Asbestos Roofing Removal in Kensington
Behind Kensington's grand frontages sit mews buildings, coach houses and flat-roof extensions, and a fair number still carry old cement roof sheets, soffits or gutters. We take that material down whole, safely, with the access and conservation care this borough demands.
What the roofs actually look like here
Most of Kensington faces inward in a sense. The grand white stucco terraces around Kensington Square and Stanford Road, the red-brick mansion blocks along Cromwell Road and Earls Court Road, present a polished face to the street. The asbestos roofing, where there is any, sits round the back and out of sight. It turns up on the cobbled mews behind the frontages, on coach houses, on flat-roof extensions tucked into rear gardens, and on the odd outbuilding behind the larger period houses near Holland Park and Campden Hill.
This is worth saying plainly. The suburban garage with a corrugated cement roof, the classic find in outer Surrey, is rare in this part of W8, SW7 and SW5. The plots are tight, the houses tall, and many were split into flats and maisonettes long ago. So the external asbestos you find is not a lock-up on a driveway. It is a mews garage or coach house roof, a lean-to or flat-roof addition behind the house, cement soffits and fascia boards under an eaves line, or a length of asbestos cement guttering that has been up there for decades.
None of that is dangerous while it is whole and undisturbed. The trouble starts when it weathers, cracks or gets broken up by someone who does not know what they are dealing with. A builder lifting a tired flat roof on a rear addition, or a decorator pulling off rotten soffit boards under the eaves, can release fibres in minutes without ever realising. That is where we come in. We deal with the external cement work specifically, on the parts of these houses the street never sees, and we treat the back of the property with the same care the front of it gets.
Why an old roof is the higher risk
Asbestos cement holds its fibres tight while the sheet is sound. Decades of London weather change that. Rain, frost and sun work on the surface, the cement face softens and starts to break down, and the sheet goes brittle. A cracked or crumbling roof sheet, a split soffit board, a gutter that has gone soft at the joints, these shed fibres far more readily than material in good order. A roof that has been quietly failing for years is a bigger problem than one that was simply left alone.
Height and access make it worse. A failing flat-roof extension at the back of a maisonette, or a coach house roof in a shared mews, is not something to poke at from a ladder. Broken pieces drop, fragments scatter across a courtyard or a neighbour's garden, and suddenly a contained job becomes a clean-up. The right approach is to take the material down in one controlled go rather than let it keep deteriorating in place.
We remove cement sheets whole wherever we can, lowering them rather than snapping them, keeping the dust down and the fragments off the ground. Soffits, fascia boards and gutter runs come away in lengths, bagged and labelled for proper disposal. Where a sheet has already failed and cannot be lifted intact, it is wetted down and handled piece by piece under control so nothing escapes into the open air. Much of this external cement work is non-licensed, but the controls still apply, and the judgement about what you are looking at should come before anyone lays a hand on it.
Access, scaffold and conservation care
Kensington adds a layer that most jobs elsewhere do not. A large part of the borough sits within a conservation area, and a great many houses and mansion blocks are listed. So a roof removal here is rarely just a roof removal. It usually means scaffold and a worked-out access plan, a parking suspension arranged on a narrow mews or a busy road, and real care taken not to mark original plasterwork, joinery or stonework on the way in and out.
There is also the question of consent. If the asbestos work sits inside a wider project on a listed building, that project may need listed building consent, and the timing has to fit around it. We are not the people who grant that, and we will not pretend otherwise, but we will work to the constraints it sets and around the other trades on site. On a roof that is in public view, the appearance of the finished replacement matters as much as the removal itself.
Replacement, when you want it, has options. A mews or coach house roof can go back as galvanised steel box-profile, as a three-layer torch-on felt system on a flatter pitch, or as asbestos-free fibre cement that reads much like the original. A flat-roof extension behind the house can take a fresh felt or single-ply covering. Soffits and fascia boards can be replaced in modern boarding and the eaves boxed out cleanly. The choice usually comes down to the look the conservation setting calls for and how the roof is built. On a frontage or roofline that neighbours and the planners can see, that matters, and we would rather get it right than leave something that jars against the rest of the terrace.
How a Kensington roofing job runs
Most work in this borough happens in occupied flats and mansion blocks with shared stairwells and no driveway, and a roofing job is no different. There is nowhere to dump a skip on a tight mews, so we plan the route in and out, protect the shared areas, and carry material away properly rather than leaving it stacked in a communal yard. Where the work touches a flat or a stairwell, containment and air testing are part of it, because neighbours are close and there is no front garden to keep things at arm's length.
We start by looking at what is actually there. If a material is in any doubt, a small sample goes to a UKAS-accredited laboratory before any decision is made, since you cannot read asbestos content off a roof sheet by eye. Most external cement removals are non-licensed and straightforward to control. Where a job does fall into higher-risk licensed work, the process is fuller: 14 days of notice to the HSE, full enclosure of the work area, and four-stage clearance testing signed off by an independent analyst before the space is handed back. The clearance step is not a formality. It is the proof the air is clean.
Graham, who owns the firm and is based in Chessington in KT9, runs these jobs himself, so you are dealing with the person doing the work rather than a chain of subcontractors. Clearaway holds Spectra licence number 142305706 and has been working across this part of London and Surrey for more than seven years. If you have an old roof, a tired set of soffits or a length of cement guttering behind a Kensington house and you want a straight answer on it, call 0800 024 6168.
Commercial Building Strip-Out, Kensington
Kensington, South London · Strip-Out
View this project"Graham has organised two jobs for me, both of which ran smoothly and on time. Clive and the team are really great, they completed the work in the agreed time and left the site spotless. Would recommend using Clearaway if you need any work done."
Why Choose Clearaway
HSE Licensed Removal
Higher-risk material handled under full enclosure, with the 14 days of HSE notice the law requires and independent clearance testing.
Planning Aware
Used to conservation areas and listed buildings: scaffold and access planned around the restrictions, original fabric protected.
Fully Licensed
Licensed asbestos removal contractor (Licence No. 142305706). Full public liability insurance on every job.
Our Own Team
We never subcontract. The people who quote your job are the people who do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our Removal Process
From first call to final certificate, every job follows the same clear four-step process.
Survey
We inspect the property and confirm the material. Sampling available if required.
Quote
Fixed written price covering removal, disposal and any replacement work.
Removal
Material is removed safely, double-wrapped and taken to a licensed disposal facility.
Certificate
You receive a waste consignment note and disposal certificate confirming legal handling.
Get in Touch
Send a few details about your project and we will come back the same working day with a fixed price. We cover Surrey, London and the South East, including Esher, Cobham, Kingston, Richmond, Epsom, Guildford, Woking and Croydon.