Leicester’s factory and warehouse roofs
Leicester’s manufacturing history left the city ringed with factory units, warehouse blocks and trading-estate sheds, much of it built or extended between the 1960s and the 1980s when asbestos cement was the standard economical roof. Beyond the city, the surrounding county carries a large stock of agricultural buildings under the same grey corrugated sheeting. Decades on, these roofs are weathered, moss-covered and often leaking at the laps and rooflights, and their owners hold a legal duty to manage what is up there.
For roofs whose sheets remain sound, encapsulation offers a route that satisfies that duty without the cost and upheaval of removal. For roofs past that point, honesty requires a different answer, and we give it.
Sealing sound sheets instead of stripping them
Encapsulation works because intact asbestos cement is a low-risk material: the fibres are bound into the cement and only escape when sheets are broken, drilled or eroded by long weathering. The programme cleans the roof under controlled conditions, repairs fixings, laps and flashings, replaces isolated failed sheets where justified, then seals the whole surface with a coating system made for asbestos cement substrates.
The outcome is a watertight roof that no longer sheds fibres or surface dust, achieved while the building stays in use. There is no strip-out to programme around tenants, no full-roof disposal cost, and the price normally sits well below a re-sheet. For an occupied unit in Leicester, those differences are usually decisive.
Compliance, registers and management plans
Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, the duty to manage falls on whoever controls a non-domestic building. The duty is concrete: identify asbestos-containing materials, record and review their condition, assess risk, and keep a written management plan. Sound material does not have to be removed; it has to be managed and kept sound. An encapsulated roof fits that requirement directly, and the survey and completion records from the works become part of your asbestos register, giving you documented evidence that the material’s condition has been assessed and improved.
The roofs we turn down
Not every asbestos roof should be coated, and we decline the ones that should not. Sheets that are friable, soft, delaminating or extensively cracked have no business under a coating; sealing them hides continuing failure and wastes the owner’s money. The correct route for a roof in that state is removal by a licensed asbestos contractor and full replacement, and if that is what our survey finds, that is what our report will recommend. The survey decides, not the sales pitch. Where deterioration is limited to identifiable areas, partial sheet replacement plus encapsulation of the remainder can be a legitimate middle path, but only inspection can confirm it.
A survey decides
We are a survey-led contractor based in the South East, working across England including Leicester and the wider East Midlands. A survey visit will establish:
- Whether the sheets are sound enough for encapsulation
- The repairs and isolated replacements needed before coating
- The state of rooflights, gutters and flashings
- What the works contribute to your asbestos management plan
If your building carries an ageing asbestos cement roof, have it assessed while encapsulation remains on the table. Weathering only moves in one direction, and so does the cost of the eventual answer.
