Does asbestos awareness training allow me to remove asbestos?

No. Awareness training exists specifically to prevent you disturbing asbestos. Working with asbestos requires Category B or C training, and licensed work must be carried out by an HSE-licensed contractor.

Which buildings are likely to contain asbestos?

Any building constructed or refurbished before the year 2000 should be presumed to contain asbestos unless proven otherwise. The UK banned blue and brown asbestos in 1985 and white asbestos in 1999.

Can you identify asbestos by its colour?

No. White, brown and blue describe the raw mineral fibre, not the finished product. Once mixed into cement, board or coatings, asbestos takes the colour of that material. Only laboratory analysis of a sample taken by a competent person can identify it.

What is Asbestos Awareness Training? A UK Guide

Q: What is asbestos awareness training?

Asbestos awareness, or Category A training, teaches workers to recognise where asbestos is likely to be found and what to do if they encounter it, so that they avoid disturbing it. It does not qualify anyone to work with, remove or sample asbestos.

Q: Is asbestos awareness training a legal requirement?

Yes. Regulation 10 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 requires employers to ensure adequate information, instruction and training is given to employees who are or are liable to be exposed to asbestos, and to those who supervise them.

Q: How often should asbestos awareness training be refreshed?

CAR 2012 requires refresher training as often as necessary to keep knowledge current. Annual refresher training is the widely used standard across UK construction and maintenance and is what most contractors and clients expect to see.

Asbestos awareness training teaches you how to recognise where asbestos might be and what to do if you find it — so you don’t disturb it. It does not qualify you to work with asbestos. That distinction is the single most misunderstood thing about this subject, and getting it wrong is how people get exposed.

If your work could disturb asbestos in a building — plumbing, electrics, joinery, roofing, maintenance, retrofit — the law requires you to be trained. Here is what that means, who it applies to, and what the training does and does not allow.

What asbestos awareness training actually is

Asbestos awareness — often called Category A training — is for people whose work may bring them into contact with asbestos unexpectedly. Its entire purpose is prevention through recognition: know where it’s likely to be, recognise it, stop, and get the right people involved.

What it does NOT do:

It does not permit you to work on asbestos-containing materials
It does not permit you to remove, drill, cut, sand or break them
It does not permit you to take samples
It is not a licence, and it is not a qualification to carry out asbestos work of any kind

Anyone who tells you an awareness certificate lets them “deal with a bit of asbestos” has misunderstood the training they took. Working with asbestos requires Category B or C training, and licensed work requires an HSE-licensed contractor.

What the law requires

The governing legislation is the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR 2012). Regulation 10 is the training duty:

“Every employer shall ensure that adequate information, instruction and training is given to those of his employees who are or who are liable to be exposed to asbestos, or who supervise such employees…”

Three things follow:

The duty is the employer’s. If you employ people whose work may disturb asbestos, ensuring they are trained is your legal obligation, not theirs.
“Liable to be exposed” is broad. You do not have to work on asbestos. Drilling a wall that turns out to contain it is enough.
Supervisors are included explicitly.

Self-employed workers carry the equivalent duty for themselves. There is no exemption for sole traders — and in practice, principal contractors and clients will ask for the certificate before you set foot on site.

Asbestos is the greatest single cause of work-related deaths in the UK, according to the Health and Safety Executive. The people dying now were largely exposed decades ago, because asbestos-related disease takes many years to develop. That delay is exactly why the training matters: nothing about a bad exposure feels like anything at the time.

Who needs asbestos awareness training?

Anyone whose work could disturb the fabric of a building constructed or refurbished before 2000. In practice that includes:

Plumbers, heating and ventilation engineers, gas fitters
Electricians, alarm and telecoms installers, data cablers
Joiners, carpenters, shopfitters
Roofers, painters and decorators, plasterers
General maintenance and caretaking staff
Demolition and refurbishment workers
Surveyors and architects working on existing buildings
Retrofit and energy-efficiency installers — insulation, ventilation and heating work routinely opens up pre-2000 fabric

The full picture is in who legally needs asbestos awareness training.

What the training covers

Under CAR 2012, asbestos awareness training should cover:

The properties of asbestos and its health effects — including the sharply increased risk for smokers
The types of material likely to contain asbestos, and where they are typically found
How the condition of a material affects risk — undamaged and undisturbed is usually safer than removal
How to avoid the risk — checking the asbestos register before starting, and what to do when there isn’t one
Emergency procedures — the steps to take if you disturb something, or suspect you have

What it deliberately does not cover is how to work on asbestos, because awareness-trained people must not.

Where is asbestos found in UK buildings?

Any building built or refurbished before the year 2000 should be presumed to contain asbestos until proven otherwise. The UK banned blue and brown asbestos in 1985 and white asbestos in 1999, with a complete ban from 1999 — but the material stayed in place in millions of buildings.

