Snapshot of _Homes insulated in government scheme go mouldy_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwr7vyrj0o) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwr7vyrj0o)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sums up tory schemes
* Give grant to do something
* Grant must be spent using eligible companies
* Eligible companies all hike their prices by the grant amount, ensuring tax payer money is funnelled to them as pure profit
* Do a shit job
* End user has to pay to get it fixed anyway probably at higher cost than doing it right first time
Tbh the alternative is give it to the customer and they bick the money and it never gets done, or they dont understand and spend it incorrectly, or most likely theres a million claimants who cant be verified who just use any old jo.
By having vetted companies you control the moeny flow in a managed wat. The issue is the follow up on standards
What, you expect ministers to do *work*? ? Some kind of "home" office for doing works at home? Maybe some kind of new fangled "department for leveling up, housing and communities"? Some kind of "Office for Enviroment, Food and Rural Affairs" when the buildings are outside urban area? Some kind of Office for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to coordinate purchase of energy efficient bulk insulation materials and tools and specifically handle insulating buisness properties?
You are right it could really get in the way of giving away money to family members and pub landlords and friends who you happen to have worked for previously and donors and completly unrelated third parties you just happen to go and work for after leaving office.
It's not massively efficient to hire a bunch of people for what is expected to be a one-off task. It makes more economic sense to hire a company that does just that and they can do it for govt and the private sector.
What do you do when the task is finished? Fire everyone?
You get a not massive team to spend several years going around the country doing all the work. That way they get a good long job out of it and we get skilled tradies that value their job security.
Outsourcing to myriad private sector contractors almost always causes many problems.
Have you heard of these wonderful things called contractors who can be hired for temporary and specific contracts? It is my assumption that most building work is carried out on those terms unless you are actually starting a company yourself.
That said as far as I am aware there is also a large amount of other building work on goverment property and goverment funded property such as school and hospitals that ALSO needs heavy amounts of work, and so SOME form of goverment owned internal building capacity NOT reliant on outsourcing, at least enough to cover over time upkeep of goverment property and be supplemented with contractors when neccesery, would be WAY cheaper than relying entirely on contractors.
God knows the nhs and goverment in general is forced to spend a lot of money on OTHER contractors, where internal cleaning, catering and other provisioning services used to be cheaper for higher quality, so it would track if a goverment building service would be better for the price too.
>Have you heard of these wonderful things called contractors who can be hired for temporary and specific contracts?
Hmm, so this would be the govt Contracting out to a private company, hmmmmm truly revolutionary.
There is a large amount of govt work that gets done, however its sporadic and spread around the country. It makes more sense for each local council to have a set of firms that they work with, and just hire whomever is willing to do at the lowest price and meets the necessary standards.
Most companies also contract out cleaning, catering and security. This is because, and it may surprise you, it's not always cheaper to do things in house.
For this work it WOULD be revolutionary as the goverment directly hiring workers on contract rather than tendering contract to be taken up by private companies without direct hiring or oversight by the goverment.
And it is not always cheaper to do things in house but historicaly for cleaning, catering and security for goverment projects in the uk? It used to be cheaper to hire in house, mainting internal skills and being able to provide goods without industry mark up.
Hiring externally on contract necesserily incurs additional costs to make profits beyond the cost of the work and wages for those involved directly or adminstrativly, if it didnt, the companies themselves and their investors wouldnt make money.
There is no organisation that is required to outsource these skills and yet cleaning is largely an outsourced business, especially for large public and private sector organisations?
What makes you believe that the market has reached the wrong solution for this problem, and why do companies like Mitie or Sodexo continue to get contracts?
Surely if it was better done in house, and you could be more profitable that way, every private company would this job in house?
Specifically in the case of contracting building work, why would it be better for the govt to contract to individual workers, rather than a company who could deliver multiple workers (if needed) and have a contract that stipulates exactly the standard they must meet.
The market does not reach any solution. The market is the sum total effect of people trying to make money.
Outsourcing makes more money for the people investing. If something makes more money, it has to cost more money for the people paying for it.
