The industrial estates around Sunderland are stacked with the kind of large-span, single-storey buildings that went up across the North East from the 1960s onwards, and a great many of them still wear their original corrugated asbestos cement roofs. On the trading parks, the workshops and the storage units that replaced older heavy industry, fibre-cement sheet was the standard covering for decades. If you control one of these buildings, the duty to manage that roof falls to you, and the practical question becomes whether to remove it or seal it in place.
Why so much of the local stock has these roofs
For roughly thirty years, corrugated asbestos cement was the cheap, quick way to roof a big industrial shed, and the wave of estate-building across Wearside in that era used it heavily. That is why a building in Sunderland dating from the late 1950s to the early 1980s so often has its single largest asbestos element sitting overhead. The roofs are now well into late middle age, weathered by decades of North East weather, and reaching the point where a decision can no longer be put off.
What the regulations actually require
Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 places a duty to manage asbestos on whoever controls a non-domestic building. You must identify the asbestos-containing materials, assess their condition, keep a written record and manage the risk. The law does not, however, force removal. It requires the material to be kept in a safe condition. Where the sheets are sound, a properly applied encapsulation system is a recognised way of meeting that duty, at far less cost than stripping and re-roofing, and with the building staying in use throughout.
How encapsulation works
Asbestos cement releases fibres as the surface erodes, cracks and weathers. Encapsulation locks the surface down. The roof is cleaned using controlled wet methods rather than dry abrasion, worn fixings and flashings are repaired, minor defects are made good, and the whole surface is sealed with a flexible coating formulated for asbestos cement. The roof becomes watertight, the fibres stay bound into the sheet, and no asbestos waste leaves the site. Broadly, encapsulation suits a roof where:
- The sheets are weathered but free of widespread cracking or holes
- The cement matrix is still firm, not soft or delaminating
- Fixings, laps and flashings are intact or repairable
- The supporting structure is sound and the building has a working future
When we will tell you to remove instead
A real survey sometimes ends with the answer you did not want. A coating flexes with the sheet underneath, so if the sheet is already breaking apart, no coating will hold it together and the money is wasted. Where we find brittle, delaminating or heavily cracked sheets, structural leaks that keep returning, or a frame that can no longer safely carry the load, we will recommend removal and replacement and set that out in writing. The same goes for material type. Higher-risk asbestos products such as insulation board or sprayed coatings are a separate category of work that normally needs an HSE-licensed removal contractor. Encapsulation is for sound asbestos cement, nothing else, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Start with a proper survey
We are a survey-led contractor, so before anyone discusses cost we inspect the roof properly: sheet condition, fixings, rooflights, gutters, internal evidence of leaks, and the structure carrying it all. You get written findings and a clear recommendation, whether that is encapsulation, repair first, or removal by the appropriate contractor. Worth remembering too: encapsulation does not end your duty to manage. The asbestos stays in place and on your register and should be re-inspected periodically. What changes is its condition, from a slowly deteriorating liability into a sealed, maintained roof. If you are responsible for a building in or around Sunderland, a condition survey is the sensible first step.
