Suspect asbestos in your Hampshire property? Don’t put your health at risk by guessing. Meyer Southern delivers fast, accurate asbestos surveys in Hampshire.
Tell us the property and what the survey is for. One of our Hampshire surveyors will come back to you the same day with a fixed quote.
Most people reading this are at one of four points. Works are booked and someone has said a survey has to happen first. A duty to manage has landed and there is no asbestos register. A sale or purchase is moving and a report has been asked for. Or something has turned up and nobody wants to touch it until they know what it is.
Meyer Southern Ltd handles all four. Our head office is in Havant, so a Hampshire survey is a local job.
Call 0239 307 2182, email admin@meyerenvironmental.co.uk, message us on WhatsApp, or use the enquiry form.
Hampshire housing spans a long stretch of the period when asbestos was still legal. Victorian and Edwardian terraces across Southampton and Portsmouth, the post-war social housing that followed the wartime bombing of both cities, and the large overspill expansions at Basingstoke and Andover through the 1960s and 70s. Asbestos was not fully banned in the UK until 1999, so most of that stock predates the ban.
In a house of that age, asbestos-containing materials tend to sit in artex and textured coatings, garage and shed roofs, floor tiles and the bitumen beneath them, pipe lagging, loft insulation and boiler flues. Left alone and in good condition they are usually low risk. Drilling, sanding or breaking them is what releases fibres, and inhaling those fibres is linked to mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. Around 2,500 people die from mesothelioma in the UK each year.
If you are renovating, selling, letting, or dealing with fire or flood damage, a survey tells you what is there before anyone disturbs it.
Hampshire carries a deep industrial and institutional footprint. The naval dockyard at Portsmouth, the docks and marine engineering at Southampton, the military estate around Aldershot, and the commercial and warehouse development that spread along the M27 and M3 corridors from the 1960s onwards. Asbestos products are still embedded across all of it.
The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 place a duty to manage asbestos on the holder of any non-domestic property. In practice that means knowing where asbestos is, keeping an asbestos register, holding a written management plan, and checking the condition of anything identified. The HSE estimates around 5,000 asbestos-related deaths a year, and a large share trace back to offices, schools, healthcare buildings and industrial sites.
If you are a duty holder without a current register, a management survey is the step that gets you compliant. We work with facilities teams across Hampshire, including sites where access has to be arranged outside operating hours.
Your survey and any removal are quoted separately. The survey report is a tender document, written to a standard any licensed contractor can price against, and you are under no obligation to use us for the work. Plenty of clients take our report elsewhere, which is exactly what it is built for.
What you get instead is one firm that already knows the building. If the survey finds something, there is no second inspection and no second explanation.
Five services, covering everything from a full building inspection to a single sample.
Every job below started with someone unsure what they were looking at. These are Hampshire and south coast properties we have surveyed, sampled and reported on.
From a single terraced house in Southsea to a school estate across the county, the survey is the same standard. What changes is access, scheduling and who needs to read the report at the end.
Tell us the property type and we will tell you which survey fits. Call 0239 307 2182 or use the enquiry form.
Four stages, from your first call to a report you can hand to a solicitor, a contractor or the HSE.
We ask about the property, its age, and what the report is for. That last part matters more than people expect, because a report for a lender and a report for a demolition contractor are not the same document. Once the survey type is settled we give you a fixed quote, so there is no laboratory cost appearing later.
A BOHS P402 qualified surveyor inspects the property. On a management survey that is non-intrusive and you can usually stay in the building. On a refurbishment and demolition survey it means opening up structure to reach concealed areas. Photographs and material descriptions are recorded throughout, so nothing in the report is a judgement you cannot see the basis for.
Anything suspect is sampled and sent to a UKAS-accredited laboratory, UKAS being the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. The laboratory confirms whether asbestos is present and identifies the fibre type. Laboratory analysis is the only result that carries legal weight, which is why a visual opinion is never enough on its own.