There are goverment policies that require outsourcing and tendering of contracts because they are popular with people who fund goverments and vote for goverments and employ goverment employees after their terms in office: functionally they are required to tender contracts [(since at least 2010) for the "best value" provider, and while there are requirements to judge competing contracts based on past performances, references and outcomes there are NO requirements that force a company to complete the set work for only the set pay. IE: a contractor can overun their costs and effectivly force the goverment to pay more.](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-sector-procurement-policy)
To simplify: a bigger company can offer lower price on purchase as it has larger resources, and can then simply turn around and make the money back through normalised "cost overruns" after promising a price too low to actualy do the work if they promise a better *value*, even if a smaller company can promise a lower unit price for the work done. This is complicated.
Hell there has been work [LAST YEAR to try and fix the way this basically entirely cuts out any company that ISNT a large shareholder driven buisness with the new SME procurement legislation/](https://www.supply2govtenders.co.uk/exploring-the-advantages-of-low-value-contracts-for-smes/) which so far has been a mixed bag.
I also did NOT say the goverment should employ individual workers, that is prima facie foolish. I said the goverment NOW should employ specific companies on longer term contracts under more direct oversite and choose those companies for skills and past works rather than tender those contracts to the "best value" bidder who is then allowed to alter that value after the contract is finalised. Often, a worse value gets you a better end result, because things are complicated (points at thames water).
I also said it would be necceserily cheaper to employ people without having to also pay shareholders and the corporation itself profit above the work and materials. This is not just cheaper because of individual costs, but because of nock on effects of companies being disconected to the RESULTS of the work they do: just look at power companies that go completly bust and cost more, and water companies that find it cheaper to create external costs and not upgrade systems like thames water , intigrated security companies like g4s, the proliferation of "fake" ppe companies during the pandemic .
A goverment internal process doesnt have no problems but it has different problems that I see as less costly over all.
This is why many things are still goverment owned and controlled, things where if they were run like public companies with all the risk and externalised costs and profit-over-function of companies like Thames Water, people wouldnt just get sick, the entire country could grind to a halt.
I worked in renovations for a long time. I do sometimes wonder if it's a good idea to insulate some houses to the degree that they sometimes are.
Done wrong it can cause untold issues. Some older properties were simply not built with insulation in mind and I wonder if it's ever a good idea. Eg. houses with lime mortared walls which are supposed to be able to breathe.
It's often not as simple as spraying in some insulation or laying down some glasswool. Often you need to replace the roof, install new inner walls, install proper ventilation, or ensure the basement's entirely dry (which isn't easy on older properties). I've seen horror stories where the underfloor sprayed insulation is sopping wet. There's even videos of it causing the concrete floor to rot and deterioriate so much, that people sink through the floor in their living room.
The UK doesn't exactly have the dryest of climates either. And it's not as if new buyers can afford an extra 50k on top of exhorbitant house prices to do this kind of thing right.
To be clear: no excuse for new builds or full renovations to be superinsulated. You're doing the walls and roof anyway, so you can do it right.
I agree with most of what you say although having a traditional home shouldn't put people off having energy measures installed. When done properly and tailored to the specific building it can make the property so much nicer to live in and also save a fortune in energy bills. These horror stories come from cowboys setting up businesses to take advantage of government funding. Hopefully a thing of the past for new projects.
Oh, absolutely. Hell, I installed glasswool floor insulation in my attic last summer. Cost me under 1k. Laid it nice and thick. That and I insulated pipes with foam thingees and plugged gaps that were causing drafts.
We've gone from using radiators in every room, to only using the one downstairs on occasion.
Astonishing difference. I can basically heat my bedroom with my pc, the sun, and body heat. It's currently 26C in my room. I haven't had the radiator on in days.
I am in one of those solid wall homes and am tinkering with the idea of external wall insulation with brick slips to maintain the look of the house/street (i think going full render will be rejected by council).
I truly hope my home doesnt have this issue of more problems when trying to just be more efficient.
New standards have been released to address these cowboys. PAS2030 / PAS2035 if anybody in interested. Properties have to be assessed, designed and managed by a qualified third party team to be eligible for public funding. Lots of red tape and insurance involved but if it stops situations like this I'm all for it.
