Asbestos Removal for Landlords in Guildford

Landlords get a specific page because the law is more nuanced here than it is for either homeowners or commercial occupiers, and because the common misunderstanding costs money in both directions.

Some landlords buy surveys they do not need. Others assume no duty applies at all, and get caught by the part that does.

Regulation 4, and exactly where it applies

Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 imposes the duty to manage asbestos. It applies to non-domestic premises, and it applies to the common parts of residential premises.

It does not apply to the inside of a single dwelling let as a home.

That distinction does most of the work. A landlord letting one house in Burpham has no Regulation 4 duty in respect of that house's kitchen ceiling. The freeholder of a block of flats at Bellfields has a Regulation 4 duty in respect of the stairwell, the entrance hall, the boiler room and the shared roof space.

Common parts means the shared areas: entrance halls, stairwells, corridors, lifts and their motor rooms, plant and boiler rooms, bin stores, communal storage, shared roof spaces, and outbuildings and gardens in shared use.

What the duty actually requires

Where it applies, it is a sequence rather than a document.

Take reasonable steps to find out whether asbestos is present, and in what amount and condition. Presume that material contains asbestos unless there is strong evidence it does not. Assess the risk from it. Prepare and keep a written record of its location and condition. Prepare a plan setting out how the risk will be managed, and put that plan into effect. Review and monitor it. And, critically, make sure the information is passed to anyone liable to disturb the material.

A management survey is the normal route to the first part. It is not the whole duty, and a survey sitting in a drawer discharges none of it.

Where the duty does not apply, but the risk still does

This is the part that gets missed.

A landlord letting a single house has no Regulation 4 duty inside it. That landlord still sends contractors into the property. Plumbers, electricians, kitchen fitters, decorators, roofers. Every one of them can disturb asbestos, and every one of them is entitled to know what they are working on.

You also have general duties as a landlord around the condition of the property, and separate duties under health and safety legislation towards people working on your premises. Neither of those disappears because Regulation 4 is written the way it is.

The practical answer is not to buy a full survey for every let house. It is to know the age of the property, know what the likely materials are, and get a single sample on anything suspect before work is instructed rather than after.

Houses in multiple occupation

HMOs sit awkwardly between the two positions, and the answer depends on the layout rather than the label.

Where a property is let as separate lettings sharing a kitchen, bathroom, hallway and stairs, those shared areas can function as common parts and the duty to manage can apply to them. Where a property is let to a single household as one dwelling, it does not, whatever the number of bedrooms.

HMO licensing is a separate regime with its own conditions, and those vary between councils. The position for a specific property is worth establishing rather than inferring, particularly since a licensing officer's expectations and Regulation 4 are two different things that both apply.

Using void periods

The single most useful piece of practical advice on this page.

Do the work between tenancies. An empty property means no scheduling around anyone, no negotiation about access, no tenant sitting in a flat above a job, and the option to combine the asbestos work with the redecoration that was happening anyway.

The textured ceiling that would cost a great deal to remove in an occupied flat is a much simpler proposition in a void, and it can be sealed instead for a fraction if the ceiling is sound. See encapsulation for when that is the right call.

The version to avoid is discovering the material on day one of a refurbishment with a tenant booked to move in a fortnight. Non-licensed work can usually be turned round in days. Licensed work needs fourteen days statutory notice before it even begins.

When a tenant reports damage

Proportion matters here, because the conversation is with somebody living in the property.

Stop anyone tidying it. No sweeping, no vacuuming, no throwing a sheet over it. Close the room if practical. Then get the material identified, because until a laboratory has spoken nobody knows whether this is a real issue or an old plaster ceiling.

If it is asbestos, cleaning up debris from a damaged textured coating is non-licensed work with the right controls and is normally a short job. Handled quickly and explained plainly it is a minor event. Handled slowly, or with the wrong tone, it becomes a much larger problem than the material ever was.

Telling contractors, in practice

The part of the duty that gets least attention is the requirement to pass the information on, and for a landlord with a portfolio it is also the easiest to systematise.

The failure looks like this. A register exists for a block. A plumber is instructed by phone to attend a flat about a leak. Nobody mentions the register, because nobody thinks of a leak as work on the fabric. He cuts into a ceiling.

Three things fix it and none of them are expensive. Put the relevant extract of the register into the instruction rather than keeping it centrally. Ask every contractor to confirm they have seen it before they attend. And keep a short standing note for each property saying what is present and where, so whoever picks up the phone can answer without finding the file.

For a single let with no Regulation 4 duty, the same principle applies for practical rather than legal reasons. If you know there is a textured ceiling in the hall of a 1970s house, the decorator should be told before he starts sanding it.

Around Guildford

The local landlord stock splits into the two categories the regulation cares about.

Blocks of flats and maisonettes from the 1960s and 1970s, across the town and particularly around the post-war estates at Park Barn, Bellfields and Stoughton. Those have genuine common parts, frequently have insulating board around service risers and in stairwell ceilings, and carry a real Regulation 4 duty. Shared roof spaces with communal water tanks are common in the same stock.

Single lets in the 1930s to 1970s suburban housing at Burpham, Merrow, Onslow Village and Westborough. No Regulation 4 duty inside, plenty of textured ceilings, garage roofs and floor tiles, and a steady flow of contractors going in and out.

Purpose-built student housing and converted HMOs around the University of Surrey add a third category, where the shared-area question is worth answering for each property rather than in general.

We work across Guildford and the surrounding towns. The areas we cover page lists them, and the commercial page covers non-residential premises.