Asbestos sufferers hit by new ruling

ASBESTOS sufferers have been dealt a blow following a new business ruling.

From tomorrow, employers will no longer be legally required to store their insurance records for 40 years.

The Government has introduced the new law to reduce the administrative burden on businesses.

But lawyers who represented the family of Leigh Carlisle, one of the youngest people in the UK to die from mesothelioma, claim it will be harder to trace company insurance histories.

Leigh Carlisle, of Derby Street, Failsworth, was 26 when she was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer contracted by breathing in asbestos, last year.

Doctors were baffled how Leigh, who died last month, developed the disease but she may have contracted it as a schoolgirl while taking a shortcut through a factory yard where asbestos was cut.

A Freedom of Information request has been submitted to Oldham Council to determine whether there was asbestos in three Oldham schools.

Geraldine Coombs, leading industrial disease lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said the new ruling would waste valuable time in compensation claims. And it could make it impossible to identify an insurer and recover compensation from them.

Ms Coombs said: “Employers will no longer have to keep back-dated evidence of their Employers’ Liability Insurance.

“This means we will not easily be able to identify the insurer responsible for the time at which asbestos exposure occurred.

“Mesothelioma is a painful, fast-acting disease and compensation claims are usually aimed at providing the sufferer with as much care as possible in their final days.”