Nearly all of the external wall insulation fitted under the latest round of the government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme has had to be fixed, a damning report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed.
Parliament’s public spending watchdog examined recent failures with the quality of installations secured via the energy supplier-funded Energy Company Obligation (ECO) and the Great British Insulation Scheme(GBIS), introduced by the previous government.
Its report, Energy efficiency installations under the Energy Company Obligation, states that poor installation work resulted in an estimated 22-23,000 homes having major issues that needed fixing. This is 98% of the external wall installations under the latest phases of ECO.
The NAO’s audit of projects carried out under ECO 4 and GBIS showed that up to 13,000 homes with internal insulation (29% of the total) also had major issues that needed fixing.
Up to 2,000 homes with external wall insulation had issues that posed an immediate health and safety risk, the report found, including exposed live electrical cabling and blocked boiler ventilation.
The NAO report states that nearly all of the faulty installations have been remediated, at a cost of up to £18,000 per property.
