be.

Councils, and the change coming

Waverley Borough Council today, with Farnham Town Council as the parish tier. From 1 April 2027 Waverley is abolished, along with every other Surrey district and the county council itself, and the area becomes part of West Surrey Council. Elections were held in May 2026 and shadow councils are running now.

The Bourne, Hale and the edges

Farnham is really several settlements that grew together, and the asbestos pattern differs across them in a way worth knowing.

The Bourne and Rowledge, to the south, have a lot of interwar and post-war detached housing on generous plots, which means detached garages and frequently more than one outbuilding. Those are the most straightforward jobs we do here: good access, a drive to park on, and a roof that comes off in a morning.

Heath End, Badshot Lea and Weybourne, to the north-east towards Aldershot, are more mixed and hold more of the post-war estate housing, which is where the textured ceilings and the shared garage blocks are.

Wrecclesham and the western side have older cottages with later additions, and that is where access gets awkward: narrow lanes, no parking, and outbuildings reached through the house or down a side passage.

None of that changes the material. All of it changes the price, which is why a photograph of the approach is worth as much as a photograph of the roof.

What we get called out for

Garage roofs, as everywhere, and here they are frequently attached to older houses rather than to estate properties, which changes the access more than the work.

Textured ceilings in the post-war housing across Rowledge, Wrecclesham, Heath End and Badshot Lea, and in the 1970s work done to older properties.

Outbuildings and stables. Farnham sits on the edge of open country and there is a lot of equestrian and smallholding property towards Tilford, Frensham and Churt, where cement sheet roofs on stables and field shelters are the norm. Those are priced by area rather than per building, at around £50 per square metre, and they are covered on the agricultural page.

We also cover Rowledge, Wrecclesham, Tilford, Frensham, Churt, Badshot Lea and Ash from here. The full list is on the areas we cover page and the ranges are on the cost page.