Asbestos Removal in Manchester and Greater Manchester

This page lists every firm the HSE currently licenses in Greater Manchester for asbestos removal. Not one of the twenty household recycling centres in the county will take asbestos. Four waste transfer sites will accept cement-bonded sheet from a householder, wrapped, with proof of address and full PPE. They will not identify anything for you, and a trader gets turned round at the gate.

Swipe the table on a phone. Salford and Ashton-under-Lyne firms on this list routinely work in Manchester.

7 of the 7 hold a standard licence, which is the one that covers removal. The Type column is there so you do not ring the wrong one.

How to read the licensed contractor list

The HSE files each of these firms under a Greater Manchester address. Licence number, licence type and expiry date are read off the register daily.

• Watch the expiry dates. None of the Greater Manchester firms hold a licence expiring in the next 6 weeks. Ask about a near date rather than ruling the firm out.
• Watch the type. Every firm on this list holds a standard licence, which is the type that covers removal work.
• The list is short because of how the HSE files addresses, not because nobody works here. Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Wigan firms often sit on the Lancashire list. Stockport firms often sit on Cheshire. If you live in those boroughs, read those pages as well. The firms travel.

The recycling centre will not take asbestos. Four waste transfer sites will take cement sheet

Greater Manchester runs twenty household waste recycling centres. None of them take asbestos. Cement-bonded sheet only, and only if you took it off your own home, goes to one of four waste transfer facilities run by Recycle for Greater Manchester: Arkwright Street in Oldham, Bredbury Parkway in Bredbury, Cobden Street in Salford, and Longley Lane in Sharston. You use the entrance for council and high-sided vehicles, not the cars-and-trailers recycling centre gate.

That is a disposal service. They will not test it, survey it, remove it, or help you unload. The sheet has to be double wrapped in heavy plastic or sealed rubble sacks. You need proof of address for the house the waste came from (a council tax or utility bill; a mobile phone bill will not do). You also have to turn up in the PPE they specify, including a hard hat, glasses, gloves, hi-vis and steel caps, or they send you away. Current rules sit on Recycle for Greater Manchester’s asbestos page. Use theirs, not a screenshot of ours, because the sites and the small print move.

Tradespeople cannot use it. If a builder took the roof off, the waste is theirs. That is the authority’s rule, not a preference.

Wigan is the exception inside Greater Manchester, because Wigan runs its own waste service. Householders there can take wrapped asbestos to Kirkless recycling centre on Makerfield Way, Higher Ince, WN2 2PR, on Saturday mornings only, and only with a booked slot on 01942 825755. Details sit on Wigan Council’s hazardous waste page.

All four gates assume you already know what is in the car. If nothing has been tested, if it is insulating board rather than cement sheet, or if a builder has already broken it up, none of them is your next move.

Where asbestos turns up in Greater Manchester houses

The Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Levenshulme, Gorton, Moston, Cheetham Hill, Eccles and Prestwich share walls and roofs, so work on one house can affect the one attached to it. Plenty of those houses were modernised between the 1950s and the 1980s with board, Artex and old kitchen floor tiles, and that is often what people are looking at now.

Houses built or refurbished between the 1950s and the 1980s in Wythenshawe, Hattersley, Langley, parts of Salford, and the semis towards Sale, Altrincham, Stockport, Bury and Bolton often have cement garage roofs, soffits, gutters and flue pipes. Artex in a bedroom is a common one. The mill conversions in Ancoats, Salford and Oldham are a different job again, because the original industrial finishes and the later fit-out can both contain it.

Tenants should ring their landlord before anyone on this list. Manchester City Council, the other nine boroughs and the housing associations all hold surveys of their own stock and pay for the work themselves. This page is aimed at owner-occupiers, landlords, and anyone whose builder has just stopped mid-job.

Turner Brothers Asbestos at Spotland in Rochdale was the largest asbestos works in the country, and the trade ran through Trafford Park after it. That history is why the word still carries weight here. It identifies nothing. The sheet on your garage needs a laboratory, the same as anywhere else.

Not every job needs a licensed firm

Three categories decide whether you need anybody in this table at all, which is why Manchester is full of vans offering asbestos removal with no HSE licence on the door.

• Licensed. Lagging, sprayed coating, and insulating board on anything beyond a short minor job. Table above, no exceptions.
• Notifiable, but not licensed. The HSE still has to be told before the job starts, and health records kept.
• Neither. Sound cement sheet. The garage roof, the shed, the flue pipe, the gutter run.

Nothing sits in a category until a laboratory has put it there. That is the reason this page will not tell you what your roof is from a description of it, and the reason Arkwright Street will not either.

Where the North West sits on mesothelioma

• North West: 54.6 deaths per million
• Great Britain as a whole: 55.9

Close to the national figure. The regional rate covers Merseyside shipping and industrial Cheshire as well as Greater Manchester, where cotton, engineering and chemicals all used asbestos.

Figures from the HSE’s mesothelioma statistics for Great Britain.

What asbestos removal costs in Manchester

No honest single number exists for Greater Manchester. The transfer sites price nothing at all: they take waste you removed and wrapped yourself. A licensed quote covers the work, the notification where the job needs one, and the consignment paperwork. Ask which of the three a figure includes before you compare it to another.

Questions about asbestos removal in Manchester

Can I take a garage roof to the tip myself?

Not to a Greater Manchester recycling centre. Those sites will not take it. Cement-bonded sheet from your own home can go to one of the four waste transfer facilities, double wrapped, with proof of address and the PPE they ask for. They will not advise you on whether it is safe to take off. If it turns out to be insulating board, they are not the answer. Wigan is separate: Kirkless, Saturday morning, booked in advance.

When was asbestos banned in the UK?

1985 for blue and brown, 1999 for white. That takes in almost every house in the county bar the newer city-centre blocks.

Why so few companies on the list?

Because the licence is hard to get and hard to keep, and because the HSE still files a lot of Greater Manchester addresses under Lancashire or Cheshire. There are 362 in the whole United Kingdom. 7 against Greater Manchester is only the county tag. Look at Preston and Lancashire and Chester and Cheshire as well if you want a wider net. Those firms travel.

Getting a quote from a Manchester contractor

The numbers in the table come off the HSE register. Ring them directly, and say which borough you are in.

Not in Greater Manchester? See all areas we cover.