I closed the last blog post by sharing that the cost of dealing with all of the asbestos was likely to be in the region of £50,000, and that we have been able to make some progress on reducing that cost.  Now to explain how…

Firstly, of the 37 instances of asbestos mentioned previously, 11 of them were within fuse boxes and pipe/boiler gaskets.  These were easily contained and safely removed by a licenced removal contractor.

Secondly, there are a couple of areas of the building where full removal is not required, some external corrugated cladding, and some internal boards on the North end of the warehouse.  Both of these areas needed sealing, labelling, and adding to an asbestos inspection and management plan.  These two areas accounted for a further 7 (of the 37).

Thanks to the wonderful team at https://www.nas-environmental.co.uk/, all of this work has now been done.  I don’t know how good your maths is, but it’s not too tricky to work out that these 2 areas account for 18 (11+7) of the 37 instances, and these have now been sealed & managed for just less than £3k, whereas the cost to remove them would have been in excess of £15k.

Sticking with the maths for a moment, we now have 19 (37-18) instances left to deal with and to remove these completely is going to cost us £35k (50k-15k), right?

Not quite actually, because what’s even better for us is that due to shopping around and getting a number of other quotes from licensed asbestos removal contractors, we have been able to get the cost of removing those remaining 19 instances reduced from £35k, down to £20k.

So, all in all this is not as high a mountain to climb as initially threatened, we find ourselves now needing to spend no more than £23k, rather than £50k.  We have secured and spent £3k of this already, reducing the remaining balance to £20k.  We have further opportunity to spread this work out as and when the funds become available or we begin with any phased development work on the site.

Now, where did I put that spare 20 “bags” I had knocking around?