Asbestos safety

Asbestos is a natural raw material. In the past, it was used in a lot of building materials because it is strong and can stand up to heat and chemicals.

If you have asbestos in your home it is not a problem as long as it is in good condition and you do not disturb it (for example, by drilling into it or using sandpaper on it).

Our legal responsibility

By law, we do not have to remove asbestos from your home, but we do have to manage it properly (for example, making it safe).

All our trades staff and contractors are trained to recognise asbestos and not disturb it when working in your home.

What we do

We are checking our homes for asbestos. If we come to your home, we may take samples of materials that we think may have asbestos in them so that we can test them. We will put information about where asbestos is on our database. If we know there is asbestos in your home, we may come back to check that it has not been damaged or whether we need to do any work on it.

However, if anything with asbestos in it is damaged, we will come out straight away to remove it or make it safe.

What you must do

You must allow us access to your home when we come to do any safety checks.

Help keep your home safe

Take care if you are decorating or doing any repairs in your home. If you think something has asbestos in it, you should not:

• drill it;
• cut it;
• scrape it;
• use sandpaper on it; or
• disturb it in any other way.

Some types of asbestos are very soft, and a lot of fibres will get into the air if you rub or scrape them.

If you are concerned about any potential asbestos, before doing any decorating in your home, please