Regulatory

1. To amend the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and associated guidance to ensure the independence and impartiality of roles in the 4-stage clearance process, to minimise the risk of exposure from asbestos to workers and building users after the removal of asbestos.

Non-regulatory
      2. To drive up the standard of asbestos surveys by improving guidance and using other interventions to ensure dutyholders understand the critical role of an asbestos survey in managing asbestos risk, and are equipped to commission a quality survey from a competent asbestos surveyor or organisation.
     

     3. To improve guidance and use other interventions to clarify the type of work that constitutes work with asbestos known as Notifiable Non-Licensed Work (NNLW).

An HSE spokesperson said, “We want to hear from all stakeholders involved in the asbestos regulatory system to ensure our approach is both effective and proportionate, supporting HSE’s commitment to protecting people and places.” The consultation closed on 9 January 2026. FAAM highlighted this rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity for its asbestos professionals to put their views forward, both alerting FAAM members by email and holding a 90-minute webinar on 17 December.

The full consultation document was still available (at the time of writing) on the HSE website at: https://consultations.hse.gov.uk/hse/proposals-control-of-asbestos-regs-2012, and the 51-page Word document can still be downloaded for information.

FAAM emphasised the importance of not just completing the consultation tick-box choices, but entering comments in the free text boxes to make salient points. This was important as, “A summary of HSE’s response to the views expressed by respondents will be published on the consultation webpage.” The HSE also intends “to take account of the responses received to this consultation. HSE may further refine the proposals, and any potential legislative changes are subject to agreement from the wider Government.”

HSE also stated that, “Further communications will be issued for interested parties in advance of any regulatory changes coming into force. A summary of responses will be made available on the consultation webpage after the close of the consultation period, where it can be viewed.”

Well, a summary isn’t available yet, which is probably a good sign that HSE received many responses.

A View
To be blunt, the regulatory changes to the 4-stage clearance are long overdue. They are also a frequent source of friction, or worse, to some FAAM members. The independence of the 4-stage clearance is fundamental to achieving the specific aim of removing ALL the asbestos and leaving it clean and free of debris. Failure of the 4-stage clearance to do this will expose other workers and occupants to a risk which they have been told has been dealt with, so are unlikely to be using the right level of protection, and often none at all.

Even if this regulatory change goes through, it may still be ineffective and meaningless unless it is also accompanied by a specific requirement to make readily available a simple, user-friendly procedure for dutyholders to locate the contact details for all available accredited nearby 4-stage clearance laboratories. As UKAS is responsible, and the sole supplier, for accrediting 4-stage clearance laboratories and gets fees for doing so, they should be this provider. However, the current UKAS list of accredited laboratories does not meet dutyholders’ needs and is “not fit for purpose” for the dutyholder to be able to quickly locate all the available accredited 4-stage clearance providers near where the asbestos removal is to take place. If UKAS can’t be directed to use the simple, readily available methodologies to make the relevant information available to dutyholders, the objective of the regulatory change will not be achieved. If not UKAS, then HSE must do this.

Even then, in this era of online advertising and payments boosting you up to the top of the list on search engines and AI co-pilots, etc., the implementation of the amended regulation will most likely determine the outcome, and whether there is an independent, unbiased assessment that the removal area is free of asbestos and “safe” to re-occupy.

The two other proposed changes are non-regulatory and involve mostly improved guidance. This is somewhat surprising for the surveying of where the asbestos is. The ability of the surveyor to locate and find the asbestos-containing materials and communicate this effectively to anyone on the site who may be expected to disturb the asbestos material is fundamental to the Duty to Manage approach. You can’t manage it if you don’t know where it is. Also, if you don’t know where the asbestos is, it can be disturbed or even removed without any precautions or protection to reduce exposure. Why a surveyor does not have to be UKAS accredited, but a 4-stage clearance analyst does, may not sit well with any logical assessment for reducing risk. We can only hope that communications to dutyholders can somehow be improved to make up for choosing a non-regulatory approach. At the end of the day, what the dutyholder needs to know is that the surveyor is both experienced and competent, to reduce false negatives and false positives to a very low level. How we can instruct them to know how to judge this is really the problem, to which accreditation offers a simple shortcut.

For the third proposal, “to clarify the type of work that constitutes work with asbestos known as Notifiable Non-Licensed Work (NNLW)”, the consultative document describes well the lack of understanding and some difficulties of its application. To some extent, if you had a simple binary licensed or unlicensed categorisation, you still have problems when choosing, so having an in-between category (NNLW) really directs most of the problems here. For example, when managing and maintaining licensed asbestos materials, some maintenance work and minor works are likely to be needed, so a de minimis is required (e.g. up to 1 hour’s work per week). An accurate estimation of the time required for the whole job from start to finish is not easy and will always be a grey area, which can be stretched and exploited. HSE wants to retain NNLW, so it will be interesting to see what the additional words of guidance can achieve.