Asbestos Removal Sutherland Shire

We do not advise it and we do not publish instructions for it. NSW law restricts how much bonded asbestos an unlicensed person may remove, and any friable asbestos is licensed work regardless of quantity. Beyond the legal position, most of the exposure risk in a DIY removal comes from breaking the material and cleaning up afterwards — the two things people get wrong. SafeWork NSW publishes the current rules.

Yes. Asbestos is a regulated waste stream in NSW, so it has to be wrapped, labelled, transported and received at a facility licensed to accept it. You receive the disposal documentation with your invoice. On friable or Class A work you also receive the clearance certificate issued by a licensed asbestos assessor.

Ours includes it, and any quote you compare it against should say so explicitly. Asbestos is a regulated waste stream in NSW: it has to be received at a facility lawfully licensed to accept asbestos, and those facilities charge by the tonne on top of the NSW waste levy. A quote that leaves disposal out is either burying it elsewhere in the price or is not planning to dispose of the waste lawfully. Ask for the disposal line to be itemised before you accept anything.

Ask for the name of the entity that holds the licence — which is not always the trading name on the van — and search it yourself on the NSW public licence register at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au. It is free, it takes about a minute, and it shows the licence class and its status. Two things to check beyond the fact a licence exists: that it is current, and that its class actually covers the work you are asking for.

Most residential jobs are done in a single day. A garage roof or a fence run is usually a few hours; a full house strip-out or friable removal with air monitoring and a clearance certificate takes longer, because the area has to stay isolated until the clearance is issued. We give you a realistic timeframe with the quote rather than after the job starts.

Under the NSW work health and safety regulation, an unlicensed person may remove up to 10 square metres of non-friable (bonded) asbestos in total — and the 10 square metres is cumulative, so it cannot be split across several small jobs. Anything above that requires at least a Class B asbestos removal licence, and friable asbestos in any quantity requires a Class A licence. SafeWork NSW recommends using a licensed removalist for any amount. We do not publish removal instructions and we do not recommend DIY removal.

For friable (Class A) removal, the clearance certificate must come from a licensed asbestos assessor who is independent of the business that did the removal — SafeWork NSW treats an existing working relationship as a conflict that disqualifies independence. The same assessor carries out the air monitoring, and the enclosure cannot be dismantled until measured fibre levels are below 0.01 fibres per millilitre. For non-friable removal, a clearance can be issued by either a competent person or a licensed assessor.