Asbestos Soffit and Fascia Removal in Guildford

Soffit board is the flat panel under the eaves, tucked behind the guttering, closing off the gap between the top of the wall and the edge of the roof. Fascia is the vertical board the gutter is screwed to.

On a house built between the 1950s and 1999 the soffit is quite often asbestos. The fascia usually is not, because it needed to hold a screw and asbestos board is poor at that, so the common arrangement is a timber fascia with an asbestos cement or asbestos insulating board soffit behind it.

Why this one starts with identification

Most asbestos jobs start with a price. This one starts with a question, and it is worth explaining why rather than sounding evasive.

Two very different materials look identical under an eaves at four metres.

Asbestos cement soffit is dense, hard, and bound. It is non-licensed work, it comes off in whole panels, and it prices at around £50 per square metre like any other cement product.

Asbestos insulating board soffit is soft, light and far more friable. It is licensed work under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 wherever the job is not short duration, it needs an HSE-licensed contractor, and it prices at £200 to £300 per square metre.

Same position on the building, same colour from the ground, four times the price and a completely different legal footing. Anyone who quotes a soffit strip without establishing which one it is has either assumed cement and will revisit the number, or is planning to treat board as if it were cement, which is the version that gets somebody prosecuted.

A sample and lab test settles it, and on this material it is money well spent rather than a formality.

What usually triggers the job

Soffits rarely get removed because somebody woke up worried about them. They get removed because something else is happening.

New guttering is the most common. The old cast iron or early plastic has failed, the roofer wants to fit new, and the soffit behind it is in the way or has to come off to get a proper fixing.

A reroof is the next. Once the tiles are off, the eaves detail is exposed and it makes no sense to put a new roof back over an old asbestos soffit.

Then there is fascia and soffit replacement in general, the uPVC job that half the street had done in the 2000s. Where that was done over the top rather than by stripping out, the asbestos is still there behind the plastic, and it turns up years later when somebody finally takes the covering off.

And rot. Where the timber fascia has gone, water has usually been getting behind the soffit for years, which matters because weathered board is more friable than sound board.

How it comes off

From a tower or a scaffold, in sections, working along the eaves.

The panels are usually screwed or pinned to the rafter feet and to a bearer on the wall. Fixings get cut where they can be reached and the panel is eased down whole rather than snapped out. Because the material is overhead, everything comes down towards a controlled area rather than being dropped, and the ground below is sheeted from the outset.

Guttering comes off first, since it is in the way, and it goes into the ordinary waste stream along with any timber fascia. Keeping the two streams separate matters: mixing plastic guttering into a hazardous load costs you money, and mixing asbestos into a general skip is an offence.

Where the board turns out to be insulating board, the work goes to an HSE-licensed contractor, the job is notified, and there is a clearance procedure at the end that cement work does not require.

The birds and the bats question

Two things live in eaves, and both change the timing rather than the method.

Birds nest behind soffits, particularly starlings and house sparrows, and they get in through a gap at the end of a run or a hole where the board has broken. Active nests are protected while they are in use, so a soffit strip in late spring may have to wait or be phased around the occupied section. Old, empty nests are not protected and simply add to the mess.

Bats matter more. All UK bat species and their roosts are legally protected, whether or not a bat is present at the time, and roosts in the eaves of older houses are common. If you or a neighbour have ever seen bats coming out from under the eaves at dusk, say so before anyone books a date, because the correct route is a survey and, where a roost is confirmed, advice from the relevant licensing body before work starts.

Neither is a reason not to do the work. Both are reasons to mention it early rather than discovering it with a scaffold already up.

Around Guildford

Soffit enquiries cluster around whole streets rather than individual houses, because the estates went up together and the eaves detail is repeated down the row.

The 1950s and 1960s stock at Bellfields, Park Barn and Stoughton is where most of it sits, along with the later suburban builds at Burpham, Merrow and Westborough. If a neighbour has had theirs done, it is worth asking what the test said, because on a matched terrace the answer is very likely to apply to yours too.

Access is the other local variable. A bungalow eaves is a tower job. A three-storey Victorian terrace near the town centre needs a scaffold, and that is £300 to £600 before anyone touches the board.

We cover Guildford and the towns around it. The areas we cover page has the list.