The report sets out every material found, where it is, what condition it is in, a risk assessment for each one, and what we recommend you do. Where you have an ongoing duty to manage, we help build the management plan around it. If removal is needed, the report is already the document a contractor prices from.
If work is booked, a completion date is set, or a duty to manage is sitting unanswered, the survey is the thing holding everything else up. It is also the quickest part to sort.
We cover the whole county from our Havant office, and we handle asbestos removal in Hampshire clients need too, if the survey turns something up.
Call 0239 307 2182, email admin@meyerenvironmental.co.uk, message us on WhatsApp, or send the enquiry form and we will come back to you today.
Tell us the property, the age and what the survey is for. Fixed quote back the same day.
It depends on what you are about to do with the building. If it is occupied and running normally and you need to meet your duty to manage, that is a management survey. If any refurbishment or demolition work is planned on a building put up before 2000, you need a refurbishment and demolition survey, and it is a legal requirement rather than a recommendation. If a survey has already been done and materials were found, the annual check is a re-inspection.
Those three cover most situations. Buying a property is a pre-purchase survey, and a single suspect material is a sampling job rather than a survey at all.
If you are not sure, describe the property and the reason on the phone and we will tell you which one applies. We would rather send you a quote for the right survey than the expensive one.
Sometimes not, and it is worth saying so plainly.
If you own and live in your own home, are not carrying out work, and nothing is damaged, there is no legal requirement for a survey. Asbestos in good condition and left undisturbed is generally low risk. A survey becomes worth doing when you are about to disturb something, when a material is already damaged, or when you are selling and want to answer the question before a buyer raises it.
Landlords are in a different position. A rented property brings duties under housing and health and safety legislation to keep the property safe for tenants, and knowing whether asbestos is present is part of that. Letting agents and managing agents carry similar exposure depending on the management agreement.
Duty holders of non-domestic property have a clear legal duty under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, and that one does not depend on whether work is planned.
The two are the survey types set out in HSG264, the HSE survey guide, and they exist for different stages in a building’s life.
A management survey covers a property in normal occupancy. It is non-intrusive, so nothing gets opened up, and it looks for asbestos containing materials that could be disturbed during day to day use or routine maintenance. This is the survey most commercial buildings need in order to hold a current asbestos register.
A refurbishment and demolition survey is fully intrusive. It is carried out before refurbishment work or demolition work starts, and the surveyor deliberately opens up walls, floor voids and ceilings to find anything hidden. It is a legal requirement before major work on any building put up before 2000, and the report is what your contractor prices the job from.
The practical test is simple. If you are running the building, you need a management survey. If you are about to change the building, you need a refurbishment and demolition survey. Getting this wrong costs money, because a management survey will not clear a site for building work and the job stops while a second survey is arranged.
Time on site is usually two to three hours for a domestic management survey. A larger commercial property, or any refurbishment and demolition survey with destructive inspection involved, can take a full day or more. We give you a realistic timeframe at quote stage rather than after we have arrived.
The survey visit is rarely what delays a transaction. The wait is laboratory analysis of any samples taken and the report being written up. If you are working to a completion date or a contractor start date, tell us at the point of quoting. We can prioritise the report where the timeline is tight, and it is far easier to plan that in at the start than to chase it later.
You get a report saying so, and that report has real value.
A clear result is documented evidence you can hand to a buyer, a lender, a contractor or an insurer. Builders can start work knowing they are not going to hit something unexpected halfway through a job. If you are a duty holder, a survey finding no asbestos still satisfies the requirement to have assessed the building, and your register records that assessment.
Nobody enjoys paying for an answer they hoped for. But an undocumented assumption that a building is clear is worth nothing to anyone, and it is not a defence if it turns out to be wrong.
Asbestos testing is the laboratory half of the job. A surveyor cannot confirm asbestos by eye, so anything suspect is sampled and analysed.
