About a year ago I had an inspection visit by a surveyor who was acting for HBC in a survey of local housing standards.
(I don't know why I get picked on for official surveys)
As he looked round and measured up, he noticed the bad state of the soffit boards. Most of the paint had flaked off. The bare areas - he said 'that looks like asbestos to me'
Recently Hyndburn Homes have 'repaired' the soffit boards.
They replaced half of the frontage of this block of flats with
white PVC, and 'repaired' my half by scraping
off flaking paint and repainting with
black.
It looks odd - money scrimping in the extreme.
I kept my windows closed while they scraped.
Last year when we had a new TV ariel installation, they said that all existing ariels and wiring would be removed - they haven't done that.
So the 'decorators' painted over all the spaghetti wiring clipped to the soffit boarding - so that when it is eventually removed it will need repainting again.