It is fair to say that the cavity wall insulation industry has taken a bit of a hammering over recent weeks. Lively lunchtime debates have taken place over the radio regarding the merits of cavity wall insulation but it was the formation of the ‘Cavity Wall Insulation Victims Alliance’ in the last couple of weeks that finally forced the industry into action.
The result was an announcement from The Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency (CIGA) that they are looking to hire an independent consumer champion to help bolster their services to consumers.
Close to 6 million properties in the UK have been issued a CIGA guarantee for cavity wall insulation – but what does this guarantee actually mean and does it provide any protection?
Taken directly from their website – ‘The CIGA Guarantee covers defects in materials or workmanship, and in the event of a problem CIGA’s technical department is there to help’
How do installers issue a CIGA guarantee?
In order for a cavity wall installer to be able to issue a CIGA guarantee they need to be registered with the Agency and follow an installation process including a detailed pre-installation assessment and stringent technical standards.
In principle this sounds great – providing protection to the homeowner if anything goes wrong – so why are the number of complaints against CIGA stacking up?
Why are there so many new complaints regarding cavity wall insulation?
Why are there so many new complaints regarding cavity wall insulation?The majority of cavity wall homes have already been installed with cavity wall insulation – the assessors / installers tend to view any cavity worthy of cavity insulation, whether it is suitable or not. Take for example timber framed properties – these are 100% not suitable for cavity wall insulation but still they are being insulated. This is in part due to lack of knowledge from the installer companies, but also because they want to make the money from the install so will proceed anyway. Often these issues only come to light when the property is due to be sold, since mortgage companies will not provide mortgages to the new buyer until the insulation is extracted.
Another example is a property that gets hit by driving rain – the cavity wall insulation can make a pathway for water leading to damp forming on the inside of the property. Again, an installer might not realise the property is unsuitable and install the insulation anyway.
The final issue comes when the installer is rushing to get through as many jobs as possible or cutting corners to make more money. This includes injecting beads without glue or leaving big air pockets when injecting the cavity wall.
In many cases cavity wall insulation is appropriate and installed correctly, but certainly this is not always the case! CIGA guarantees are being issued regardless though, but often these issues only come to light years down the line.
Up to now CIGA have tend to blame it on the installers and clean their hands of these claims and as a result nothing ends up getting done, leaving the homeowner to foot the bill to resolve the issue. This has really harmed CIGA’s reputation and calls into question the value of the CIGA guarantee.
What are CIGA trying to do to help the situation?
CIGA are introducing an independent consumer champion, which they hope will drive improvements to the customer service that CIGA provides, and ensure the agency is held to account.
The Consumer Champion will attend board meetings, provide mediation to resolve long-standing issues, publish statistics on CIGA’s consumer response time in the Annual Report and will be awarded power to recommend disciplinary proceedings if CIGA member companies fail in their duty of care to consumers.
What have CIGA said?
On the announcement, Gerry Miller, Chief Executive of CIGA, said:
“Problems with cavity wall insulation are exceptionally rare, affecting only around two in every thousand installations. On the rare cases where something does go wrong however, it is CIGA’s responsibility to help consumers.
“We accept that there have been some cases where there have been unacceptable holdups in the process. We take ensuring that CIGA is best equipped to help homeowners and residents very seriously, so we are appointing a Consumer Champion, to hold CIGA and the industry to account and to improve the service that we provide to customers.”
Amber Rudd MP, Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said:
“I’ve been working closely with the industry to improve consumer protection. The appointment of an independent Consumer Champion at CIGA would be a big step forward for cavity wall insulation customers.”
It is welcome news indeed that the industry is taking action to improve its reputation. Our recommendation is to speak to the installer before any work and ensure they are operating under the CIGA framework.
Will the CIGA consumer champion help?
CIGA are clearly feeling the heat, hence this announcement, and it remains to be seen whether the CIGA consumer champion will actually help the homeowner. All we can say is that we are getting more and more complaints from homeowners who have taken their case to CIGA only to have it thrown out on some technicality.
Personally we feel the problem stems from CIGA being run as a cash cow, generating funds rather than providing any real service (they currently have £20m sat in the bank but only have 5 full time staff at this current time. This is surely not enough to oversee the 6 million guarantees that have currently been issued – however ,only time will tell!
Cavity Wall Insulation Victims’Alliance can give no credence to the Consumer Champion and was not involved in deciding the terms and conditions of this post. There are significant problems with Cavity Wall Insulation which five full time staff would struggle to resolve. CIGA can only sustain approximately 900 claims against it hence it’s constant defence . Consumers are being left in dire circumstances without swift redress in our significant experience. Amber Rudd MP and DECC are aware of these issues. A scandal would be in the cover up.
