With millions of homes still to connect before the copper switch-off, and London’s pre-war housing stock sitting squarely in the crosshairs, a piece published this week by Broadband Provider raises a question the rollout has so far managed to avoid: is anyone checking for asbestos before the drilling starts?
Research by London Asbestos Help makes a disarmingly simple observation: Openreach is targeting full fibre coverage to 25 million homes by the end of 2026, with the copper network scheduled for retirement in January 2027. Around 6.6 million homes still need to make the switch. A significant proportion of those properties were built before 1999, when the UK banned asbestos. And a standard full fibre installation involves drilling through external walls, routing cables through ceiling voids, and in some cases disturbing partition boards or floor coverings. In a pre-2000 property, any one of those surfaces could contain asbestos-containing materials.
Nobody in the installation chain is required to check first.
Why London is particularly exposed
While this as a national issue, London carries a particular concentration of risk that the article touches on without fully dwelling on.
London has one of the oldest housing stocks of any major city in the country. The terraced streets of inner London, the mansion blocks of the interwar years, the ex-council towers of the 1960s and 70s, all of these are overwhelmingly pre-2000 builds. Asbestos was used extensively across all of them: in Artex ceiling coatings, pipe lagging, floor tiles, partition boards and roof materials. The variety of building types in the capital also means the ACMs are often in unexpected places.
A standard broadband installation in a Victorian terrace in Hackney, a purpose-built flat in Hammersmith, or an ex-council property in Southwark is almost by definition an installation in a building with some history of asbestos use. The question is never really whether it is present. The question is where, and whether anyone is disturbing it.
The 2025 rule change that most homeowners have not heard of
One detail from the analysis deserves wider circulation. A 2025 update to asbestos licensing rules reclassified the mechanical scraping or drilling of Artex coatings as Notifiable Non-Licensed Work. Artex was routinely manufactured with chrysotile, better known as white asbestos, during the decades when it was in common use. Drilling near a coated ceiling during a cable run can release fibres without the engineer or the householder being aware anything has happened.
According to London Asbestos Help, awareness of that reclassification remains very low among homeowners. Which is perhaps not surprising. The guidance has not been accompanied by any public-facing communication directed at the millions of households about to receive a broadband engineer.
The legal position is clear. The practice is not.
Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, a refurbishment and demolition survey is legally required before intrusive work begins in any pre-2000 building. The duty sits with the person responsible for the premises, not the contractor. Openreach engineers do not carry out asbestos surveys. The installation booking process does not prompt householders to arrange one. And so the surveys, in most cases, are simply not happening.
Landlords are in the most exposed position. A landlord who books a broadband installation for a pre-2000 rental property without first commissioning a survey has almost certainly not met their obligations under CAR 2012. The duty sits with the dutyholder regardless of whether the contractor is aware of the issue.
What the January 2027 deadline means in practice
The copper switch-off creates a forced migration that is unlike most technology upgrades. Homeowners and tenants cannot simply choose to stay on their existing service indefinitely. When the copper network is retired, properties that have not migrated will lose their connection. That deadline concentrates millions of installations into a short window, and it removes the option of deferring.
For London, where the combination of installation volumes and pre-2000 building stock is most acute, the coming eighteen months represent a significant period of unacknowledged asbestos disturbance risk.
If your property was built before 2000 and you have a full fibre installation approaching, commission a refurbishment and demolition survey before the engineer arrives. An accredited survey typically costs between £250 and £500. That is not optional in most pre-2000 properties. Under the current regulations, it is the law.
