Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2014, Official Report, column 112W, on Schools: Asbestos, what system is in place to inspect schools under (a) local authority control and (b) outside local authority control, to assess their standard of asbestos management.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has no specific system in place to inspect schools to assess their standard of asbestos management.

HSE's work planning systems focuses its inspection priorities on the major hazard industries and comparatively high risks sectors (such as construction, waste and recycling, and some types of manufacturing), but can also involve targeted initiatives elsewhere. In recent years this approach has resulted in discrete inspection programmes to assess asbestos management by:

• local authorities with responsibility for system built schools; and
• schools outside local authority control on a sample basis.