I was not surprised at the opinion as I always felt that the HSE were being a little hypocritical over this area of work when they claim. rightly, asbestos as such a major health issue. Bob

I suspect tighter guidance and amendments only to the regulations as there would be a prolonged consultation over new regulations. The primary issue for me was that the HSE concentrated a lot on the work and not enough on the people doing the work. Thus one had teams of people who were regularly removing asbestos under the HSE defined sporadic work. The intention was in the Directive that such work was only done by people who were actually there to perform another task and incidentally needed tp remove small amounts of firmly bonded ACM. The HSE have actually created a system whereby people use the sporadic definitions to decide if they can do the work themselves eg remove gutters a soffitts to install uPVC equivalents, without using a contractor whose people were under medical supervision. It has now reached a position where some contractors only train a very small number of staff in asbestos and use these to go in and remove asbestos before work commences and then other operatives undertake the work. The HSE have permitted this to happen and some heads really ought to roll over this at the Director level in the HSE. Bob

Ron The main changes will be ones of attitude by the persons you mention not regulatory. Indeed the regulations themselves need very little change to comply Bob

I confused! The EEC told the UK (in Feb 2011) to sort this out within 2 months. You lot are now talking about Oct 2011 or April 2012 ( I know how those dates arise) Surely 2 months after Feb was end May 2011 - or am I missing something?

Ron Yes significant impact because most have been working through the loopholes in poorly drafted legislation. I do hope this does not hit the quagmire Bob

Background Information for those who were not aware of where this all started, hope this helps. In the middle of February the European Commission issued a press release stating that it was giving the UK Government two months to bring its asbestos regulations (Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006) in line with the EU Directive on protection of workers from asbestos. The EU Directive 2009/148/EC lays down provisions to protect workers from risks including asbestos-related diseases, mainly through preventive measures. The Commission received a complaint that Article 3(3) (a) and (b) of the EU Directive hadn't been correctly transposed in UK legislation. Article 3(3) gives the possibility for an exemption from three obligations set out in the directive for activities that involve only sporadic and low intensity exposure to asbestos – for example the case of some maintenance and repair activities. The UK authorities don’t comply with three clear obligations refering to: • notifying asbestos works to the responsible national authority • making a prior health assessment for the workers and a new assessment every three years, for as long as exposure continues • keeping a register of the workers who are, or may be, exposed to asbestos at work. In the Commission’s view, the UK law omits certain specific parts of Article 3(3) (a) and (b), so widening the scope of the derogation of this Article. The UK legislation currently focuses on the measurement of exposure to asbestos and not enough on the how the material will be affected by the work itself, while the directive deals with both exposure and the material.