Leicester’s factory and warehouse roofs
Walk around Leicester and you’ll see the legacy of its industrial past: factory units, warehouses, trading estate sheds, many put up or extended between the 60s and 80s when asbestos cement was the go-to for an economical roof. Head out into the county and there are plenty of farm buildings with the same grey corrugated sheets. Decades on, these roofs are often weathered, covered in moss, and letting in water at the laps and rooflights. As the owner, you’ve got a legal duty to manage what’s up there.
If the sheets are still sound, encapsulation is a way to meet that duty without the massive cost and disruption of ripping the whole thing off. If a roof’s past that point, we’ll tell you straight: you need a different answer. We don’t mess about.
Sealing sound sheets instead of stripping them
Encapsulation works because asbestos cement, when it’s intact, isn’t high risk. The fibres are locked in the cement and only get released if the sheets are broken, drilled, or badly eroded by years of weather. Our programme starts with a controlled clean, then we fix any loose fastenings, laps, and flashings. If a few isolated sheets have failed, we’ll replace them if it makes sense. Finally, we seal the whole roof with a coating system designed specifically for asbestos cement.
You end up with a watertight roof that won’t shed fibres or dust, and we do it all while your building stays in use. No need to schedule around tenants for a strip-out, no huge disposal costs, and it’s usually a lot cheaper than re-sheeting. For an occupied unit in Leicester, those are usually the deciding factors.
Compliance, registers and management plans
The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 put the duty to manage squarely on whoever controls a non-domestic building. It’s not vague: you have to identify asbestos-containing materials, record their condition, review it, assess the risk, and keep a written management plan. Sound material doesn’t have to go; it just has to be managed and kept sound. An encapsulated roof ticks that box directly. Our survey and completion records become part of your asbestos register, giving you clear, documented proof that you’ve assessed and improved the material’s condition.
The roofs we turn down
Not every asbestos roof should be coated. We walk away from the ones that shouldn’t. If the sheets are friable, soft, delaminating, or badly cracked, coating them is pointless. You’re just hiding a continuing failure and throwing money away. For a roof in that state, the only correct path is removal by a licensed asbestos contractor and a full replacement. If that’s what our survey finds, that’s what our report will recommend. The survey decides, not some sales patter. If the deterioration is only in specific areas, then partial sheet replacement combined with encapsulation of the rest can be a sensible middle ground, but we’ll only know for sure after an inspection.
A survey decides
We’re a survey-led contractor, based in the South East but working right across the UK, including Leicester and the wider East Midlands. When we visit, we’ll establish:
- If the sheets are sound enough to encapsulate
- What repairs and isolated replacements are needed before we coat
- The condition of rooflights, gutters, and flashings
- How the work will fit into your asbestos management plan
If your building has an old asbestos cement roof, get it assessed while encapsulation is still an option. Weather only goes one way, and so does the cost of fixing it further down the line.
