PAC: Why was govt’s home energy efficiency scheme such a failure?
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will hold a scrutiny session on faulty energy efficiency installations.
Meeting details
The session will explore why there were such high levels of poor quality and faulty installations of insulation under the government’s Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme, which was meant to tackle fuel poverty and reduce emissions through home retrofits.
Tens of thousands of these homes now need repairs to tackle health and safety and damp and mould risks. Almost all (98%, up to 23k) of homes with external insulation, and a little under a third (29%, up to 13k) of homes with internal insulation installed under the ECO are now estimated to need fixing. At September 2025, less than 10% of the homes estimated to be affected had been fully remediated.
Two panels will be held, first with the chief executives of TrustMark and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), two bodies with differing responsibilities for the quality of retrofits, followed by senior officials from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) and energy regulator Ofgem.
Witnesses’ views are likely to be sought on why so many have proved faulty, why it took government so long to realise poor quality was rife in the scheme, and government’s plans to fix the c.30k homes in need of attention and reform the system to prevent similar future failures.