Why the UK needs a National Asbestos Register

The purpose and aims of UKNAR

UKNAR (UK National Asbestos Register CIC) is a not-for-profit social enterprise granted regulatory approval in 2020.

UKNAR’s mission is to protect public health by preventing avoidable and potentially deadly exposures to asbestos fibres. Hundreds of thousands of UK workplaces, public buildings, schools, hospitals and homes still contain asbestos and despite improved legislation, there are many thousands of accidental exposures to asbestos every year: mostly because people are unaware of the presence of asbestos or its danger.

Photograph: UKNAR

We believe that by leveraging today’s inexpensive, easy-to-use technology, in collaboration with the asbestos industry and other safety professionals, we can limit future accidental asbestos exposures and help prevent thousands of deaths from asbestos-related diseases.

Five per cent of UKNAR’s Asbestos SMART licence fees go to Mesothelioma UK, the UK’s leading charity supporting mesothelioma victims and clinical research.

UKNAR’s three key elements

UKNAR’s work focuses on three key elements:

1. Establishing a UK national asbestos register of all workplaces with asbestos.
2. Supplying Asbestos SMART management software that provides standardised digital asbestos registers, which are easily accessible, up-to-date and simple to understand.
3. Free information and education to those responsible for managing asbestos in situ.

Ultimately, through collaboration, we are campaigning to build a national asbestos register for all UK workplaces with asbestos: making vital asbestos information and up-to-date digital asbestos registers easily accessible to all who need it, in a standard format.

Asbestos – the scale of the problem

Asbestos remains in 1.5 million UK buildings, including 500,000 workplaces and 75 per cent of schools and hospitals. It is responsible for around 5,000 deaths annually,¹ making it the UK’s deadliest workplace risk.

More than 50 per cent of these deaths are from mesothelioma, an incurable, but entirely preventable cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres.

Construction workers, tradespeople and building surveyors are at high risk of asbestos exposure, but more people are contracting mesothelioma from their normal working environments – most notably, teachers and healthcare workers, including those below the age of 50.² Thousands of accidental asbestos exposures go unreported each year, potentially affecting millions of people.

Andrew Paten is co-founder and chief executive of UK National Asbestos Register (UKNAR CIC). Photograph: UKNAR

Asbestos costs the UK economy billions of pounds annually in terms of healthcare costs, legal claims and lost productivity.³´⁴ Unknown tens or hundreds of millions of pounds are wasted through poor asbestos management, clean-ups, project delays and cost overruns, sometimes on a single building project.⁵

Without a national database it is difficult to estimate the total cost, but safely removing all six million tons of asbestos from UK buildings will take decades and cost tens of billions of pounds.

Meanwhile, improved asbestos management would reduce costs and prevent deaths and suffering; limiting unnecessary damage to the material and exposure to fibres, major project delays, cost overruns and future healthcare expenses.

Regulatory reach insufficient to prevent all exposure

The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012⁶ require that, where asbestos is believed or known to be present in a workplace, the dutyholder must maintain an up-to-date, accurate register and share it with anyone who may be at risk of exposure or causing a disturbance to asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). The register should detail the location, type and condition of any such materials present.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974⁷ requires employers to take all reasonably practicable measures to ensure the health and safety of people in their workplaces, including properties where employees and contractors are sent to carry out work, when such buildings contain asbestos. This means employers must also ensure such people get to see the register before they undertake any activity that could put them – or others in the vicinity – at risk of asbestos exposure.

A national database would record all buildings with ACMs and, with dutyholders’ permission, hold the most up-to-date registers for their respective properties to make this information more easily accessible to those who need it.

While most supervised project works covered by the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 manage access to this vital information effectively,⁸ this is often not true for the millions of unsupervised minor works carried out in UK workplaces every year, such as routine building or systems maintenance, minor fabric repairs and IT cabling extensions. These are frequently carried out by visiting contractors or staff, unaware that ACMs are present. This increases the likelihood of them disturbing asbestos, unknowingly putting themselves and other building users at risk.

