Could My Soffits Contain Asbestos?

Why older soffits are a worry

A soffit is the board that closes the gap under the roof overhang, between the wall and the fascia. In houses from the middle of the last century into the 1990s, builders often used flat asbestos-based boards for soffits because they were cheap, fireproof and weather resistant. Two materials are involved. Asbestos cement is bound hard and is the lower-risk type. Asbestos insulating board is softer and more crumbly, releases fibres more easily when disturbed, and is classed as a higher-risk material.

The age of the house is the first clue, but alterations count as well. A 1990s extension on a 1930s house may have soffits of a different age than the old part. A newer home may have had old boards reused. If your house was built or altered before 2000, treat a suspect soffit with care. Plastic and timber soffits are clearly different once you look closely, but a painted board can be hard to read.

Signs that a soffit might be asbestos board

There is no sure sign, but some features should make you stop and check:

• Flat, smooth, grey-white or pale boards, usually painted, fixed with small pins or screws and covered at the joints with thin timber strips.
• A chalky or slightly fibrous edge where a board has broken or been drilled.
• The same board material on the porch ceiling, the garage soffit or the gable ends.
• A pre-2000 house with no record of the soffits ever having been replaced.

Our page on soffit ventilation shows what a modern vented soffit looks like, which helps you compare. If the soffits are plastic with a woodgrain or smooth finish and clip-on joints, they are not asbestos. If you are unsure, assume nothing.

The same boards turn up in places beyond the roof edge. Porch ceilings, garage and car port soffits, airing cupboard linings, boiler cupboard panels and the panel behind a fuse board were all common homes for insulating board. If you have one in the roofline, check the others, because a contractor working on the porch or the garage needs to know too. Photograph each board before anything is done, so there is a record of what was there and where it sits on the house, which helps whoever tests or removes it later.

What the rules say about the work

HSE guidance sorts asbestos work into licensed, notifiable non-licensed and non-licensed. Asbestos insulating board is a higher-risk material, and working on it generally falls into the licensed category, which needs a contractor holding an HSE licence. Asbestos cement work, by contrast, can be non-licensed. You can read the categories on the HSE non-licensed work page. A soffit that may be insulating board is tested before anyone on our side touches it.

If a test shows insulating board, we explain that a licensed contractor must remove it, and we can then fit the new roofline afterwards. If a test shows a harmless board or plastic, the work goes ahead as normal.

Testing works as it does for other materials: a small sample is taken with controls, sealed and analysed in a laboratory, and the result names the material. Since the boards are higher risk, take the sample through a person trained to do it, and do not remove a piece yourself. Our guide on testing a garage roof for asbestos describes the same process, which applies to soffits.

What to do now

Do not drill for lights, cable clips or bird deterrents, and do not pressure wash or scrub the boards. Leave them as they are. If they are intact and painted, they are not an emergency. Book a sample test through a surveyor or a laboratory, which our page on how much soffits and fascias cost helps you budget around, since an asbestos finding changes the price. For roofline rot or damage that exposes the board, see rotten fascia boards.

If the roofline needs work and you do not know what the soffits are, our free survey includes photographs and a straight answer on whether we would stop and test first. The guttering, soffits and fascias page explains the rest of the service.