Asbestos in schools: assessing the risks

Despite a ban on the use of asbestos in buildings, the risks associated with this material have not gone. Steve Sadley​ from the Asbestos Removal Contractors Association, discusses the scale of the problem in schools

Asbestos is the generic name given to a range of naturally occurring fibrous minerals. The danger from asbestos comes from the inhalation of the fibres, which can result in the development of various asbestos-related diseases, including asbestos-related lung cancers and mesothelioma, which is almost always associated with asbestos exposure.
    
Asbestos-related lung cancer is generally linked to prolonged exposure to high levels of asbestos and is typically found in individuals who have worked in the asbestos manufacturing and installation industries. In contrast, mesothelioma can be associated with very low levels of asbestos exposure, leading to more incidents in groups traditionally considered low risk, such as teachers and nurses.

An on-going problem
The risks associated with asbestos are not new and have been reported on since the early 1900s. The first UK regulations to control asbestos were introduced in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the final uses of asbestos were banned in the UK. Asbestos has been incorporated into a wide variety of products. Some of these products have asbestos bonded within a matrix, such as vinyl to form floor tiles, which are generally lower risk. In other products, the asbestos content is higher and less well bound and thus more likely to release asbestos fibres. This is termed “friability.” The more friable a product is, the greater the risk of asbestos fibre release.
    
Progressive bans on the use of asbestos during the 1970s and 1980s meant that the installation of the highest risk materials was prohibited. So, at best, the friable materials we encounter in a school environment are at least 40-50 years old, if not much older, underscoring the need for good asbestos management.
    
Asbestos products were widely used, partly due to cost-effectiveness and partly because of the material’s fire-retardant properties. During the postwar population boom, system-built schools, such as CLASP (Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme) and SCOLA (Second Consortium of Local Authorities) were introduced, and asbestos products were ideally suited for use within these properties. Recent issues with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) have identified that most of these types of properties are at the end of their designed operational life and require significant maintenance. This can only be undertaken with due consideration to the asbestos that is present in these buildings. It should also be noted that asbestos concealed in the structure of the building may only be uncovered with a pre-demolition or refurbishment survey, which will likely be necessary before work on buildings with RAAC can commence.

Common areas for improvement
HSE has recently reported on its findings from inspections on 421 schools (roughly two per cent of schools) in the “Management of asbestos in school buildings 2022/23” report. These inspections identified some common areas for improvement, which schools should consider when reviewing their own arrangements.
    
Overall, inspections showed that most schools have effective management systems in place to deal with asbestos. However, the report also stated that seven per cent of the sample had significant enough failings to warrant enforcement action. These failures predominantly relate to asbestos surveys or management systems.
    
Extrapolating these results across the school estate means that as many as 1,500 schools in the UK could currently be subject to enforcement action. However, no announcements have been made about continuing this inspection program to identify these schools.
    
What the report doesn’t reveal within its methodology is that, in advance of these site-based assessments, HSE ran a series of workshops to assist schools in understanding the processes for asbestos management and helped schools prepare for these assessments. In addition to this, all of the schools visited were contacted in advance to ensure that the appropriate site personnel would be available during the site visit. The question the report fails to answer is whether the levels of non-compliance would have been higher if not for these initial informative actions.

Knowing what’s expected
It needs to be noted that the requirements that schools are being asked to follow are not new, and the duty to manage asbestos requirements that these assessments were based upon are almost 20 years old. Yet, seven per cent of pre-notified schools were found to be non-compliant, despite extensive guidance being provided by both HSE and DfE.
    
Of the seven per cent of schools where intervention was required, HSE noted some other failures. For example, it found that some schools did not have an up-to-date survey on-site that clearly shows the location of the asbestos throughout the estate and highlights any areas not surveyed.
    
Without up-to-date information on the location of asbestos, it will be impossible to adequately manage asbestos. Contractors and staff rely on this information when undertaking work, and, more importantly, they will need invasive asbestos surveys to be conducted when working on the building fabric. This is especially important given the issues of RAAC.
    
It also found that some schools had a register that did not clearly indicate if remedial action identified during a survey had been completed and records updated. This is a common observation from asbestos surveyors. Whilst re-surveying or re-inspecting premises, they often find actions or recommendations have not been completed. Duty holders are not under any legal obligation to follow the recommendations from a survey, but they should at least acknowledge these recommendations and outline what they have chosen to ignore. ATaC (Asbestos Testing & Consulting Association) members report that while surveying schools this summer, they have encountered numerous incidents of materials that were recommended to be removed many years ago, but are still in place and being inadequately managed.
    
The research also found that some schools are not regularly monitoring the condition of asbestos-containing materials. This is one of the basic requirements of managing asbestos. Regular assessments of conditions are necessary to ensure staff, pupils, and visitors are not at risk from asbestos exposure. The more friable the material, the more frequently these inspections should be conducted. This requirement applies to all workplaces, but schools are more critical than workplaces, as research has shown that the younger you are exposed to asbestos, the more likely you
are to develop an asbestos-related disease in the future.

Managing the issue
In summary, many existing schools contain asbestos, and yet no central register exists to identify these schools or ensure that they have adequate funding to manage the asbestos within them. Currently, the education sector faces an estimated £11 billion cost for backlog maintenance, and the surveys that have been conducted to determine this estimate have specifically excluded the costs of asbestos.
    
Despite the Parliamentary Work and Pension review on HSE’s approach to asbestos 2022/3 recommending the development of a national database for asbestos, HSE has chosen to reject this requirement. Given the issues that have been highlighted with RAAC and rushed surveys due to the lack of a central register, this may influence the government to establish a central register of asbestos in educational premises.
    
It is important to note that despite a ban on the use of asbestos, the issues associated with this material are not gone, and even a concerted effort to remove all asbestos from schools will take many decades to achieve. Therefore, it is essential that the schools that present the greatest risk to students are identified and efforts are focused on the removal and better management of asbestos on these sites.