Our surveyor takes a small sample under controlled conditions, using wetting and sealing so no asbestos fibres are released into the room. Asbestos sampling is quick and usually leaves nothing more than a mark the size of a coin. The sample goes to a UKAS accredited laboratory, UKAS being the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, where it is examined under microscopy to confirm whether asbestos is present and which fibre type it is.
Laboratory analysis is the only result with legal weight behind it. A visual opinion, however experienced, is not enough on its own, and no report should ever be built on one.
Standard results come back within a few working days. Where a project or a completion date depends on it, tell us at quote stage and we can prioritise the analysis. If you have one material rather than a whole building to worry about, professional asbestos testing on its own is often all you need, and it costs considerably less than a full survey.
The report contains an executive summary, every asbestos-containing material found with its location and condition, photographs throughout, a material risk assessment for each item, and clear recommendations for what to do next. Where there is an ongoing duty to manage, it feeds the asbestos register and management plan.
It usually travels further than people expect. A solicitor may want it during a transaction. A lender may ask for it before releasing funds. A removal contractor prices directly from it. Building control may want sight of it before signing off structural work. Your insurer may ask for it at renewal.
That is why the report is written to be read by people who are not asbestos specialists.
Not necessarily removal. That surprises people.
Asbestos in good condition, in a location where it will not be disturbed, is often safest managed in place and monitored. The report will say where that applies. Removal becomes the answer when a material is damaged, when it sits somewhere it will get knocked, or when planned work is going to disturb it.
Where removal is the right call, the report is already the document a licensed contractor prices from, and you can take it to whoever you choose. We handle asbestos removal in Hampshire clients need as well, so if you would rather keep it with one firm that already knows the building, that is available.
An asbestos register is the record of every asbestos containing material identified in a building, where it is and what condition it is in. An asbestos management plan is the document setting out what you are going to do about each one, who is responsible, and when it gets checked again.
If you hold non domestic premises, you need both. Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 the duty holder is legally responsible for managing asbestos on site, and in most cases that is the landlord, the commercial tenant or the property manager, depending on what the lease says. The Health and Safety Executive expects the register to be current, not filed away from a decade ago.
Both come out of a management survey. The survey finds the materials, the register records them, and the plan says how you manage asbestos going forward. Anyone doing maintenance work in the building should be able to see the register before they start.
If you have inherited a building with no paperwork, that is the most common reason people call us. We carry out asbestos inspections across Hampshire commercial buildings and industrial properties and can have your register and plan in place from a single visit.
Every survey is quoted on the individual property rather than from a price list, because the variables genuinely move the number.
Size and type of property is the biggest one. Survey type is the next, since a destructive refurbishment and demolition survey takes considerably longer on site than a non-intrusive management survey. Then the number of samples needing laboratory analysis, how accessible the building is, and whether you need the report faster than standard.
Tell us the property age, rough size and the reason for the survey, and you will get a fixed quote with the laboratory costs already in it.
The whole county, from our head office in Havant. That includes Southampton, Portsmouth, Winchester, Basingstoke, Andover, Eastleigh, Fareham, Gosport, Farnborough, Aldershot and the surrounding towns and villages.
On property types we survey domestic, commercial and industrial. Houses, flats and rental portfolios. Offices, retail units, warehouses and hotels. Schools, care homes and healthcare buildings. Factories and plant rooms, where we can work around production schedules.
If your property is not obviously in one of those categories, call and describe it.
Surveys are one part of what we do. We also handle asbestos testing on individual materials, asbestos re-inspections on a scheduled basis, and asbestos removal in Hampshire clients need once a survey has identified something that has to come out.
That matters at the point where a survey finds a problem. Plenty of survey firms hand you a detailed report and leave you to find a contractor. We can quote the removal from our own report, which means no second inspection of the building and no explaining the situation twice.
You are not tied to us for the removal work. The report is written as a tender document, so any licensed contractor can price against it, and we would rather you compared quotes than felt cornered.
Alongside asbestos services we also carry out lead testing and legionella testing across residential and commercial property in Hampshire, which is useful if you are assessing a building against more than one risk at the same time.
