Asbestos Licensing Unit

HSE's Asbestos Licensing Unit (ALU) is a small team based in Edinburgh.

ALU's role is to set national standards for assessment and to encourage those involved in the assessment process to adopt a consistent line, to ensure standards are applied fairly and without prejudice.

The ALU team monitors the work of licence-holders across Great Britain by collating all the information received from all site visits and assessments. It then builds a performance history to inform the decision to renew/issue a licence to a particular licence-holder.

In addition to standard enforcement action the following sanctions are available to ALU to address licence-holder poor performance:

• The use of extra licence conditions e.g. the requirement to submit air monitoring results on a quarterly basis;
• Issue a licence for less than 3 years or reduce the licence term at any time;
• The refusal to grant a licence on a permanent or temporary basis;
• The revocation of a licence that prevents the contractor from carrying out licensed work altogether.

Further information on asbestos licensing is available on the asbestos licensing website

It also plays a key part in the Asbestos Liaison Group (ALG).