Ahead of the short debate in the Senedd on external insulation problems – and roughly a year since the first official report to Bridgend Council’s Cabinet – it’s useful to put the timeline of the Caerau Arbed/insulation scandal in its proper scale so you can understand why people are so angry about it.
The sums of money involved are quite small for a government in the grand scheme of things. It’s the smoke and mirrors, nobody being upfront about it and the lack of any sense of urgency to undo the damage that make this far worse than it otherwise would have been.
I’ve now been provided with more information that clarifies who knew what and when.
The closest thing to “bad guys” in all of this are the late Phil White and his business associates – we all know that. However, it would be far too easy to put the blame entirely on them. They’ve been helped by people at all levels of government and politics – directly and indirectly – who should’ve known better.
It’s right to say some elected members and officials past and present have at least tried to get answers or secure a solution – Keith Edwards is amongst those who deserve a nod there, as does the previous Chief Executive of BCBC, Darren Mepham, who perhaps stumbled on something he wasn’t supposed to find before conveniently leaving the scene.
What was a well-meaning attempt to address fuel poverty and cut energy bills for people in one of Wales’ most deprived communities has ruined lives. In some cases, it’s left households out of pocket as they’ve tried to fix the problems themselves (often unsuccessfully).
They’ve had their concerns dismissed. People who should’ve stood up for them haven’t. Protecting reputations has taken priority over putting things right. Nobody has accepted responsibility.
2012-13 – Green Renewables Wales Ltd (GRW) – a company which counted then Bridgend Council Cabinet member and Labour councillor for Caerau, Phil White, as a director – submits a bid to the Welsh Government’s Arbed programme worth around £300,000 to undertake internal and external energy efficiency and insulation work on 25 homes in the Caerau ward.
After the bid was successful (because Philip White was both a deciding Cabinet member and director of GRW), GRW appointed a sub-contractor – Tower Energy, which had no prior experience in undertaking this kind of work – to carry it out. To make matters worse, the work was carried out with no performance bonds or guarantees.
In total, around 150 properties in the ward had work carried out in some way or another through a mix of programmes administered and backed financially by the Welsh and UK governments, Bridgend Council and energy companies. Arbed is administered by the Welsh Government and BCBC via a former EU programme; CESP and ECO were administered by the UK Government and involved energy companies.
Despite this, the same contractors – including GRW/Tower Energy – were seen working on properties that were funded under different schemes and in many cases householders were only given the option of a single contractor.
August 2014 – Huw Irranca-Davies – as Ogmore’s MP – and former Senedd Member Janice Gregory visit Caerau and praise the work of Arbed in the ward, which is included a Welsh Government-published report (pdf).
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May 2015 – A resident in Caerau who received work to their home from GRW and Tower Energy contacts Bridgend Trading Standards:
“Outside they’ve left a bare windowsill. Inside my gas meter I had to put expanding foam in myself to stop the bare wall leaving in damp causing my gas meter to erode. Upstairs they put a windowsill on top of my old windowsill….causing me not to be able to open my window as it’s dragging along the windowsill and marking it. My skirting board was damaged by them and needs replacing. I’m still waiting for the invoice off my roofer to forward on to them or to you. There is a pic of my stairs carpet too as that’s the mess they’ve left it in I’ve not been able to get it clean. Unfortunately I can’t afford a professional cleaner.”
September 2015 – Trading Standards tells the affected resident that David Edge (another director of GRW) would contact them to assess the damage and undertake work where necessary.
May 2016 – Huw Irranca-Davies is elected to the Senedd, while Chris Elmore is elected to replace him at the UK Parliament via a by-election.
July 2016 – The same resident from the 2015 email:
“I was wondering if you could help me I was contacted months ago by a gentleman called David Edge who said that my property would be put right and since that person has been I have heard nothing since. He took a receipt I had for the work I had done to my roof and said that I would be reimbursed as this was caused by their workers and now I have heard nothing since. I now have no proof of work done to my roof as it was the only invoice I had and I have other problems appearing with the shabby work that they have done.
“Do you know what or who I can contact please as my property has been ruined by these cowboy builders and it seems like I am having to foot the bill.”
