The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is set to inspect hundreds of council buildings to check the risk of asbestos is being properly managed.
Britain’s regulator for workplace health and safety will visit local authority head offices as well as public libraries, museums, and leisure centres.
Inspectors will check councils are meeting the ‘duty to manage’ asbestos requirements and preventing exposure to the dangerous substance, which was widely used in post-war construction before it was banned in 1999.
The head of the HSE’s health and public services sector, Helen Jones, said: ‘To keep people safe from its harms, a culture of safely managing asbestos is needed in our building industry and among those responsible for buildings.
‘Asbestos exposure in Great Britain is still the single greatest cause of work-related deaths due to exposures decades ago.
‘Together, we must protect people in the workplace and reduce future work-related ill health.’