Please could you let me know how i can contact CWIVA
thank you
Not everyone is registered with CIGA, you are looking in the wrong place folks- Try BUFCA the PU installers has a list of installers on their website for CWI.
If you have a house in the SW of England and it gets lashed with rain ,DO NOT GET CAVITY WALL INSULATION. My house is ruined . Its a 1950’s ex council house in Plymouth , I have been fighting to get my house fixed back the way it was for over a year now and still CIGA are trying to wriggle out of it. My families home, life nightmare is beyond belief.
I bought my first house two years ago. It is a 1970’s home and had theECOgroup come and insulate my home offering the CIGA Government backed guarantee. Obviously the insulation service itself was free, but still getting it done was the biggest regret of my life – seriously. the CIGA thing is about as useful as a bit of used toilet paper. We had damp come through the wall about 2 months after it was installed, so we went back ECOgroup but they had already gone out of business which was when the alarm bells started going off. We thought the CIGA guarantee would allow us to get this resolved, but instead they came back to us and blamed us as if it was our fault for letting them install the cavity wall insulation on our home. This was via a Government scheme! Why the hell is it our fault! Who are these people installing it when it isn’t suitable. It ended up costing us £3k to get it removed. CIGA stink. I have since done research on them and it is run by the same cowboys that own all the big cavity wall insulation companies. So yes cavity wall insulation does work in some cases, in fact I am sure a huge number of cases, but the CIGA warranty is a complete waste of time. Make sure you get it installed by a big company that is my recommendation and try to find neighbours that have had cavity wall insulation installed and make sure they have had no problems!
Hi Bex,
I think this is the sort of thing they are trying to improve, but appreciate that far more can done. As you say, putting the blame on the homeowner is not acceptable if Government approved installers are putting the cavity wall insulation in peoples homes. We tried to speak to their new consumer champion this morning, and to be honest she was frosty to say the least, but I guess appointing by appointing her they are at least trying to make the right moves forward. I think CIGA will always struggle though until such time it becomes truly independent as an oversight body.
The installer mis-sold me cavity wall insulation and after having CIGA inspect the property, they said it was all installed to standard. Blaming me in part for not controlling condensation. An independant report said this was not true and the CWI must be extracted as it was the cause of damp and mould. CIGA are pointless. CIGA later tried to take credit for having the CWI extracted. Here is my property https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otl_EAH-1K8
I raised a problem with CIGA over two months ago (damp patches on a wall which had cavity insulation). They stopped replying to my emails and when I called, I was told nobody was available to speak to me. As the two month period has now elapsed, I raised this with their ‘consumer champion’ two days ago. I got an automated email reply saying someone would be in touch. Nothing as yet. I can see this going to solicitors.
In my opinion ciga guarentee is not worth the paper it is written on. After nearly 12 minths of communication with ciga to resolve an issue with damp in my property its still not sorted and now telling me they dont cover it… shambles
I have been trying to get GIGA to resolve a complaint about my cavity wall insulation since 2013. They sent a surveyor out on 16th May 2016 who discovered “large voids” I still have not received a copy of his report and they do not respond to my letters. They are NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
Hi N A Larkin, I think that is the feedback we are getting more and more regarding CIGA!!
My Cavity wall insulation has failed.
No Ciga Guarantee was ever issued and I cannot find my Installation papers. Building control at the Local Authority do not have any information to help. I want to claim and I have been told that I need evidence of the Installer details before I can do this.
Can you help? Surely the Installer would have had to claim from a Funder before getting paid. I don’t know who funded. How can I find out details so that I can contact the Funder for help? Alternatively, have you any other suggestions?
Charles Rose
Have all details but cannot get threw to get a copy of certificate. Even have the certificate number given to us by company who put it in
I’ve had serious problems wit CIGA. Some of your observations help understand why. David Brill.
Well I have tried to contact British Gas Trading Ltd and guess what they are unable to be contacted CIGA for help but again they would not help me without me unless I supplied them with proof that my house belongs to me. Well we were never asked before we had cavity wall insulation installed . So CIGA the guarantee is not worth the paper its written on I do have a damp patch has come after few years and the phone number to British Gas Trading Ltd is not avaliable just wish we didnt bother to have the work done Im going to contact Trading Standards for some help
I contacted CIGA on an issue with damp.
A representative called to assess the problem.
CIGA has blamed me for lack of maintenance and refuse to do anything, which I dispute as I had
all the maintenance done and repairs and replacements carried out . An independent company came to see
the problem and noted that the insulation had dropped, which CIGA are denying.