Ok, so we are planning to redo our kitchen which will undoubtedly involve cutting into the walls.

It is 1940s house and has lathe and plaster walls. We previously had other stuff done several years ago that involved removing some lathe and plaster and replacing with gib, the builder certainly didn't mention anything about asbestos at the time, but I believe health and safety regulations have become much stricter in the past couple of years.

I have no idea if asbestos was used in lathe and plaster at that time, and everything I read is pretty vague with a lot of mights and maybes.

Is this something I am meant to check before, or just leave it up to the builder doing the work? What do people normally do?

I don't want to find myself in situation where I have paid for a bunch of work and materials to then be told I need to spend an extra $xxxx for asbestos removal.