Health and Safety Decimation Will Create More Victims Of Asbestos

The review of health and safety has already created a situation where many more victims of asbestos exposure will be created and compensation will be even hard to obtain.

Despite a recent court case in support of a victim Mrs Willmore who was exposed as a child to asbestos in school toilets in Huyton, Merseyside and the perceived pressure that this ruling will put on local authorities, the government's review will do nothing to change the realities that most victims die well before any court settlement.

Worse than that, surveys conducted by HSE into the current state of asbestos in schools are flawed, to say the least.

According to the teaching union, NUT, the latest survey carried out by the HSE in conjunction with the Department for Education (DfE) of 152 council education providers, which declared they were ‘satisfied’ that 110 have procedures and precautions in place to manage asbestos safely, was flawed and the resultant confidence in the findings, ‘misplaced’.

The HSE survey, which received assurances that the 110 providers have systems in place to meet their duties under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006, had been conducted only online, and it was a follow up by an actual HSE inspection programme of the remaining 42, which found the majority of local authorities in England with ’system build’ schools to be capable of managing asbestos safely.

According to the NUT general secretary, Christine Blower, “… the findings of this limited survey will be used to justify the abolition of a recently-established DfE steering group which was set up with the aim of improving asbestos management in schools”.

Despite the contentious HSE survey and the alleged shortcomings of the results, white asbestos can still be found in school buildings, often in severely deteriorated and damaged condition after many decades of neglect. A history of insufficient funding has too often meant that neither the fabric of the school premises nor the asbestos had been either properly or adequately ‘managed’, as the Control Regulations required.

The cancellation of the schools building programme means that asbestos victims will be found amongst generations to come, with the majority dieing before compensation is finally agreed, if indeed it is. No doubt the government and insurance industry will find ways of minimising any payment as they continue to do so now.

Source: Asbestos Victims Advice website / Guardian

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