Inadequate Asbestos Risk Management Kills 13 Workers Every Day

Thirteen people die every day in the UK through asbestos related disease, making it the country's biggest workplace killer.

But many of these deaths could be avoided if organisations kept adequate records showing the locations of asbestos in their properties, developed a risk management plan and provided it to all staff and contractors who could disturb the asbestos.

Statutory property compliance specialist BES Consulting surveys thousands of commercial and public sector buildings every year.

It has found that an alarming number of people responsible for properties say their organisations have not given them the budgets or resources to properly manage compliance and to put a suitable and adequate monitoring solution in place.

"We find it incredible that so many people are blaming inadequate budgets and lack of time as the reason for not maintaining records about the compliance of their buildings," said BES Consulting's Director, Steve Daniels.

"It is a legal requirement that organisations take all reasonable steps to comply with legislation.  The cost and ease of keeping an up to date asbestos register and risk management plan - as trade unions such as Ucatt and NUT called for recently - is nothing compared to the burden and expense of having an asbestos incident.

People shouldn't be allowed to even put a whiteboard up in an office, school or hospital without knowing whether there is a risk of encountering asbestos.  If they innocently drill into the wall and it contains asbestos the consequences could be dire.

Technology exists to make it easy for property managers to not only keep on top of asbestos risk management but also other areas of statutory compliance such as legionella, fire and health and safety.

There is really no excuse for asbestos to continue to be a killer in Britain, let alone be responsible for nearly 5,000 deaths a year."

BES Consulting, which has offices and surveyors across the UK, provides management solutions for statutory property compliance.  The company works on some of the country's largest commercial property estates.