On 18 May 2026, the Palmerston North District Court sentenced property owner Sanal Lonappan to a $32,000 fine for treating WorkSafe asbestos notices as optional.
Judge Lance Rowe convicted him under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 for breaching a prohibition notice, failing to give inspectors reasonable assistance, and intentionally removing a prohibition notice. The facts are a clean warning for anyone owning or working on pre-2000 New Zealand buildings: when WorkSafe says stop, stop.
What happened
WorkSafe first got involved in May 2022 over concerns the building contained asbestos. Inspectors confirmed asbestos-containing materials and issued prohibition notices requiring refurbishment work to stop. What followed was a sustained pattern of non-compliance.
Lonappan repeatedly ignored statutory requests for documents and information. Inspectors later found work continuing in breach of the prohibition notice. He was also seen removing notices affixed to the building's entrances. That work included removing asbestos-contaminated soffit material from a canopy directly above a public footpath — the kind of disturbance that can put fibres into the air for workers and anyone walking underneath.
WorkSafe area manager Carl Baker called the defiance repeated, deliberate, and ultimately unsuccessful. A prohibition notice, he said, exists because there is a risk of serious harm. It is a legal requirement, not a suggestion.
Why prohibition notices matter
A prohibition notice is the urgent tool inspectors use when they believe an activity involves, or will involve, an immediate and serious risk to health or safety. It stops the activity, or stops it being carried on in a specified way, until the problem is fixed.
Failing to comply can attract serious fines under HSWA. Notices must be prominently displayed while they remain in force. Removing, destroying, or defacing them is its own offence. Lonappan's case stacks all three problems: the work continued, the inspectors were obstructed, and the paper on the door came down.
What property owners, PCBUs and builders should do
If you are planning work on a building built or renovated before 2000 in New Zealand:
- Commission an asbestos survey from an accredited surveyor before work begins.
- Do not disturb or remove materials that may contain asbestos without proper testing and controls.
- Where removal is required, use a licensed removalist.
- If WorkSafe issues a prohibition notice, stop immediately — the same day, not after you finish the bay you are in.
- Leave notices displayed and cooperate with inspectors. Failing to assist is a criminal offence under HSWA.
Builders and site supervisors should treat a missing or torn-down WorkSafe notice as a stop-work trigger in its own right, not as someone else's paperwork problem.
How this sits with the rest of the NZ asbestos story
This is a different lesson from WorkSafe's August 2026 roof waterblasting alert. That case was about a prohibited method on asbestos roofs. This one is about ignoring the stop-work order once asbestos is already in play. Both end in the same place: asbestos remains New Zealand's leading cause of work-related death, with around 220 people dying from asbestos-related disease each year, and the regulator is publishing enforcement stories to make the duty concrete.
The bigger signal
Lonappan had multiple chances to engage and put things right. The conviction and fine arrived anyway. For duty holders, the cheap move is compliance on the day the notice is issued. The expensive move is hoping the notice will go away if you take it off the door.
$32,000 is one published outcome. The risk that forced the prohibition notice — fibres over a public footpath — is the one that should change behaviour on the next pre-2000 refurbishment, before an inspector has to write anything down.
Sources
- WorkSafe New Zealand, 18 May 2026 — Ignoring WorkSafe has consequences
- 1News, 18 May 2026 — Property owner ignores asbestos stop-work order, fined $32,000