Drill, cut or sand the wrong ceiling tile, soffit or cement sheet in a building from before 2000 and your people breathe in fibres they cannot see. The law puts the duty to train them on the employer. This pack is for electricians, plumbers, joiners, roofers and shopfitters.
Asbestos is still in a lot of buildings put up or refurbished before 2000, and nothing on it says so. On small jobs it turns up as insulating board, cement sheet roofs and soffits, textured ceiling coatings, floor and ceiling tiles, pipe lagging, flues and gaskets. The fibres are invisible. The disease can take decades to appear and there is no known safe level of exposure. It still causes thousands of deaths a year in Great Britain.
This pack is asbestos awareness training. Your people learn to ask for the asbestos register before they start, to presume asbestos is present in a pre-2000 building with no register, and to stop, leave, keep others out and report if anything is disturbed. They learn never to sweep suspect debris or use an ordinary vacuum on it, and never to take contaminated clothing home. Licensed work goes to a contractor holding an HSE licence, and notifiable non-licensed work needs notification and separate, additional training.
Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012:
Also relevant:
One hazard, covered from the legal position to the records.
The pack includes a theory test answer key for whoever marks the test. It is sent to the employer separately from the candidate paper, so the test stays a genuine check when you or your supervisor mark it.
For when a customer, principal contractor or insurer wants someone other than you to have checked the records.
You assess your own people in-house using the pack and send PHW the completed records. PHW checks them and, where they hold up, issues a certificate with a QR code. Scan the code and it opens a live page showing the record. The certificate states plainly that the assessment was carried out in-house and verified by PHW. Only records that hold up are certified.
HSE prosecutions in this line of work.
£88,300 + £5,018 costs · 2026-03-06
Demolition went ahead at a Cannock site despite a survey identifying asbestos. A later survey found 218m² of asbestos-containing materials and debris, and an unlicensed company was appointed to clear it up instead of a licensed contractor.
Read the case →£36,000 + £8,867 costs · 2026-07-06
Workers sorting waste by hand had no warm running water, soap or means of drying themselves and no asbestos awareness training, despite asbestos having been brought onto the site.
Read the case →