Information in a report from the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) has found “serious failings at every level”
The insulation scandal concerns the Energy Company Obligation 4 (ECO4) and the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) last year, which saw poor quality insulation installed in thousands of homes.
The scandal led to several firms involved being suspended for poor practice. Now, the PAC is calling for the Serious Fraud Office to investigate issues.
The scheme left many needing reparations
According to a National Audit Office report from October last year, between 22,000 and 23,000 homes had external wall insulation installed under the scheme, while 9,000 to 13,000 homes had internal insulation installed with major issues requiring reparation.
Some of these even posed health and safety risks to residents.
The current PAC report states that fraud is extremely likely to have occurred at some point along the way, as little to no measures were taken to audit the process or those involved in it.
Very little attention was spent on the system as a whole, or how well the system was working, leading to poor insulation and homeowners left with cold, damp, or unsafe conditions, and stress and poor mental health or physical health, not to mention costs for repairs.
The PAC report can be read in full here.
“The most catastrophic fiasco that I have seen”
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “I have served on the Public Accounts Committee for twelve years. In all that time, a 98% failure rate in a public sector initiative amounts to the most catastrophic fiasco that I have seen on this Committee.
“Indeed, our report finds the project was doomed to failure from the start. Government behaved inexplicably in redesigning a similar scheme which was working reasonably well into a highly-complex number of organisations with siloed responsibilities, which did not respond to failures anything like quickly enough to prevent damage being done to people’s homes.
“Potentially thousands of people are now living with health and safety risks in their homes, and despite government’s protestations we have nowhere near enough assurance that they are not financially exposed to unaffordable bills to repair the defective works.
“All involved in the system must now move at far greater pace to make good. The public’s confidence will have rightly been shaken in retrofit schemes given what has happened, and government now has a self-inflicted job of work on its hands to restore faith in the action required to bring down bills and reduce emissions.
“Finally – this Committee’s remit is financial scrutiny. We are not a law enforcement body. The sheer levels of non-compliance found here make it clear to us that these matters should be referred to the Serious Fraud Office, and our report recommends as such.”
