Nottingham City Council fined £30,000 over asbestos failures

Nottingham City Council has been hit with a £30,000 fine for failing to manage the risk of asbestos at a depot occupied by its Street Scene team.

The council was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive after a contractor noticed debris on the floor at the Woolsthorpe depot in Bilborough in May 2009 and reported his suspicions that it contained asbestos. The building was being used at the time as offices, garages, a mess room and storage.

An investigation by the HSE found that the city council had failed to follow a plan recommended by a specialist asbestos removal company in February 2005. The company had removed the majority of the asbestos on the site, but there was no guarantee – because of the design of the building – that it had all be taken out.

Nottingham had conducted health and safety inspections of the depot, but these had not identified the failure to follow the plan or implement the council’s own policies on asbestos management, including the training of Street Scene’s management.

The HSE claimed that during the four-year period, Nottingham “did nothing to prevent the exposure to asbestos of those working in, or visiting, the building”. It estimated that up to 150 could have been exposed to the material.

Nottingham pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4(10) of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006 and Regulation 5(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

HSE principal inspector Frank Lomas said: "The latest health and safety statistics show that more people are dying as a result of asbestos related diseases than are killed in accidents at work. This situation will not change unless organisations take their duty to manage asbestos seriously.

"The council failed to identify that its own asbestos policy had not been implemented at the depot. It's all well and good having policies in place but they are meaningless unless they are put into practice and in this case, around 150 people were needlessly exposed to a potentially fatal substance."