What is an asbestos register?
Every non-domestic building in the UK that may contain asbestos needs an asbestos register. It's the live document that supports the duty-holder's asbestos management plan under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012.
Who is responsible?
The duty-holder is whoever has responsibility for the maintenance and repair of the non-domestic premises — usually the building owner, landlord or managing agent.
The surveyor produces the management survey. The duty-holder uses that survey to build and maintain the register.
What an asbestos register must contain
There's no single legally-mandated template, but a competent register includes the following for every known or presumed ACM:
- Location (building, floor, room, specific position)
- Material type (e.g. AIB ceiling tile, cement flue, textured coating)
- Extent (area or quantity)
- Condition (good / fair / poor)
- Material assessment / risk score
- Recommended action (manage in place, encapsulate, remove)
- Photographic evidence
- Date of inspection and surveyor
Living document, not a one-off PDF
The register has to be kept up to date. ACMs degrade, refurb work changes the building, and re-inspections happen. A register that's three years stale is a liability for the duty-holder.
That's why structured capture matters. A scanned PDF of an old report is hard to update; a structured ACM register can be revisited, re-scored and re-exported.
How AsbestosSurveyPro fits
AsbestosSurveyPro captures the management survey as a structured ACM register from the start — every item with location, condition, scoring, photos and recommended action. The PDF report is generated from that structured data, so the underlying register is always current.
Takeaway
An asbestos register isn't a document — it's a living dataset. Capture it structurally on the survey, and re-inspections, updates and audits stop being painful.