ZOE CONWAY & ESYLLT Carr
Correspondent and business producer
Bbc
Margaret Chappell cannot help
The owners who say that their houses are destroyed by inappropriate insulation adapted to a government program says that the action announced to repair it will not help them – because the work has been carried out too long ago.
The government has found a “serious systemic” problem in houses equipped with insulation under two of its own regimes since 2022 – and has ordered the installers to say them properly.
But that will not include Margaret Chappell, 93, whose work was done in 2021 and now his house is consumed by humid and black molds and a ruin plaster.
The government said he would keep other programs under examination, but Ms. Chappell said she and other residents were “ignored”.
“It is as if we do not exist. It’s appalling,” added Ms. Chappell, who had lived at her house in the county of Durham for 60 years.
She and 153 of her neighbors in the city of Chilton had solid wall insulation adjusted after the Durham county council advised them to take advantage of a free government program.
They were told that work would help make their homes warmer and reduce their energy bills. But Ms. Chappell, who suffers from chronic asthma, said that since then, Dump had consumed her living room.
His wallpaper has taken off and the plaster behind him is saturated and collapsed.
“I don’t want to be sitting here, breathing in this dust,” she said.
Margaret Chappell’s house is consumed by humid and black molds and a ruin plaster
More than three million houses in the United Kingdom have experienced isolations in the context of government regimes, including 260,000 properties that have insulated the solid wall.
In October, the BBC told the story of Tormuja Khatun, 84, of Luton, whose house with unsuitable solid wall insulation had mushrooms that pushed on the walls and the dry rot nourishing the floor joists.
Since then, the house has become so dangerous to live, it had to move. His family has been warned that it will cost more than £ 100,000 to be repaired.
The insulation of Ms. Khatun was installed in 2022, so in theory should be covered by the promise of help from the government – but they still do not know when the work will start and which will take the bill.
Tormuja Khatun had mushrooms and rot in his house after the failure of his insulation
Shortly after this BBC report, the government ordered an audit by the independent organization of the characteristic of more than 1,000 properties which have been insulation of the solid wall. He found that in half of the audit houses, the work had not been carried out at the required standard.
The Minister of Energy Consumers, Miatta Fahnbulleh, said last month in Parliament that the audit had found “systemic” “systemic” problems. She said the installers would be required to solve and pay any problem.
Ofgem’s energy regulator is now trying to establish how widespread the problems and have written 65,000 households that have been solid wall insulation since 2022 in the ECO4 and GBIS regimes of the government.
But because the houses of Chilton were carried out in another government program, called the delivery program for local authorities, it is currently not planned to contact the residents.
The government said it was “currently confident that the quality of the work as part of the local authorities delivery program was high ”, but it would keep the situation under study.
“Catastrophic scheme”
The construction surveyor, David Walter, has inspected isolated properties for 25 years. He evaluated damage in many of Chilton’s houses and said that “poor design and poor manufacture” had led to rain penetration which caused humidity and mold.
In the opinion of Mr. Walter, the properties are not adapted to the insulation of the solid wall and said that it should be removed from all properties. He warned that it could cost tens of thousands of pounds per home to be repaired.
He said that the cost “could actually exceed the market value” of each house and added “it just shows which catastrophic diagram it was”.
‘Someone must act’
Susan Haslam at the home of his parents
Susan Haslam said that she was fighting to repair the damage to her parents’ house, Bob and Maureen in Chilton since their death three years ago.
She said that her father worried about humidity when he took care of her mother, who had dementia.
She said that stress had prevented her family from being able to cry properly for their parents, who saw the house “as part of their inheritance”, after working for decades.
“We don’t want to drop them, we want it to be sorted for them and for us,” she said. “Someone is responsible and he must act.”
The company hired by the Durham County Council to do the work on Ms. Chappell’s house, Talent, was failed before the installations.
Sub-contract talent has subcontracted work to another company, Westdale North Ltd, which says it is “always on site, and working on problems that have occurred”.
He added that he was doing the work “as a gesture of goodwill, although it is not legally necessary to do so” by adding “the care and the consideration that we have for residents is an essential part of our service”.
The company said that the work had been reported by the Council and Talents before its erasure, adding: “Some problems that have been raised with talents have not been communicated to us because they are no longer in business.”
The head of planning and housing of the county of Durham, Michael Kelleher, said that it was “a complex situation, the collapse of talents causing delays out of our control and that we understand the frustrations of residents” .
Kelleher said that the Council had set up an e-mail address for the residents concerned, organized inspections to take place in the properties concerned and provided Westdale North a list of problems raised by the residents.
“Westdale North has carried out in-depth work to solve the problems and we will continue to light up with them to ensure that all exceptional problems are rectified,” he added.
