Leading housing consultancy Pennington Choices has announced a seminar exploring ‘Best Practice Management of Asbestos in Social Housing’ to complement the Health and Safety Executive campaign and highlight how to deal with this potentially fatal substance.

Across Britain, more than 40,000 people have died from the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma since the late 1960s and the latest figures show that the annual numbers dying from this disease are increasing.

Asbestos came into popular use within the building trade in the 1950s and can be notoriously difficult to identify; found in pipe insulation, boilers, floor tiles, ceiling tiles, sprayed coatings and certain kinds of roofing materials.

Mark Seaborn, managing director of Pennington Choices explained: “Many people don’t realise how common it is to find asbestos in buildings built before the year 2000. It’s important to be able to identify it and also to know what to do if you do find it.”

Following their commitment to run a number of free asbestos awareness training sessions, as part of a specific Health and Safety Executive initiative, Pennington Choices has announced a major seminar event for social landlords, which will focus on legal duties when dealing with asbestos, safeguarding health, best practice during refurbishment, ensuring the quality of surveys and much more.

With expert speakers from a variety of backgrounds, the seminar will ensure that organisations working with social housing are on the right track when managing the risk caused by asbestos.

Among the speakers are: Principal Specialist Inspector from the Health and Safety Executive, Martin Gibson; Environmental Law Specialist from Trowers & Hamlins LLP, Amanda Stubbs; Jon Murthy from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) and Pennington Choices’ Head of Asbestos Services Paul Wright.

The seminar will take place on 29th November at London Chamber of Commerce, at a cost of £65 per person; to include full-speaker line up, pre-seminar networking, refreshments and best practice packs and information to take away.

This course will provide invaluable information for anyone involved in social housing property maintenance, property managers and directors.

For more information, full speaker details and topic outlines email Hannah Snowden at Pennington Choices: hsnowden@pennington.org.uk or tel. 01928 568 842.

For more information about Pennington Choices visit: www.pennington.org.uk

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