Here’s one for the asbestos bods.
A building on a nursery (plants not kids) catches fire. The fire has been put out. The building is likely to have contained asbestos (asbestos cement roof tiles let’s say) which would have been damaged in the fire and the subsequent fire service operations.
We have inspectors that might visit the site, although not the building itself but they will be within 30m of the burned out shell. What is the likelihood of the guy being exposed to asbestos fibres?
Would making the guy wear PPE near this building be over the top?
Don’t say “Do a risk assessment “as I have no idea what the risk might be.
Note. We do not own the site and we do not have access to the burned out building and we are not going start monitoring the environment on another employers site.

Perhaps a call to your local fire brigade safety officer would help. A recall a simialr incident we had and they were extremely helpful in offering advice and who to contact to get more information.

If it was me, I would be calling my asbestos advisors/removal company (if you have one already) If not, I would be finding one pretty sharpish even if it's just for advice in the short term re protecting the site etc....the lovely weather is not going to help to keep it all damped down.

Useful guidance on clearing up. I would assume advice on PPE would apply to inspection/surveying as well.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/guidance/a11.pdf

Sorry
I think people have got the wrong end of the stick:
The location is not our site; the building that is burned-out is not ours. We have no right to (nor do we want to) come on to another employer’s site to sort out their asbestos problem.
What we would like is some advice at to what is the risk to our staff coming on to the site to carry out a statutory inspection near the building.
The inspection is a statutory duty on our part: we must visit the site at some time.
Should we:
a) Issue our staff with PPE, that is adopt the precautionary principle; assume the worst until evidence exists to the contrary. But we do not know the sort of PPE would be appropriate and as far as we know the owner of the site has not made his staff wear PPE, so our staff would be turning in up all suited up with the local staff working in t-shirt and shorts.
b) We could get heavy and try to lean on the owner of the site and insist that they provide us with detailed information about the asbestos situation on the site and that it is safe for our staff to come on site. If we really got heavy we could in theory stop theme trading until it was safe for our staff to get on site. Of course, then we would be accused of harassing a poor small business that was trying to do it’s best on hard times and then we would be written up in the Daily Mail and dragged through the media. Remember there is no evidence of a significant risk just the possibility that such a risk might exist.
c) We could “man up”- after all the owner’s staff are working on the site and they would not be doing this if they thought there was a risk. The risk to our staff is negligible as long as all they do is visit the nursery and keep well clear of the burned out building.
Has anybody found themselves in the a similar situation eg working on a site that they do not control, where there might be asbestos but with no evidence either way?

You must ask the local environmental people about this and the HSE if they are involved. The property is nothing to do with you but you are concerned about the safety of your employees due to the proximity of your workplace, that should make them at least visit and if necessary they would get the landowner to take action or failing that they would act and claim the costs back from the landowner. Give them a ring and tell them of your concerns and be insistant that something is done.