From the agricultural buildings of the Weald and the Downs to the coastal industrial estates at Brighton, Worthing and Eastbourne — Sussex still carries an enormous stock of 1960s-80s asbestos cement roofs. We strip, dispose and re-cover, all under one contract.
The rural half of Sussex — the Low Weald, the High Weald, the South Downs and the farming country around Battle, Heathfield, Uckfield and Lewes — was built out with asbestos cement roofs across most of its agricultural buildings during the cheap-corrugated boom of the 1960s and 70s. The grain stores, the dairy parlours, the calf housing, the equestrian schools, the redundant Dutch barns now used for storage or contracting fleets — nearly all of them have original cement sheet still in place, well past its design life. Sixty years on, the sheets are friable at the laps and the gutters are full of degraded fibres.
The coastal half of Sussex tells a different story. The trade-park economy from Shoreham through Newhaven, Eastbourne and Bexhill, plus the older industrial estates behind Brighton and Worthing, were built later but built with the same product. The added complication on the coast is corrosion: salt-laden air over fifty years has eaten the fixings, so cement sheets are now loose as well as fibrous. We've removed roofs in Newhaven where individual sheets were being held by a single corroded hook bolt.
New-Cladd is for the higher-tier asbestos work this all requires, and we run our Sussex jobs from a Kent base — same-day reach into BN, RH and southern TN postcodes. We've stripped cement sheet off cattle barns near Uckfield, off industrial units on the Brighton trade parks, off former military buildings near Battle and off vineyard packhouses in the Cuckmere valley. Same licensed scope, same paperwork chain, finished with an integrated re-roof in most cases.
The single biggest job category across the Weald and the Downs — cement sheet off grain stores, livestock barns, equestrian schools and machinery sheds.
Trade-park asbestos strip on the Brighton, Worthing, Shoreham, Newhaven and Eastbourne estates — usually paired with PVDF-coated re-cover for the salt-air spec.
R&D surveys carried out ahead of any intrusive work — mandatory under CAR 2012 and a useful baseline document for the building owner regardless.
Where strip isn't viable yet — perhaps for a working livestock building mid-season — we can seal and encapsulate bonded asbestos to extend safe life by a decade or more.
Hazardous-waste consignment notes raised, sealed loads taken to a licensed Sussex or Kent facility, four-stage clearance certificate issued by independent UKAS analyst.
Once the asbestos is off, the same crew re-clads in box-profile, insulated composite or standing-seam — especially relevant on barn-conversion and diversification projects.
"Three livestock barns, all with original 1970s asbestos cement, all needing to come off before we could re-cover. Calving was due in eight weeks. New-Cladd did the R&D survey within a week, gave us the HSE notification dates, scheduled the strip and the re-roof back-to-back, and we were dry, sealed and ready before the first calf hit the floor. Genuinely impressed by the paperwork discipline."
Asbestos cement roof sheet stripping is classed as Non-Licensed Work under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. We notify every job to HSE under the ASB5 procedure, operate trained and face-fit-tested operatives in full RPE, track waste through the licensed-carrier consignment system, and arrange independent UKAS-accredited four-stage clearance. RAMS and certificates available on request.
All of BN (East and West Sussex coast through Brighton, Worthing, Eastbourne, Hastings), all of RH (mid-Sussex, Horsham, Crawley, East Grinstead), and the Sussex portion of TN (Battle, Crowborough, Wadhurst, Rye). If you're on the Surrey or Hampshire borders, call with the postcode and we'll confirm.
Yes — most of our Sussex agricultural asbestos work is on live farms. We phase the work by building, isolate the work area under the licence, and keep livestock and farming activity going on the rest of the holding. We're used to scheduling around calving, lambing and harvest windows.
On coastal Sussex industrial buildings, the cement sheets are often very loose — salt has corroded the fixings to nothing. We have to assume sheets can fall during strip, so the encapsulated work area, scaffold and netting design is tighter than it would be inland. Pricing reflects the additional containment.
HSE notification (14-day) goes in first. Bonded asbestos cement is double-wrapped, labelled, consigned under a hazardous-waste consignment note, and disposed of at a currently-licensed facility. Independent UKAS analyst issues a four-stage clearance and Certificate of Reoccupation. Full file handed to the building owner on completion.