Poor communication: the root of common failings

UKNAR has identified five common failings that dutyholders and employers experience when trying to supply – and access – up-to-date asbestos registers.

• Communication failures: visiting contractors often don’t see any asbestos register – paper folders get mislaid, lost or locked away, email trails don’t reach the right people in time, while password-protected portals can be inaccessible or hard to navigate.
• Incomprehensible documents: information supplied is often incomprehensibly worded or too poorly arranged for the layperson to understand easily. Lengthy management surveys are provided when just a few key pages would suffice. Most asbestos registers need clear plans and photographs to be effective.
• Out-of-date information: over time, original documents are lost, and asbestos registers fail to get updated as circumstances change. This problem is compounded by information being produced by different consultants, then held and lost in multiple systems as IT contracts and consultancies change.
• No evidence of compliance: there is often no proof that the asbestos register has been accessed and read. This lack of accountability means high-risk behaviours go unchecked, exposing dutyholders and employers to claims of negligence.
• No standard formats: although all asbestos registers that fulfil Health and Safety Executive (HSE) requirements contain the same basic data, they are arranged in many different formats, which makes them harder to understand. A standard, common format would allow everyone to become familiar with them and competent in their use, regardless of the property.

Establishing a national asbestos register

A national register or database of property asbestos registers would help save time, money and lives. Establishing it need not be difficult – if  enough dutyholders and safety professionals  have the will to do so.

A 2022 Parliamentary inquiry recommended establishing a national database of all public buildings containing asbestos, but despite widespread media attention and public support it was rejected by the then Conservative government. Nevertheless, in September 2023 a Private Members’ Bill for a national asbestos register for non-domestic premises was introduced and received cross-party support. However, the Bill did not progress through Parliament and there has been no further Parliamentary progress since on the introduction of a national register.

This is disappointing as those who understand the risks associated with asbestos mostly agree that such a database is urgently needed and would improve asbestos management throughout the UK, benefiting everyone. Moreover, it could be developed and sustained without burdening taxpayers.

Asbestos SMART software established to simplify register access

UKNAR has spent four years establishing the viability of a national asbestos database and developing and trialling the Asbestos SMART software to deliver digital asbestos registers. The Asbestos SMART system gives visiting contractors and key on-site personnel immediate access to the latest asbestos register for a building through their phones or devices, using a unique QR code issued to each building enrolled on the system.

Photograph: UKNAR

Asbestos SMART resolves common failings through the following features:

• Concise and comprehensible digital asbestos registers are produced in a common format from any existing register from any consultancy that meets HSE requirements.
• QR codes or hyperlinks make the most up-to-date registers easily accessible on or off site.
• Management notices with QR codes are placed in properties, ensuring instant, round-the-clock access to up-to-date registers on site for visiting contractors, on-site personnel and visitors.
• Hyperlinks to the latest register can be incorporated into works orders and other documents before contractors quote for works or visit the site.
• Electronic or contractor sign-in processes can be adapted to access and view the latest register. Compliance is automatically established and recorded when the QR code is scanned or the hyperlink opened. The contractor confirms that they have read the register and will not undertake any works that might disturb the asbestos.
• Digital Asbestos SMART registers can easily and quickly be updated online by any authorised professional, regardless of their original authorship.
• Historic asbestos documents are archived as PDFs for easy access and future reference, regardless of changes in consultants, IT systems or property management.
• Dutyholders across a wide range of sectors already use the Asbestos SMART service, with costs typically ranging between £150 and £500 per property annually. For dutyholders with hundreds or thousands of properties in their portfolios, these costs could be reduced further - potentially very significantly. This shows it is possible to fund, develop and sustain a national asbestos register privately, without burdening taxpayers.

A National Asbestos Register would benefit everyone

A national asbestos register would benefit dutyholders, employers, the general public, HSE and the Government. It would reduce the risks and costs associated with poor asbestos management, improving efficiency, safety, compliance, transparency and accountability.

The public would benefit from better asbestos management in workplaces, schools and hospitals, and greater awareness of asbestos dangers in their homes. HSE could use the database to better target and improve enforcement efforts.