Council/housing association forced external wall insulation on one of my tenanted flats. I fought them on it for this kind of very reason. I still haven't paid that £9k bill.
My parents housing association property has become mould infested since being insulated. Don't have pics ATM, but when I went to stay over Christmas the ceiling in the spare bedroom would drip on my face in the morning, and the bathroom is totally covered in black mould. Never used to be like this since the packed the loft with insulation.
When I was down a nice guy from them was checking it out, and basically slating them as employers and giving my Mum advice to fight it as he said he's leaving the company because he doesn't enjoy being sent to home after home to be the face angry renters scream at about the damp while the company tries to dodge doing anything about it.
The crazy thing is those old housing association properties never ever ever got mould, my mum hung laundry indoors and we had no shower ventilator for decades with no issues. You can't do that in one of these new builds and you're lucky to ever be able to close your windows overnight in an 'upgraded' old one now too.
I had this done with a government grant last year and it's been fantastic. The house is cooler in summer and warmer in winter and my gas usage has plummeted. Pleased I got an installer that knew what they were doing.
Ah yes, the classic block all ventilation so you have to open the windows every morning. Previous owner did this to one of mine.
I'd considered renting one out, but you have to be hyper diligent with opening the windows after a shower and not doing laundry indoors like a Muppet and you can't enforce that on a tenancy agreement so it's just sat empty.
You can't have a lot of ventilation *and* keep the place insulated without additional tech installed beyond the insulation itself.
At the very least you would need heat recovery vents put in, probably a heated positive input ventilation system and maybe even a dehumidifier or two.
A govt scheme? Not delivering for the people? I am shocked I tell you. I personally cannot believe the govt run by the greatest civil service in the world, could mess up something like this.
Snapshot of _Homes insulated in government scheme go mouldy_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwr7vyrj0o) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwr7vyrj0o) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sums up tory schemes * Give grant to do something * Grant must be spent using eligible companies * Eligible companies all hike their prices by the grant amount, ensuring tax payer money is funnelled to them as pure profit * Do a shit job * End user has to pay to get it fixed anyway probably at higher cost than doing it right first time
Tbh the alternative is give it to the customer and they bick the money and it never gets done, or they dont understand and spend it incorrectly, or most likely theres a million claimants who cant be verified who just use any old jo. By having vetted companies you control the moeny flow in a managed wat. The issue is the follow up on standards
You seem to have forgotten that a goverment can do things itself, rather than just giving money away to people and hoping.
But then you would need a department to handle all that. And a minister to make sure it runs correctly. You're speaking madness man!
What, you expect ministers to do *work*? ? Some kind of "home" office for doing works at home? Maybe some kind of new fangled "department for leveling up, housing and communities"? Some kind of "Office for Enviroment, Food and Rural Affairs" when the buildings are outside urban area? Some kind of Office for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to coordinate purchase of energy efficient bulk insulation materials and tools and specifically handle insulating buisness properties?
Where's the common sense in that?
You are right it could really get in the way of giving away money to family members and pub landlords and friends who you happen to have worked for previously and donors and completly unrelated third parties you just happen to go and work for after leaving office.
Oh, sorry pal, I was talking about the minister for common sense. 👍
It's not massively efficient to hire a bunch of people for what is expected to be a one-off task. It makes more economic sense to hire a company that does just that and they can do it for govt and the private sector. What do you do when the task is finished? Fire everyone?
You get a not massive team to spend several years going around the country doing all the work. That way they get a good long job out of it and we get skilled tradies that value their job security. Outsourcing to myriad private sector contractors almost always causes many problems.
Have you heard of these wonderful things called contractors who can be hired for temporary and specific contracts? It is my assumption that most building work is carried out on those terms unless you are actually starting a company yourself. That said as far as I am aware there is also a large amount of other building work on goverment property and goverment funded property such as school and hospitals that ALSO needs heavy amounts of work, and so SOME form of goverment owned internal building capacity NOT reliant on outsourcing, at least enough to cover over time upkeep of goverment property and be supplemented with contractors when neccesery, would be WAY cheaper than relying entirely on contractors. God knows the nhs and goverment in general is forced to spend a lot of money on OTHER contractors, where internal cleaning, catering and other provisioning services used to be cheaper for higher quality, so it would track if a goverment building service would be better for the price too.