Common locations:

Where	Typical materials
Roofs and outbuildings	Corrugated cement sheets, gutters, downpipes, soffits
Walls and ceilings	Insulating board (AIB), textured coatings, partitions
Around heating	Pipe lagging, boiler insulation, flue pipes
Floors	Vinyl floor tiles, bitumen adhesive, backing paper
Fire protection	Sprayed coatings on steelwork, fire doors, fire breaks
Services	Water tanks, rope seals, gaskets, electrical panel backing

Two that catch trades out repeatedly: textured decorative coatings on ceilings, and the paper backing on vinyl floor tiles. Neither looks like people’s mental image of asbestos.

The three main types — and why colour won’t help you

Chrysotile — white asbestos
Amosite — brown asbestos
Crocidolite — blue asbestos

Less common forms include tremolite, actinolite and anthophyllite.

You cannot identify asbestos by looking at it, and the colour names are actively misleading. They describe the raw mineral fibre, not the finished product. Once mixed into cement, board, coating or adhesive, asbestos takes the colour of whatever it was mixed into — usually grey, white or beige. Materials also frequently contain more than one type.

The only reliable identification is laboratory analysis of a sample taken by a competent person. Do not take samples yourself.

All three main types are dangerous. Some are more hazardous than others, but there is no safe type and no known safe level of exposure.

What to do if you find or disturb asbestos

Stop work immediately. Do not carry on “just to finish”.
Do not disturb it further — no drilling, breaking, scraping or moving.
Leave the area and stop others entering. Close the door.
Do not clean up. Never sweep, and never use a domestic vacuum — you will spread fibres into the air.
Report it to your supervisor and the person responsible for the premises.
Keep contaminated clothing out of circulation — do not take it home or shake it out.
Wait for assessment by a competent person before anyone returns.

If you think you have been exposed, tell your employer and ask for it to be recorded. A written record made at the time matters far more than a recollection years later.

The duty to manage — Regulation 4

Regulation 4 of CAR 2012 places a duty on whoever is responsible for maintaining non-domestic premises — and the common parts of domestic buildings, such as blocks of flats. The dutyholder must:

Take reasonable steps to find asbestos-containing materials, and their condition
Presume materials contain asbestos unless there is strong evidence otherwise
Keep an up-to-date record — the asbestos register
Assess the risk and write a management plan
Act on the plan, and review it
Give the information to anyone liable to disturb the material

That last point is where it meets you on site. Before starting work on a pre-2000 building you should be asking for the asbestos register. If nobody can produce one, that is a reason to stop, not a reason to assume it’s fine. “Nobody mentioned asbestos” is not a defence, and no register means unknown, not absent.

How often should training be refreshed?

CAR 2012 requires refresher training as often as is necessary to keep knowledge current. In practice, annual refresher training is the widely used standard across UK construction and maintenance, and it is what most principal contractors, clients and insurers ask to see.

Refresh sooner if your work changes, if guidance changes, or if an incident shows a gap.

CPD training versus other providers — the honest position

Nexis CPD’s Asbestos Awareness (Category A) course is CPD-accredited awareness training. It covers the Regulation 10 syllabus and issues a dated, verifiable certificate.

It is not a UKATA or IATP certificated course, and it is not an Ofqual-regulated qualification. Some principal contractors, clients and frameworks specifically require UKATA or IATP certification — where that is the case, you need that route, not this one. Check what has actually been asked of you before you buy. If a site induction sheet says “UKATA asbestos awareness”, take that literally.

What CPD-accredited awareness training does give you is the knowledge Regulation 10 is aimed at, documented, for £9.

Common questions

Does asbestos awareness training let me remove asbestos?
No. It exists specifically to stop you disturbing it. Removal requires Category B or C training, and much of it requires an HSE-licensed contractor.

How long does the training take?
Online awareness training typically takes one to two hours.

Is online asbestos awareness training acceptable?
For Category A awareness, yes — HSE accepts that awareness training can be delivered online. Category B and C involve practical elements and cannot be done solely online.

My building is from 2005 — do I still need it?
For that building, the risk is very low. But most trades work across many buildings, and you rarely choose their age.

Is asbestos dangerous if left alone?
Asbestos in good condition and left undisturbed is generally lower risk than asbestos that has been damaged or removed badly. Fibres are released when material is broken, drilled or degraded — which is why the correct action is usually to manage it in place rather than rip it out.

Get asbestos awareness trained

Asbestos Awareness (Category A) — for trades and maintenance staff liable to disturb asbestos
Asbestos Awareness for Architects and Designers — duties at design and specification stage

£9 per course. CPD accredited, 100 % online, verifiable e-certificate on completion. Pay for 2, get 3 — any 3 courses for £18.

Please note: this is a CPD-accredited Category A awareness course and general information, not legal advice. It is awareness training only — it does not permit or qualify anyone to work with, remove or sample asbestos, and it is not a UKATA, IATP or Ofqual-regulated qualification. Where your employer, client or scheme requires a specific certification, that must come from an approved provider — always check your own requirements.