Posted By Ann Guerrini Hi Adrian, You will need to check your lease. If you have a full repairing lease then your company will be responsible. It might be an idea to get together with the other occupants and arrange to share the cost of a survey. You may also find that even if your landord arranged to carry out a survey he would recover the cost back from the tenants i.e. by service charges. Ann

Posted By Stuart Nagle Adrian. So far as I am aware the CAWR places duties either on the building owner, where they occupy the premises, and/or the employer or individual employers where a building is in multiple occupation by a number of different employers. If the premises you lease is occupied by your company and hence company employees are present, It would be my personal opinion that the employer (your company) is responsible for ensuring the health, safety and welfare of your employees, and therefore for undertaking an asbestos survey of those areas occupied by your company employees (e.g. the company premises), excluding communal areas. It is also my opinion that the premises landlord would be responsible for surveying communal (shared) areas of the building. These would be areas that are generally shared by all companies with premises in the building, such as communal entrances, stairwells, plant rooms (where they service all the premises), and ancillery areas such meter cupboards etc that usually remain in the landlords control, but to which your company may have access (for meter reading etc) by way of a key, along with other leasees in the premises. In addition, if the premises were leased after the CAWR came into force, I think your company might well be looking to the landlord to explain why he had not had the premises surveyed prior to letting them the premises for business use. There may be further mileage in this argument if your company is trying to avoid the costs of a survey, but this might be for a court to decide... or through mutual agreement between all parties (perhaps wityh costs shared equally ( say on a Sq foot basis of premises occupied) Regards... Stuart

Posted By ken mosley I have heard similar comments from landlords and owners of buildings in the past. The whole area of duty holders under CAWR has been a little murky. It was the subject of much discussion during the consultation process. There is, however, one aspect of legislation often overlooked in this debate. The Defective premises act 1972(Civic Government{Scotland} act1992, north of the border), which places a duty on landlords to exercise reasonable care for tenants and others to ensure their safety is not affected by defects in the state of the premises. Asbestos in a deteriorating condition would fall into this category.