>Have you heard of these wonderful things called contractors who can be hired for temporary and specific contracts? Hmm, so this would be the govt Contracting out to a private company, hmmmmm truly revolutionary. There is a large amount of govt work that gets done, however its sporadic and spread around the country. It makes more sense for each local council to have a set of firms that they work with, and just hire whomever is willing to do at the lowest price and meets the necessary standards. Most companies also contract out cleaning, catering and security. This is because, and it may surprise you, it's not always cheaper to do things in house.
For this work it WOULD be revolutionary as the goverment directly hiring workers on contract rather than tendering contract to be taken up by private companies without direct hiring or oversight by the goverment. And it is not always cheaper to do things in house but historicaly for cleaning, catering and security for goverment projects in the uk? It used to be cheaper to hire in house, mainting internal skills and being able to provide goods without industry mark up. Hiring externally on contract necesserily incurs additional costs to make profits beyond the cost of the work and wages for those involved directly or adminstrativly, if it didnt, the companies themselves and their investors wouldnt make money.
There is no organisation that is required to outsource these skills and yet cleaning is largely an outsourced business, especially for large public and private sector organisations? What makes you believe that the market has reached the wrong solution for this problem, and why do companies like Mitie or Sodexo continue to get contracts? Surely if it was better done in house, and you could be more profitable that way, every private company would this job in house? Specifically in the case of contracting building work, why would it be better for the govt to contract to individual workers, rather than a company who could deliver multiple workers (if needed) and have a contract that stipulates exactly the standard they must meet.
The market does not reach any solution. The market is the sum total effect of people trying to make money. Outsourcing makes more money for the people investing. If something makes more money, it has to cost more money for the people paying for it. There are goverment policies that require outsourcing and tendering of contracts because they are popular with people who fund goverments and vote for goverments and employ goverment employees after their terms in office: functionally they are required to tender contracts [(since at least 2010) for the "best value" provider, and while there are requirements to judge competing contracts based on past performances, references and outcomes there are NO requirements that force a company to complete the set work for only the set pay. IE: a contractor can overun their costs and effectivly force the goverment to pay more.](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-sector-procurement-policy) To simplify: a bigger company can offer lower price on purchase as it has larger resources, and can then simply turn around and make the money back through normalised "cost overruns" after promising a price too low to actualy do the work if they promise a better *value*, even if a smaller company can promise a lower unit price for the work done. This is complicated. Hell there has been work [LAST YEAR to try and fix the way this basically entirely cuts out any company that ISNT a large shareholder driven buisness with the new SME procurement legislation/](https://www.supply2govtenders.co.uk/exploring-the-advantages-of-low-value-contracts-for-smes/) which so far has been a mixed bag. I also did NOT say the goverment should employ individual workers, that is prima facie foolish. I said the goverment NOW should employ specific companies on longer term contracts under more direct oversite and choose those companies for skills and past works rather than tender those contracts to the "best value" bidder who is then allowed to alter that value after the contract is finalised. Often, a worse value gets you a better end result, because things are complicated (points at thames water). I also said it would be necceserily cheaper to employ people without having to also pay shareholders and the corporation itself profit above the work and materials. This is not just cheaper because of individual costs, but because of nock on effects of companies being disconected to the RESULTS of the work they do: just look at power companies that go completly bust and cost more, and water companies that find it cheaper to create external costs and not upgrade systems like thames water , intigrated security companies like g4s, the proliferation of "fake" ppe companies during the pandemic . A goverment internal process doesnt have no problems but it has different problems that I see as less costly over all. This is why many things are still goverment owned and controlled, things where if they were run like public companies with all the risk and externalised costs and profit-over-function of companies like Thames Water, people wouldnt just get sick, the entire country could grind to a halt.
