The KV Group: finding our sweet spot in consultancy.
From the sharp end of licensed asbestos removal, here’s how our journey unfolded...
Since our founding in 2009, we have consistently raised the bar in delivering safe, effective, and compliant asbestos services, making a lasting impact in Wales and beyond. Our business has changed considerably since then. We began by training asbestos removal operatives, progressed into recruitment and licensed asbestos removal, and have now brought everything we learned back into training and independent consultancy.
Kusten Vorland was founded by Katie Parsons-Young during a difficult period for employment in Wales. The steel industry was making significant redundancies while asbestos removal contractors were struggling to recruit and retain skilled operatives. Working with the Welsh Government’s ReAct programme, we trained people for careers in licensed asbestos removal before helping them secure work within the industry. We later obtained a licence to supply asbestos labour, creating full-time employment while responding to an industry-wide skills shortage.
However, asbestos labour has never operated like conventional recruitment. Operatives travel between projects, demand fluctuates and rates can change dramatically according to the complexity and location of the work. So, as the industry evolved, we evolved with it. We retained our strongest people and secured our own HSE licence to undertake licensed asbestos removal. That decision marked the beginning of the next chapter in the Kusten Vorland story.
From creating opportunities to transforming places.
For more than a decade, Kusten Vorland delivered complex licensed asbestos removal projects across Wales and beyond. Contracting was a heavily male-dominated world, and Katie had to fight hard to establish both herself and the company within it. Kusten Vorland earned its place through technical competence, resilience and an unwillingness to compromise on standards.
Our work contributed to some of Wales’s most ambitious public investment programmes. We helped prepare schools including Groes Primary School, Dyffryn Comprehensive School and Ysgol Cwm Brombil for redevelopment, enabling generations of pupils to learn in safer, modern environments. In 2017, we managed extensive asbestos removal and demolition works at Penarth Learning Community, helping to prepare the site for the development that included the award-winning Ysgol y Deri.
Our other significant projects included work at Llantwit Major Secondary School, Sandfields Comprehensive School, Llanilltud Fawr Primary School and the University of South Wales Atrium building. These projects demanded far more than asbestos removal. They required careful planning, regulatory knowledge, commercial control and the ability to balance safety with the realities of occupied and operational buildings.
Finding our home and building our future in hospitality
The hospitality industry welcomed us, trusted us and gave us the opportunity to demonstrate what thoughtful asbestos management could achieve. We have since developed and delivered asbestos management solutions for prominent hotel groups and brands including Park Inn, Thistle, Hand Picked, Crown Plaza, Radisson and Hilton Hotels.
Hotels present a distinctive asbestos challenge. They operate around the clock, protect guests as well as employees and cannot approach intrusive work, maintenance or emergency repairs in the same way as an unoccupied commercial building. Understanding those pressures became central to our work. We learned how to integrate asbestos compliance into hotel operations without losing sight of guest experience, commercial priorities or business continuity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, both contracting and hospitality faced extraordinary pressures. As hotels adapted their buildings to provide temporary accommodation under Home Office contracts, the KV team advised clients on the asbestos risks created by changes in occupancy, maintenance and building use. COVID was one of the hardest periods in our history, but it also reinforced something we had understood for years: clients needed more than contractors. They needed knowledgeable, independent advice.
A deliberate change in direction, shaped by everything we’ve learned
In 2023, Kusten Vorland’s transition from licensed asbestos removal contractor to independent consultancy and training provider was visually marked by a smart, modern update to our 20-year-old logo. This was not a step away from the asbestos industry. It was the culmination of everything we had learned within it.
After years of surveying buildings, planning projects, directing licensed removal works, managing contractors and supporting dutyholders, we understood where asbestos management most commonly breaks down. We had also seen the commercial practices, standardised recommendations and conflicts of interest that clients rarely get to see. By becoming entirely independent, we can now use that knowledge solely in our clients’ interests.
We do not undertake asbestos removal, so we have no financial interest in recommending it. Our role is to tell clients what is genuinely required, what is proportionate and how they can achieve compliance without unnecessary work or avoidable expense. Becoming smaller has allowed us to become more focused. Today, clients benefit directly from Katie’s experience rather than being passed through layers of account management.
We may be a small consultancy, but we have a significant impact on how some of the UK’s largest hotels and property portfolios manage asbestos. Discover our insights on achieving independent compliance in our News and Insights Section, or learn more about our Asbestos Risk Management Services.
We’re proud of where we’ve been and even more excited for what’s ahead.
We helped 2,160 people develop skills that enabled them to secure employment within the asbestos industry. We delivered complex projects that helped transform schools, universities, hotels and public buildings. We built client relationships that have endured from our earliest days and survived some of the most challenging periods our industries have faced.
Today, we bring that entire history to our consultancy and training. We help dutyholders understand their responsibilities under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, challenge advice that does not serve them and establish practical, sustainable systems they can manage with confidence.
Our purpose is no longer to make clients reliant on our services. It is to give them the knowledge, structure and confidence to take control of their own asbestos compliance. What began with training has come full circle. We are once again focused on education and empowerment, strengthened by more than 20 years of experience gained at every level of the asbestos industry. We are proud of where we have been, clear about who we are today and excited about the impact we can make next.
Would you like to include us in your asbestos management journey?
Contact us today to discuss how we can support you with asbestos compliance.
