Managing asbestos roofs across Northumberland starts with the law
Whoever controls maintenance of a non-domestic building in Northumberland carries a duty to manage asbestos under Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012: identify the material, assess its condition, keep a written record and manage the risk. It does not require removal – sound asbestos cement can be sealed, recorded and monitored in place, and encapsulation is that decision carried out properly inside your management plan.
Where asbestos cement roofing sits across Northumberland
Northumberland combines former-coalfield industry with extensive farmland. Asbestos cement roofs cover the Cramlington and Blyth industrial estates, the Ashington and south-east Northumberland units, and the agricultural buildings across the county’s wide rural belt.
Most of these roofs were built for a thirty-year life and have long outrun it, which is why so many are now porous, moss-covered and leaking at the fixings even where the sheets themselves remain sound.
Encapsulation, repair or removal: the honest choice
Encapsulation is not painting over a problem. The roof is surveyed sheet by sheet, cleaned under controlled conditions, repaired where fixings and rooflights have failed, and sealed with a coating system made for asbestos cement. The cured surface binds the sheet, locks fibres in, restores water-shedding and adds years of service life, usually at a fraction of the cost of stripping, hazardous-waste disposal and full replacement, and without emptying the building.
When we will tell you to remove instead
There are roofs we will not coat, and it is better you hear that before a survey than after a failure. Encapsulation is wrong where sheets are extensively cracked or holed, where the cement has gone soft and friable through decades of saturation, or where storm damage and structural movement have broken the roof’s integrity. It is also strictly limited to asbestos cement: insulation board, lagging and sprayed coatings are licensable and must be removed by an HSE-licensed contractor. Where removal is right for your building, we say so in writing.
Survey-led across Northumberland
We survey commercial, industrial, managed and agricultural buildings across the county, including Cramlington, Blyth, Ashington, Hexham and Morpeth. The route is the same wherever the building is:
- A condition survey of sheets, fixings, rooflights, gutters and structure
- A photographic record for your asbestos management plan
- A plain written recommendation: encapsulate, repair first, or refer for removal
- A specification and price only where coating is genuinely appropriate
- Work carried out under controlled, documented conditions
If a building in your portfolio dates from the 1960s to the 1980s and the roof has never been assessed, a free asbestos roof encapsulation survey answers the compliance question and the cost question together.
