Cavity Wall Insulation

George Hollingbery Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Sanders. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), for securing this important debate. The tale I have to tell today is not quite as dramatic as the one he told. Today’s debate of course follows on from a similar one obtained by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) in October.

According to Department of Energy and Climate Change estimates, there are about 690,000 remaining “easy to treat” cavity walls in Britain, not including those in exposed locations, or with other issues such as narrow cavities and wall faults. If those were all insulated, the energy bill saving would be about £100 million a year, and the carbon dioxide saving would be about 450,000 tonnes a year. That would be the same CO₂ saving as taking about 180,000 cars off the road. We should be clear, therefore, that cavity wall insulation is, on the whole, a good thing, when it is done at the right time, in the right place, in the right properties, by the right people.

Encouragingly, DECC statistics indicate that since 2009 the number of CWI installations has hugely increased across the UK. In 2012-13, in East Hampshire alone, there were 4,986 cavity wall installations, which is welcome—as long, of course, as they were done properly. However, as we have heard this morning and no doubt will again, there are times and places where the treatment is not suitable. For homes in an unsheltered position or exposed to severe wind-driven rain, or whose external walls are poorly built or maintained—with, for example, cracks in the brickwork or rendering—cavity wall insulation can clearly be a liability, as it may attract severe damp.

It is in just such a location that a constituent of mine in Meon Valley is currently experiencing terrible damp problems in his home, subsequent to the installation of cavity wall insulation. In the past several years dampness has begun to occur inside his south-facing walls, which, as he lives on top of a hill, are frequently exposed to driving rain. He tried several remedial measures without contacting the insulation company, none of which, unfortunately, solved the problem, and he was forced to conclude a year or so ago that his cavity wall insulation, installed in 2006, was the likely culprit. He brought the matter to the installer’s attention late last year. Since then, like, I suspect, many people attending the debate, he has been in dispute with the installer, and has requested the removal of the insulation.

This is not a fairy tale, but I am delighted to report that last week, after the debate and my intention to take part was announced, the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency, with which the installer has an agreement to provide a 25-year guarantee, has, after a further inspection of the property, recommended two options to resolve the problem. Hip, hip hooray! What a marvellous thing that is. One option is extraction in the affected area of wall, with the removal of all insulation to minimise the risk of further problems. Alternatively, the work could be redone with a decent damp seal membrane and/or a waterproofer called Haloseal. That is a magical thing, and I am delighted. I have also been informed that CIGA will reimburse my constituent for considerable costs incurred in remedying damp damage and for machinery that he had to bring into the house to extract water from the atmosphere.

That is all welcome and I am grateful that CIGA has reacted so positively to the case, but, despite the assurances, my constituent has very little trust in the industry. The fact is that the insulation should never have been installed as it was in the first place. Obviously, despite fairly well defined circumstances in which cavity wall insulation is clearly not appropriate, it is nevertheless routinely still being installed. According to a DECC review in 2012, there are between 215,000 and 245,000 cavity-walled houses in the UK in an exposed location, which could make them inappropriate for cavity wall insulation. That represents 1% to 1.5% of cavity-walled houses in the UK, so it is by no means an insignificant problem. I understand that my constituency is described as a category 3 area, which means that it has “severe” exposure to driving rain, and that therefore cavity wall insulation may be unsuitable for some properties. That sounds like almost everywhere in the UK to me.

Surely it should not be too difficult for installers to get things right. The CIGA website says that registered installers are required to carry out a thorough pre-installation inspection of the property, so problems should really be ironed out at that stage. It seems that, as most eloquently described by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen, there is a need for either much more policing of the scheme or much more rigorous training.