Insulation scandal: “I have to scrape the mold off the walls”

Every two weeks, Zoe Godrich scrapes the black mold off the walls of her children’s bedrooms.

She says her house now looks like a squat. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking because I can’t provide my children with the basic needs of a safe warm home.”

The mold set in after her Swansea home was fitted with hollow-wall insulation three years ago. She says that within weeks, water was constantly running down the walls “like a little waterfall.”

Cavity wall insulation installed under government-backed green energy schemes may have failed in hundreds of thousands of homes because it was not installed correctly, the BBC can reveal.

Single mother Zoe and her three children now sleep in one room, on mattresses on the floor. The other two bedrooms are uninhabitable, she says.

She says she threw out all their beds and wardrobes because they were engulfed in dampness and mold. She shows me a picture of her six-year-old daughter’s baby doll, covered in black mold, which she had to throw in a bucket.

One of her daughters takes several medications for asthma. Her son has eczema so bad that his cracked skin is bleeding. She says they were not taking these medications before the isolation. The NHS says dampness and mold can lead to respiratory and skin diseases.

David Walter is a building inspector who has been inspecting detached homes in the UK for over 25 years. He visited Zoe’s home in April and said the installation had been “messed up” and the extraction had also not been done properly.

He says there is nothing unusual about what happened to Zoe’s home. “The industry is motivated by money – they get government subsidies to do this work. So there’s an incentive for contractors to just get people to sign up, do the work and get the grants.” He blames a lack of oversight and regulation for the problems.

Since 2008, more than three million homes have had cavity wall insulation under green energy schemes set up by the government. Energy suppliers were responsible for inspecting 5% of them to check the quality of the installation.

Figures compiled by energy watchdog Ofgem, seen by the BBC, suggest insulation in hundreds of thousands of these homes may have failed because it was not installed correctly.

A total of 15 million homes had cavities filled.

A year after the problems began, Zoe went on a merry-go-round of companies and organizations to try to get help. It started in early 2022 with Installers UK doing the installation work. The company insisted that the insulation was not to blame and then went bankrupt.

The firm told the BBC the problems were caused by a hole in the roof, although it could not provide a copy of the pre-installation report to confirm this. If there were problems with the property, according to standards body the British Valuation Office, they should have been fixed before the work could be carried out.

She then contacted City Energy Network Limited who secured the funding for Zoe’s home. His name is on the warranty for the work, although City Energy says this is a mistake and has nothing to do with the warranty that should have been issued by the company that did the work.

Zoe says she was advised to remove the isolation. She took out a £7,000 loan to pay for it. What she didn’t know was that mining would void the job’s warranty. Without the insulation the house is now very cold. It cannot afford to increase the temperature, which leads to even more moisture and mold.

City Energy told the BBC that its only involvement was to fund a grant through the government scheme. He says he is not affiliated with Installers UK, nor was he involved in the installation or removal process.

The government recognized that standards needed to be improved several years ago. It commissioned the independent organization Trustmark to set up a quality assurance scheme in 2019.

But the problems Zoe faces raise questions about how well the scheme is working. Both Installers UK, who carried out the work in 2021, and City Energy, who secured the grants, were registered with Trustmark.

Zoe says she doesn’t see a permit. “The life was just sucked out of me. For the past few years, all I’ve done is fight company after company.”

City Energy says that while it is under no obligation to provide any assistance, it “understands and sympathizes with Ms Godrich’s position” and says it has tried to resolve the issues directly with her in an attempt to help.

In a statement, Trustmark told the BBC: “The issues at Ms Godrich’s property are complex. The work was done to an earlier standard and did not take the “whole house” approach that current standards do, preventing some of the problems seen here.

“However, the situation in which Ms Godrich has been left is completely unacceptable and must be rectified. We will work with the British Valuation Office and City Energy to reach an appropriate solution that makes Mrs Godrich’s property a warm, comfortable and healthy home for her and her family.”

The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero declined to comment, but referred us to a ministerial statement from February, which said: “The Government is committed to protecting all consumers carrying out home upgrades, as well as improving the overall consumer journey.”