ASBESTOS in council homes in Wokingham Borough will be “eradicated as quickly as possible” in a new £500,000 action plan.

Wokingham Borough Council is looking for a contractor to find out where asbestos is, and remove it.

The contract will likely cost more than half a million pound. The money will come from the council’s housing revenue account, used to maintain and service its social housing.

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Councillor John Kaiser, lead for housing, said: “We built a number of council houses in the past using asbestos, which at the time was a perfectly acceptable building material. But now we have a duty to both tenants and contractors, as landlords.

“And this is for us to appoint a competent company to actually remove the asbestos and report where the problems are. Their job will to be to go round and manage asbestos and eradicate it as quickly as possible in the council homes that we’ve got.”

Cllr Kaiser was hopeful the contractors could clear all the asbestos in council homes in the borough quickly.

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He said: “The amount of asbestos in our homes — as we’re delivering newer homes of course they won’t have it — will hopefully be something that will get eradicated fairly quickly.”

The plan was welcomed from opposition councillors, during a meeting of the council executive on April 22.

Cllr Rachel Bishop-Firth said: “A friend of mine recently lost her husband, much too young, to a disease which was almost certainly caused by the fact that he had worked with asbestos in the past.  

“He was just one of the 20 tradespeople who the Health and Safety Executive estimates lose their lives every week to asbestos-related illnesses.  

“I am glad to see that the council is tackling this issue to ensure the safety of residents living in homes owned by the borough, and the tradespeople who undertake repairs.”