AN EXPERT compensation firm specialising in asbestos-related claims is holding advice sessions in Swindon this week.

This year claims experts Industrial Diseases Compensation (IDC) has uncovered thousands of cases where workers may be due compensation after their health was damaged through working with asbestos.

In Swindon, asbestos-related illness is an enduring tragedy.

Evening Advertiser readers and local businesses paid for the creation of a memorial in Queen's Park to victims of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer so often found among former staff of the Railway Works that it is often referred to as the Swindon Disease.

Karen Gatiss of IDC said: "In some of the advice sessions we have organised, as many as one person in three was eligible to make a claim for the illness they were suffering as a result of exposure to asbestos at work."

The sessions were due to be held today from 11am to 2pm at the Gorse Hill Working Men's Club in Chapel Street, and tomorrow at the Rodbourne Cheney Workingmen's Club on Moredon Road, again from 11am to 2pm.