Recommendation 8

Wholesale removal is not, however, without its own risk and uncertainty. Despite this, HSE has been slow to invest in research to better understand the costs and benefits of removal and to evaluate options for safer removal. This is becoming a more urgent task. The likely dramatic increase in retrofitting of buildings in response to net zero ambitions means that more asbestos-containing material will be disturbed in the coming decades, thus changing the cost-benefit analysis. Simple reliance on a set of regulations which devolve asbestos management to individual dutyholders will not be good enough. There is a need for a cross-government and ‘system-wide’ strategy for the long-term removal of asbestos, founded on strong evidence of what is best from a scientific, epidemiological, financial, and behavioural point of view.