Meanwhile, the Government would demonstrate commitment to workplace safety and public health, with the database informing a phased, long-term plan for the removal of asbestos and better policy decisions.

Professionals urged to take action

Anything involving the Government takes a long time and UKNAR therefore urges dutyholders and safety professionals to start now and help us build a national database to reduce future asbestos exposures immediately.

Recent industry reports indicate ACMs are deteriorating, with half of these showing damage and 20 per cent of all deteriorating materials showing medium or high levels of damage. Risks are increasing as a younger, less asbestos-aware workforce is now being employed to retrofit old buildings to improve their energy efficiency.

Working collaboratively, UKNAR has helped establish OpenAsbestos, a not-for-profit industry initiative to share information between IT systems and asbestos consultancies.

Through crowdfunding, UKNAR has built robust, scalable IT software suitable for a national database. This has already been used to create hundreds of digital asbestos registers for schools, other estates and safety professionals willing to pay a small annual licence fee for the service. It has been widely praised – some say it has “revolutionised their approach to asbestos management”.

More adopters are required to spread awareness that asbestos can be managed better. UKNAR’s goal is to prevent avoidable asbestos exposures – for everyone’s benefit.

Some UKNAR key achievements in the last year

1. Educating schools, improving asbestos management and adoption of Asbestos SMART in schools

• Although we work across many sectors, over the last year much of our focus has been on improving asbestos management in schools where some of the greatest risks lie for millions of children and hundreds of thousands of adults.
• Hundreds of teachers and thousands of former students have died from exposure to asbestos in schools.
• 75 per cent of schools still contain asbestos.
• One-third of schools received written enforcement actions from HSE following their recent asbestos management inspections.

In the last 12 months, UKNAR delivered 10 free webinars educating and informing hundreds of dutyholders responsible for asbestos in more than 10,000 properties and over 3,000 schools.

In 2024, we have deployed Asbestos SMART software in more than 300 schools protecting 100,000 children, staff and contractors in more than 1,200 asbestos-containing school buildings.

2. Our contribution to legislative success: Private Members’ Bill for National Asbestos Register passed on 13 September 2023

• In collaboration with Mesothelioma UK, ResPublica and other industry groups, UKNAR contributed to the ‘Asbestos (National Register) Bill’ to “create a national register of asbestos in non-domestic premises, detailing its condition”. This successfully passed its first reading on 13 September 2023.

3. Supporting asbestos victims through Mesothelioma UK

• In the last 12 months UKNAR has donated over £8,000 to Mesothelioma UK in support of the 2,600 people in the UK who die of this lethal asbestos-caused cancer every year.

Andrew Paten is co-founder and chief executive of UK National Asbestos Register (UKNAR CIC).

Contact him at:

uknar.org

For more information see:

linkedin.com/company/30597118/

@OrgUknar

[email protected]

1. +44 (0)20 3633 4303

Useful links

cdn.uknar.org/ParliamentaryInquiryExtract.mp4 (5 mins). Where the case for a national asbestos register was explored and endorsed by DWP Parliamentary inquiry

Andy Brown’s short Demonstration of Asbestos SMART – April 24. (16 mins):

cdn.uknar.org/Asbestos-SMART-Demonstration-April24.mp4

Recording of Webinar – includes Demo of Asbestos SMART – April 24. (60 mins):

cdn.uknar.org/UKNAR-Asbestos-SMART-Demo-April24.mp4 

Andrew Paten short video - The 7 Biggest Challenges of Managing Asbestos in Situ:

cdn.uknar.org/7cs-explainer.mp4

References

1. hse.gov.uk/asbestos/dangerous.htm
2. mesothelioma.uk.com/the-government-and-health-and-safety-executive-hse-reject-recommendations-for-sweeping-reform-of-the-uks-asbestos-management-system/
3. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmworpen/560/report.html
4. governmentbusiness.co.uk/features/working-towards-zero-asbestos
5. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54060327
6. legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/632/contents
7. legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/contents
8. legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/51/contents