Sharon Lord, 49, worked hard and spent thousands to renovate her four-bed family home in Burnley, Lancashire.
Ms Lord’s dream turned into a nightmare shortly after she was approached at her home by a door-knocker advertising cavity wall insulation that would be delivered as part of a government scheme in 2014.
She is one of thousands of homeowners trapped in cold homes plagued with black mould due to botched insulation. In her own case, she has been advised that it will cost over £100,000 to have the work corrected.
Earlier this month, the Government said homes fitted with solid wall insulation under two inherited schemes – ECO4 and the Great British Insulation Scheme since 2022 – 30,000 had been impacted faulty installs.
Ms Lord was not required to foot the bill of the installation as it was covered under the ECO4 scheme which offers completely free cavity wall insulation grants to eligible customers to reduce energy bills and make homes more energy efficient. However, the cost free installation has been anything but.
Just a few months after the insulation was installed, she noticed wet patches on walls around her home. By March these had developed into areas of black mould, particularly in the front bedroom which belonged to her eldest son, then eight-years-old.
She added: “I had a newborn in the property as well, but he wasn’t in that room.
“This mould was actually showing up round about where the steel girder actually was at the front of the property. I just thought it might just be settling down.
“I did contact the company, and they just told me to give it a quick wash a day and it would be okay.”
Members of the SSB Law Victims Support Group have been plagued by black mould for years (Photo: Supplied)Ms Lord washed the affected areas down with bleach and water, but the problem persisted – and it was not long before others emerged.
“I started noticing other patches within the house. There was movement in the property as well, cracks around the windows. I had a crack that appeared on my bathroom wall, which is an outer wall that the insulation had gone into.
“And when I contacted the company, they just told me that this was ‘perfectly natural’,” she said.
‘It was running down the walls’
She filled in the cracks as advised but the following winter the problems worsened and the condensation was so bad it caused significant damage.
“It was running down the walls. It was just wet through all the time,” she said. “I had to replace the floors in the bedroom because they were no-good because they were wet through and, obviously, it’s not safe.”
Ms Lord, and others who had to cavity wall insulation fitted, had been promised lower energy bills and more energy efficient homes, but for those affected by botched installations, the opposite has been true.
“It was colder inside my bedroom than what it was outside,” she said. “It will have obviously, made my energy bills go up higher rather than reducing them.
“My main concern was that the house was cold and that it was damp.”
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When she for a third time to get back in contact with the firm that installed the insulation, Heatwave Energy Systems, she was unable to. The company went into liquidation.
In January, the Government suspended 39 businesses from installing new solid wall insulation in people’s homes after finding widespread cases of poor-quality insulation under inherited ECO4 and GBIS.
She now regularly washes the walls of her home down with bleach to keep the black mould at bay, uses dehumidifiers and keeps windows open for long periods.
Ms Lord sought support from law firm SSB Law, which has now gone bust, in a bid to get redress for the damage. The surveyor sent to assess the situation said her property “wasn’t worth the plot of land that it was stood on” and the cost of any work to put it right would far exceed the value of her home.
“My house is probably worth about £75,000, £80,000 and they told me that it would probably be £128,000 to correct the damage.”
The extensive remedial work would involve taking off the roof, removing outer walls and chipping away at the insulation. The beams in the entire home would also require gutting and replacing. It would be unlivable during the process.
“I’m a single parent, so I don’t even have a partner that I could lean on, and I certainly don’t have the money to put the house right,” she said. “I’m just stuck with the house, and it’s soul destroying.”
She feels the Government is doing enough to protect the people having cavity wall insulation installed now but said they are “absolutely not” doing anything to support people affected around the same time as her.
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Read More“All I want is my property to be put back to the position it was before that cavity wall insulation went in.”
Debra Sofia Magdalene, administrator for the SSB Law Victims Support Group, a network of homeowners affected by failed cavity wall insulation under Government-backed retrofit schemes, said they are “really fed up” that remedy measures have only been introduced for more recent victims.
“The Government has to do something about it. This is putting people’s lives at risk. Damp and mould is a killer,” Ms Magdalene said, adding she believes at least two people’s deaths have been linked to the scandal.
The group, which blames inadequate monitoring of the government-backed grants, said victims have also experienced respiratory problems, skin conditions, and seen pre-existing health conditions worsen.
‘The people who installed it, they should be punished’
Habiba Ali’s mother was approached by a door-knocker advertising cavity wall insulation in 2017.
A couple of months after the installation, Ms Ali, who was living with her mother at the time, said they started noticing black mould.
“The house was really, really cold,” she said. Soon after, Ms Ali and her mother developed a persistent cough and breathing difficulties.
Her mother, who relies on her state pension did not pay for the insulation to be fitted, but now faces higher energy bills to keep her home warm.
Ms Ali said because her mother is unable to afford to heat her entire home, she refrains from putting the central heating on and only heats one room when she uses it.
She has since moved into her own property which now has a broken boiler. Ms Ali said she was told she would only be eligible for a free boiler if insulation upgrades were made to her home. But she refuses to have them because of her previous experience.
It means she has to take hot showers at her mum’s and use electric heaters to warm her home.
“We just try to heat the one room up and as soon as the room gets hot then we just switch it off for a while, then if it gets cold, we put it back on,” she said.
The i Paper contacted the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero for comment.
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