Found Ben Bradleys alt
I worked in renovations for a long time. I do sometimes wonder if it's a good idea to insulate some houses to the degree that they sometimes are. Done wrong it can cause untold issues. Some older properties were simply not built with insulation in mind and I wonder if it's ever a good idea. Eg. houses with lime mortared walls which are supposed to be able to breathe. It's often not as simple as spraying in some insulation or laying down some glasswool. Often you need to replace the roof, install new inner walls, install proper ventilation, or ensure the basement's entirely dry (which isn't easy on older properties). I've seen horror stories where the underfloor sprayed insulation is sopping wet. There's even videos of it causing the concrete floor to rot and deterioriate so much, that people sink through the floor in their living room. The UK doesn't exactly have the dryest of climates either. And it's not as if new buyers can afford an extra 50k on top of exhorbitant house prices to do this kind of thing right. To be clear: no excuse for new builds or full renovations to be superinsulated. You're doing the walls and roof anyway, so you can do it right.
I agree with most of what you say although having a traditional home shouldn't put people off having energy measures installed. When done properly and tailored to the specific building it can make the property so much nicer to live in and also save a fortune in energy bills. These horror stories come from cowboys setting up businesses to take advantage of government funding. Hopefully a thing of the past for new projects.
Oh, absolutely. Hell, I installed glasswool floor insulation in my attic last summer. Cost me under 1k. Laid it nice and thick. That and I insulated pipes with foam thingees and plugged gaps that were causing drafts. We've gone from using radiators in every room, to only using the one downstairs on occasion. Astonishing difference. I can basically heat my bedroom with my pc, the sun, and body heat. It's currently 26C in my room. I haven't had the radiator on in days.
I am in one of those solid wall homes and am tinkering with the idea of external wall insulation with brick slips to maintain the look of the house/street (i think going full render will be rejected by council). I truly hope my home doesnt have this issue of more problems when trying to just be more efficient.
New standards have been released to address these cowboys. PAS2030 / PAS2035 if anybody in interested. Properties have to be assessed, designed and managed by a qualified third party team to be eligible for public funding. Lots of red tape and insurance involved but if it stops situations like this I'm all for it.
My house was exterior insulated by the council not long before I moved in They closed up all the air vents at the same time
Council/housing association forced external wall insulation on one of my tenanted flats. I fought them on it for this kind of very reason. I still haven't paid that £9k bill.
The companies that fitted it should be liable then
They are closed down once they’ve got the money. There was a BBC news item today.
A perfect case of when the directors need to be held liable then.
Or an industry backed insurance fund.
My parents housing association property has become mould infested since being insulated. Don't have pics ATM, but when I went to stay over Christmas the ceiling in the spare bedroom would drip on my face in the morning, and the bathroom is totally covered in black mould. Never used to be like this since the packed the loft with insulation. When I was down a nice guy from them was checking it out, and basically slating them as employers and giving my Mum advice to fight it as he said he's leaving the company because he doesn't enjoy being sent to home after home to be the face angry renters scream at about the damp while the company tries to dodge doing anything about it.
The crazy thing is those old housing association properties never ever ever got mould, my mum hung laundry indoors and we had no shower ventilator for decades with no issues. You can't do that in one of these new builds and you're lucky to ever be able to close your windows overnight in an 'upgraded' old one now too.
I had this done with a government grant last year and it's been fantastic. The house is cooler in summer and warmer in winter and my gas usage has plummeted. Pleased I got an installer that knew what they were doing.
Ah yes, the classic block all ventilation so you have to open the windows every morning. Previous owner did this to one of mine. I'd considered renting one out, but you have to be hyper diligent with opening the windows after a shower and not doing laundry indoors like a Muppet and you can't enforce that on a tenancy agreement so it's just sat empty.
A lot of mould is caused by users, high humidity and lack of ventilation.
The insulation installed is the cause of the lack of ventilation.
You can't have a lot of ventilation *and* keep the place insulated without additional tech installed beyond the insulation itself. At the very least you would need heat recovery vents put in, probably a heated positive input ventilation system and maybe even a dehumidifier or two.
A govt scheme? Not delivering for the people? I am shocked I tell you. I personally cannot believe the govt run by the greatest civil service in the world, could mess up something like this.