Asbestos Legislation

Mar 23, 2018

There has been a level of scaremongering regarding the asbestos legislation (The Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016) which is set to come into force April 4. As usual, most of the scaremongering comes from parties who either want to take your money – or spend other people’s money. This is an example of the sort of thing we are seeing:

There certainly are obligations under the regulations to conduct an asbestos survey. We recently had a survey  done on a small (under 400 m2)  building, and the cost was $1500.

And then, where it is identified that there is asbestos, there is an obligation to prepare and review an “asbestos management plan”.

However, what is often left out of the pitch to spend other people’s money, is that where a building owner or occupier reasonably believes that asbestos is not present in the workplace, then they are not required to perform an asbestos survey. Generally industrial buildings are relatively simple structures, and many in South Auckland have been built in the years since asbestos ceased to be used, so in what we would contend are the majority of buildings, it is reasonable to believe , and after taking a brief inspection, that there is no asbestos to be found. And therefore no need for the expensive asbestos survey.


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