A group of Lydiate residents are attempting to force the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into releasing information about the disposal of asbestos at a local demolition site
A group of Lydiate residents are going to the Court of Appeal this week in an attempt to force the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into releasing information about the disposal of asbestos at a local demolition site.
At the end of January 2020, then-Sefton councillor Patricia O’Hanlon was alerted to what residents described as dangerous practices at a building site on Saville Road, which she went to investigate with her husband Mike.
She told the ECHO: “It was the start of covid, so people had to be in their own houses and gardens. The Saville Road site is surrounded by housing on all four sides and it’s all close together.
“There was a young man there, and it was absolutely horrific. They’d been smashing down the building with a sledgehammer. The building and the asbestos roof simultaneously. He didn’t have proper protective clothing on, he didn’t have a mask, and his clothing was just absolutely covered in dust.
“We told him what he was doing was wrong, and he didn’t know it was asbestos.”
On that day, the young man reportedly stopped working and locked the site up, but the demolition later continued.
Ms O’Hanlon said: “Asbestos debris and dust was going everywhere. It was very windy at that time as well,” she said, adding that it was blowing the dust onto children’s play equipment in the gardens.
She added: “That play equipment eventually had to be destroyed because it was covered in debris. We could see what was happening was wrong, but they kept trying to tell us that the site posed no danger.”
Mr and Mrs O’Hanlon and another resident, Derek Baxter, set about gathering evidence of the “very worst asbestos handling you can imagine”.
The residents and councillors complained to the HSE, but it said that the site was safe.
In February 2020, Ms O’Hanlon alleged that an HSE inspector went to the site and wanted to take enforcement action, but was prevented from doing so.
Ms O’Hanlon commissioned analysis by asbestos solutions company Fibre Safe, which found that there appeared to be asbestos cement containing Chrysotile asbestos fibres in the rubble from the site.
The former councillor claimed that the HSE “allowed this unlawful work to continue and covered up their involvement in these environmental crimes by concealing documents from us and the information rights bodies.”
She added: “These documents proved the site was very dangerous contrary to the HSE propaganda being fed to complainants of a site being managed appropriately.”
The group submitted an information request to the HSE. She said: “This was a body in force to keep us safe. We had discovered HSE had issued contravention notices like confetti but had no intention of proceeding to prosecution.
“It was to be some 16 months before HSE made an unlawful declaration under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) only declaring information to deceive us that the site was safe while deliberately concealing and withholding documents that showed a very dangerous site.”
Those documents included two enforcement notices served to a bogus asbestos clearance contractor, which the HSE refused to release. The residents group appealed that decision and won their case at the Upper Tribunal.
However, the HSE and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) are now appealing the judgment at the Court of Appeal on the basis that the dates of the files requested are outside the scope of the documents they can release. The residents group has enlisted the help of solicitors Leigh Day to present their case, which is set to be heard on Tuesday, June 9.
Ms O’Hanlon said: “We’ve been going for six years trying to get information from them. They have never given us a full and honest declaration of what information they hold.
“I think we have a force behind us of everybody who believes that what’s happening is wrong. There are laws in place to protect us all from this, but they’ve just disregarded those laws.
Ms O’Hanlon added: “It has been three laypeople against the HSE and ICO up to now – a David and Goliath scenario.”
She said that the Court of Appeal decision will have significant consequences for public access to environmental information. “This is a fight for every one of us in our country to be safe from asbestos and other contaminants.
“We’re all at risk of being exposed to asbestos from wagons trundling down our road and dust coming out. You’ve only got to get a tiny, tiny piece of asbestos latched onto your lung, and that is it, it’s fatal.”
Ms O’Hanlon added: “Saville Road is not the only site where it is happening. It’s happening all over the country and people don’t even know what’s going on.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful.”
There are various examples of asbestos handling concerns at building sites across the country, including in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. In summer 2025, ITV News reported that residents were calling for work on a housing development to stop on the site of a former asbestos factory after the substance was found in samples they obtained inside their properties.
A spokesperson for the HSE said: “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
The Government Legal Department is representing the HSE’s interests at the Court of Appeal, on the basis that the Upper Tribunal ruling risks overturning an exemption to the 2004 Environmental Information Regulations stating that bodies do not have to release information obtained after a request was made.
