5. Asbestos Management Plan

Premises Managers etc must produce a local Asbestos Management Plan for their area of responsibility that sets out how the risks from these materials will be managed. This should include:

• Who is responsible for managing asbestos
• The Asbestos Register
• Plans for work on asbestos materials 
• Ensuring that, where the need for work has been identified, works are undertaken to comply with this
• The schedule for monitoring the condition of low and medium risk materials
  
  o Low risk – six monthly
  o Medium risk  - quarterly 
• Procedures to monitor and review the plan and the arrangements to act on it so that the plan remains relevant and up-to-date

The Asbestos Management Plan should be easy to read and easy to find when you, or anyone else, needs it. It must:

• Be easy to update
• Record local monitoring of the condition of asbestos materials, i.e. six monthly or quarterly inspections by staff on site and annually by NPS

You must:

• Take the necessary steps to put the plan into action
• Tell people about your decisions

You may consider that materials identified in the Asbestos Register as needing to be ‘monitored and managed’ pose a higher risk than identified in the Register, for example if ACMs are located in a school where it may be susceptible to damage by children. The HSE’s ‘Material and Priority Scoring Tool’, available in section 6 of the HSE microsite ‘Managing my Asbestos: a step by step guide to the duty to manage asbestos’, can assist with this process. Any outcomes from this process that differ from the assessment provided by NPS should be discussed with the NPS Asbestos Service Manager.

Premises Managers should also maintain an Asbestos Document File containing:

• A record of all asbestos surveys affecting the building
• Copies of all written advice given in response to enquiries
• Copies of all advice received from the asbestos consultants
• Details of all work on asbestos containing materials carried out
• Copies of all incident reports relating to possible or actual asbestos exposure (including official notifications to the Health and Safety Executive)
• The current Asbestos Register and all amendments to it
• Details of inspections of ACMs (six monthly or quarterly by staff on site and annually by NPS)
• All method statements for work on asbestos containing materials
• All risk assessments for work on asbestos containing materials
• All air monitoring reports
• All special waste disposal certificates
• All audit records