Licensed Asbestos Removal: what the job involves and who is licensed to do it

How licensed asbestos removal works

1. Establish whether the work is licensable at all. Sprayed coatings, pipe and boiler insulation and most work on asbestos insulating board are licensable. Asbestos cement, textured decorative coatings and many gaskets and rope seals are usually non-licensed work, some of it notifiable. The material and its condition decide this, which is why it is decided from a survey and not from a photograph.
2. Check the licence before anything else. A licence is held by a company, has a number and an expiry date, and comes in three kinds. The register on this site is HSE's own disclosable list, so a company that is not on it does not hold a licence, whatever a website says. Ask for the licence number and check the expiry falls after your work finishes.
3. Build the notification period into your dates. Licensed work has to be notified to the enforcing authority in advance, and the notice period is not negotiable. A contractor who can start tomorrow on licensable work is either doing something they should not or has misidentified the material. Ask when the notification goes in, and plan the programme from that date.
4. Agree the enclosure and the clearance. Licensed removal happens inside a sealed enclosure under negative pressure, and it ends with a four-stage clearance carried out by an independent accredited analyst, not by the removal contractor. The certificate of reoccupation comes from that analyst. A quote that includes clearance from the same company is a quote to check its own work.
5. Get the waste paperwork. Asbestos waste is hazardous waste and travels on a consignment note to a site licensed to take it. The consignment note copy is your evidence that what left the building arrived somewhere legal, and it is the document most often missing from a cheap job.

Paperwork and evidence

Common questions

Can I remove asbestos myself?

Some non-licensed work is legally possible for a competent person, but this site does not tell anyone how to do it. Identification, controls, waste and clearance all have to be right, and a mistake is not visible. Get it identified first and then take advice from HSE's own guidance.

How do I know a contractor's licence is current?

The register pages here carry the licence number and its expiry date exactly as HSE's disclosable list publishes them, on the date shown at the foot of every page. HSE's Asbestos Licensing Unit is the authority if a date matters.

What are the three licence types?

HSE's list names a standard licence, a scaffolding licence and a maintenance licence. They are different permissions, and a holder of one is not a holder of another, which is why this site gives each its own page in each county.

Does a licence cover the whole of the UK?

One licence covers England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is a separate regime under its own enforcing authority, and this register does not cover it.

Licensed contractors by county