THOUSANDS of people are living in homes that pose a risk to their health and safety following what MPs described today as the “catastrophic failure” of two government insulation schemes.

Major defects have been identified in more than 30,000 homes fitted with insulation under the Eco4 and Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) since 2022, according to a damning report by the Commons public accounts committee.

The committee said the schemes were so badly designed they were almost “bound to fail” and warned that the extreme level of non-compliance by installers should be investigated for fraud. 

It found that fewer than 10 per cent of affected homes had been fixed since problems emerged in October 2024, despite households facing “immediate health and safety risks.”

End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said: “The report confirms a clear failure of a system that was supposed to protect people in fuel poverty. 

“Done properly, home upgrades and insulation are among the safest ways to bring down energy bills. Done badly, as we’ve seen, they can cause real harm.

“Thousands of households have been left living with defective insulation, facing damp, mould, stress and in some cases serious risks to their health and safety.”

He said the committee is “right to say there were serious failings at every level,” adding: “What’s shocking is not just the scale of the damage, but how long it was allowed to happen without effective intervention. 

“The priority now must be to find and fix every affected home as fast as possible, with a cast-iron guarantee that no household will pay a penny to put this right.”

Fuel Poverty Action spokesman Jonathan Bean said: “The government home retrofit scandal is growing, and before continuing down the same path, ministers need to focus on fixing the already damaged homes and ending the suffering of the tens of thousands of often vulnerable people who live in them.

“Victims of botched retrofits are sick of vague promises — what they want is a public inquiry into this scandal and a guarantee their homes will be fixed.” 

He also warned that the new £15 billion Warm Homes Plan risked repeating the same mistakes.

The report criticised Trustmark, the body overseeing quality standards, for failing to alert officials to widespread faults until late 2024.

The government said it rejected claims of widespread safety risks but accepted the need for urgent remediation.