You start work on fitting out your new premises, ripping out old cupboards and partitions, and – horror of horrors – your workmen tell you they have found asbestos.
Your landlords say they didn’t know anything about it; they only bought the building 10 years ago; the previous tenants had been there forever, and they only moved out on Friday so they – the landlords – had no opportunity to check anything themselves.
So, whose responsibility is it to deal with the asbestos? What the law says is that the duty to manage asbestos lies with whoever is responsible for the maintenance or repair of the property it’s in. If it’s in the back of a cupboard in the interior of your new premises, that’s you who is responsible on the face of it. It may be that the landlords do have some responsibility, but it would take a court case to prove it.
Meanwhile you have to be able to do something about it, and quickly, or your whole fitting out project – and your business itself – is at risk.
The trouble is that asbestos can only be moved by someone qualified. Finding a company that can do the work is not necessarily easy. They may be very expensive. Sometimes, other premises have to be closed off, including common parts of the building, before the work can be carried out, and other tenants may object to that.
So, in other words, asbestos is a huge problem whenever you encounter it.
If you know you are going to be disturbing the existing internal structure of old premises, then while the draft lease is being negotiated between the solicitors, you should do the best you can to check whether asbestos is present or was ever used, in order to minimise your risk of a problem. The worst thing you can do is to ignore the risk when taking over business premises.