Asbestos removal for communities of owners

Where asbestos usually hides in an apartment block

In older blocks and urbanisations on the Costa del Sol and in Málaga city, fibre-cement tends to appear in the same places: water tanks on the roof, downpipes in internal shafts or on the façade, ventilation and smoke ducts, the roofs of storage rooms and laundry areas on the top floor, and the covers of garages or bin stores. Some of these elements belong to the community, others to individual flats.

Before anyone talks about removal, it is worth making an inventory with photos: what is there, where it is, whether it is in use and what condition it is in. That list is what the administrator needs to put the subject on the agenda, and it avoids arguments later about what was or was not included.

Who decides: the owners' meeting and the administrator

Under the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (Ley 49/1960), works that affect common elements – the roof, the façade, shared installations – need an agreement of the owners' meeting, and the community must be informed before walls, structure or façade elements are demolished. The exact majorities depend on the type of work; your administrator will tell you which applies.

In practice a job runs much more smoothly when the meeting has, in writing, a clear description of what will be removed, who will do the asbestos work and how the residents will be affected. Our guide on asbestos in a community of owners: who decides and who pays explains how to prepare that decision, and how the cost is usually shared according to the community's own statutes and quotas.

How the removal is organised in an occupied building

The asbestos removal is carried out by a company registered in the RERA that works as our subcontractor. It prepares its work plan, which the labour authority of the province approves, and the start of the work is notified in advance. The plan sets out how the work area is closed off and how the material is lowered to the street without crossing the flats.

Our part is everything around it: coordinating dates with the administrator, informing residents, removing plinths and old supports once the fibre-cement is out, opening and closing small areas where pipes ran, and taking away the non-hazardous rubble. If a skip, lift or scaffold has to stand in the street, the town hall must authorise the occupation of the public road; the administrator or the community's technician usually applies for it.

Informing residents and owners who live abroad

Many communities on the coast have a high share of owners who are only there a few weeks a year. They want to know what is happening without having to fly over. We usually agree with the administrator a short written notice for the noticeboard and the owners' e-mail list, in Spanish and English, with the dates, the areas affected and a contact number.

• dates of each phase and which parts of the building will be closed;
• what residents should do – keep windows closed, avoid the roof, move items from storage rooms;
• photos of the finished work sent to the administrator for the community's records;
• the waste delivery receipts, for the community's file.

Lifts, stairwells and the street door are the points where residents and the work meet, so they get specific attention in the notice. Where the material has to come down through a shared space, the route and the hours are agreed with the administrator beforehand, and the area is cleaned when each day's work is finished.

This is the same approach we use with individual owners abroad, explained on our page about uralita removal for villas and apartments.

Shared tanks, private tanks and forgotten tanks

Water tanks are the most common asbestos item on community roofs. Some feed the whole building; others belonged to individual flats before mains pressure improved, and are now disconnected and forgotten. Removing disused tanks is usually the easiest item to approve, because nobody loses anything and the roof becomes safer and easier to maintain.

Where a private tank sits on a common roof, the community and the owner should agree beforehand who orders and pays for its removal. The practical details – disconnection, plinth, new supply – are explained on our page about asbestos pipes and water tanks and in the guide on what to do with asbestos cement pipes and tanks.

The town hall census and what it means for a community

Ley 7/2022 required town halls to draw up a census of installations and sites with asbestos, and higher-risk public buildings are to be dealt with before 2028. The law does not set a fixed date by which a private community must remove its asbestos, and owners should be wary of anyone who claims otherwise to win a contract.

The census is still a good reason to put the subject on the agenda: it keeps asbestos on the town hall's radar and buyers increasingly ask about it. Our guide on municipal asbestos inventories under Ley 7/2022 explains what the census is, and the post on who is legally required to remove asbestos in Spain answers the question that comes up at almost every meeting.

Choosing the company: what the meeting should ask

Owners' meetings sometimes receive several quotes that look similar on paper. Ask each bidder who will actually carry out the asbestos work, whether that company is registered in the RERA, who prepares and files the work plan and how the waste will be documented. A quote that does not mention a work plan is a warning sign.

Our post with an asbestos removal contractor checklist gives the meeting a ready-made list of questions. For the cost factors, our sister site's page on asbestos removal costs explains what makes one community job more expensive than another.