Huw Irranca-Davies accused of letting down residents in homes scandal

Martin Shipton

The politician expected to be named as Wales’ Deputy First Minister has been accused of letting down constituents who are the victims of a home insulation scandal.

Huw Irranca-Davies, the MS for Ogmore, is standing on a joint ticket to be deputy to Eluned Morgan, who is likely to be elected unopposed as the new leader of Welsh Labour on Wednesday July 24.

Bridgend town mayor Ian Williams claims that Mr Irranca-Davies waited years before making representations to the Welsh Government on behalf of residents of Caerau, near Maesteg, whose homes were ruined by shoddy workmanship carried out by a company with a prominent Labour councillor as a director.

Remedial work

Last year homeowners were told they may have to wait until 2026 before remedial work is complete – 13 years after their nightmare began.

In 2020 the leader and chief executive of Bridgend County Borough Council apologised to homeowners at Caerau near Maesteg for the saga that left many of them facing repair bills of more than £20,000.

The authority paid more than £300,000 to Green Renewable Wales Ltd (GRW) to insulate the homes under a grant scheme administered by the council known as Arbed.

Senior council officers have confirmed that no audit trail exists to trace the awarding of the contract to GRW, one of whose directors was senior Labour councillor Phil White, who died in 2021.

Mr White had been a member of the council’s cabinet and at the time of his death had been referred by the Public Services Ombudsman to the Adjudication Panel for Wales over alleged multiple breaches of the councillors’ code of conduct stemming from his apparent conflict of interest.

The Arbed programme was meant to address fuel poverty and contribute to carbon reduction in some of Wales’ poorest areas.

Complaints

But after the scheme in Caerau was completed, numerous complaints were raised about the internal and external wall insulation work that had been undertaken. An independent consultant’s report was scathing about the quality of the work.

Although public money has been allocated to repair the damaged homes, work has still not begun.

Caerau residents have now launched a petition aimed at speeding up the remedial work. It reads:: “Since the [original] works have been done, residents have had to live with extreme damp and mould. This has led to residents paying for work to put things right, such as paying for new kitchens, carpets, new paint, new blinds. This has been an ongoing issue for over a decade now. Some residents have unfortunately passed away having not seen these issues put right.

“Damages to the property must be put right and residents compensated for putting the damages right themselves which has amounted to thousands of pounds.”

Facebook

Bridgend town mayor Ian Williams, of the Bridgend Independents Group, said: “In November 2020 Huw Iranca Davies was in a conversation on Facebook regarding Arbed and he was saying things that in my opinion didn’t make sense so I commented ‘it sounds to me as though you have done nothing’.He responded by telling me he would send me an email which he did.

“It was full of the normal platitudes but he used the word ‘initially’ which I thought was strange for someone supposed to be helping people.

“As a result of this email I asked for information under the Freedom of Information Act from both Bridgend County Borough Council and the Welsh Government and it was quite clear that this man had not sent one piece of correspondence to the council until January 25 2021 and nothing regarding Arbed to the Welsh Government until May 25 2021.

“I think it’s an absolute disgrace that an elected Senedd Member can totally mislead and ignore the very people who elected him and put a ‘comrade’ and his flawed Labour Party before the people who asked for his help as far back as September 2016 and earlier and I will never forgive him for the way he’s treated them, some of whom are now my friends. I can assure you that he’s destroyed any trust they had in the Welsh Labour Party.”

‘Badly damaged’

In a letter dated May 26 2021 to Julie James, then the Welsh Government’s Climate Change Minister, Mr Irranca-Davies wrote: Could I request a meeting at your earliest opportunity, to discuss an ongoing issue of poorly installed energy-efficiency measures in properties in Caerau in my constituency. I have previously met and discussed this with [Cabinet Minister] Lesley Griffiths earlier this year, along with Cllr Huw David the leader of BCBC [Bridgend County Borough Council].

“ … In short, one particular company involved in the installation of external wall cladding in the Caerau area several years ago has left over 100 properties badly damaged. Over 20 of these properties were installed under the Arbed scheme and administered locally by BCBC. The remainder were installed under the CESP and CERT programmes of the UK Government. The common factor is the sub-standard installation by the contractor.”

Mr Irranca-Davies did not mention in his letter to Ms James that one of the directors of the company that carried out sub-standard work was a leading Labour councillor.

We invited Mr Irranca-Davies to comment, but he did not do so.