Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 13
62nd Report - Faulty energy efficiency installations
Published 23 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Faulty energy efficiency installations All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
To limit further faulty installations, the Department asked the certification bodies and scheme providers, via TrustMark, to suspend installer businesses based on their failure rate. By the end of January 2025, 38 installers had been suspended, preventing them from carrying out new work of this kind under government schemes.22 The Department told us this represented 81% of the external wall insulation market and that 22 installers had been re-instated by the time we took oral evidence in November 2022, 16 C&AG’s Report, para 2.3 and Figure 10 17 C&AG’s Report, para 2.6 18 Q 75 19 C&AG’s Report, Figure 7 20 FEE0003, FEE0021 21 Energy Security and Net Zero Committee Oral evidence: Retrofitting homes for net zero, HC 453, 12 February 2025 22 C&AG’s Report, para 2.13 12 after having fixed the identified defects for which they were responsible.23 However, this reinstatement process only covers remediation work identified by the audit of 1,109 external wall insulation installations, before it was understood how widespread the major failures against the quality standard were.24
From: Public Accounts Committee, 62nd Report - Faulty energy efficiency installations (HC 1229), 23 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 7 April 2026 (deadline 23 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations, but disagrees with the recommendation to halt wall insulation installation without independent supervision and with the recommendation to refer fraud to the Serious Fraud Office.
- On wall insulation, it disagrees with the recommendation, noting that every household with external wall insulation under ECO4 and GBIS "is being and will be offered an on-site audit", subject to the householder accepting; internal wall insulation concerns are triaged and referred for audit where they meet "the threshold of risk factors".
- It agrees on the find-and-fix programme: TrustMark "currently intend" it to complete by May 2027, though the department states it is "unlikely" to deliver on a "significantly shorter timescale". It will update the Committee in writing every six months, first in June 2026.
- It disagrees with referring fraud across ECO to the Serious Fraud Office, stating that this "relates to an existing ongoing responsibility of the regulator", Ofgem, which can and does make referrals where appropriate.
- It agrees to publish an annual report to Parliament on retrofit schemes, with the first publication "before Autumn 2027", and "intends to consult" on the design of a reformed consumer protection system during summer 2026.