Further enquiries are brushed off by Trading Standards and the resident is pointed towards Citizens Advice (email image).
September 2016 – One of the then Labour councillors for Caerau, Phil John (email image) – who I’ve been told has been personally affected by the scandal – contacts Huw Irranca-Davies to arrange a meeting to discuss damage to a constituent’s home under the programme (though there’s a UK Parliament email address and Huw Irranca-Davies had left parliament by this point – it’s possible, but very unlikely, that he wasn’t aware of the issues).
2016-17 – At some point two other (then) Labour councillors – I’ve been reliably told they were Wyn Davies and Keith Edwards – go to Bridgend Council’s monitoring officer (the senior legal adviser) with evidence of damage to properties. They are told there wasn’t a paper trail and the officer responsible had left the local authority so it was now a private matter between householders and contractors.
Ahead of the 2017 local elections there’s a botched de-selection process which leads to “purge” of Labour councillors who are barred from standing from the party. There’s a mass resignation of several senior Llynfi Valley Labour councillors, including the aforementioned Phil John, Wyn Davies and Keith Edwards.
Phil John stands as an Independent and loses his Caerau seat, while Phil White is re-elected. GRW is wound-up in August 2017, which Phil White later blames on debtors not paying what was owed.
2018 – In January, Chris Elmore MP contacts the Welsh Government and is told that the Welsh Government believe they have no responsibility for funding repair work in Caerau. He would go on to contact the Leader of Bridgend Council, Cllr. Huw David (Lab, Cefn Cribwr), and the Chief Executive of the Council several times between February 2018 and September 2019 requesting updates.
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Around this time the then Chief Executive of Bridgend Council, Darren Mepham, realises something is wrong and orders an internal audit (the findings of which were published in January 2022) of the council’s management of the programme.
The audit formally reveals the lack of a paper trail/documents. In a later report, BCBC officers concluded that:
“The findings of Internal Audit highlighted a number of internal procedural issues relating to the governance, decision making, procurement, monitoring and control aspects of the funding that the Council administered for this scheme at this time.”
Phil White is seen backing Huw Irranca-Davies’ bid to become Welsh Labour leader, but Huw later withdraws from the race.
Darren Mepham announces he’s to leave his post as BCBC’s Chief Executive in 2019 and is replaced by Mark Shephard.
December 2019 – Concerns about the insulation component of the Arbed scheme are raised by a Senedd member (Plaid Cymru’s Sian Gwenllian), though only as a result of a BBC Wales report into unsuitable work in Gwynedd.
July 2020 – A report on an independent evaluation of homes that took part in the energy efficiency programmes is prepared (pdf). This involves a sample of 36 homes in Caerau. All homes were found to have some form of defect caused by poor workmanship regardless of whether they were taking part in a BCBC/Welsh Government or UK Government scheme.
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The cost of repairing the 25 homes worked on under the Welsh Government’s Arbed scheme was estimated at up to £400,000 alone (up to £16,000 each). The total cost of repairing all of the 70 homes in Caerau that received some sort of work administered by Bridgend Council is estimated at anything up to £1.1million.
October 2020 – Wales Online/The Western Mail publishes a story linking the Caerau insulation scandal to Philip White/GRW Ltd, with Cllr. Keith Edwards (Ind, Maesteg East) accusing Bridgend Council of a cover-up.
The story was published a few days after Philip White stood down from Bridgend Council’s Cabinet for health reasons, saying his involvement in the Caerau scandal didn’t have anything to do with his decision.
November 2020 – The first formal report into the insulation scandal is published by Bridgend Council.
The Council formally apologises for their involvement and say they have referred themselves to internal and external auditors as well as the Public Services Ombudsman.
The council’s desired outcome is a scheme involving all of the parties (BCBC, Welsh Government, UK Government, energy companies) to fix all of the affected properties at the same time on the same terms. This position is backed by Huw Irranca-Davies.
December 2020 – Huw Irranca-Davies contacts an Independent town councillor (email image) to say he was satisfied to leave the Ombudsman investigation properly run its course and wouldn’t say anything to prejudice its outcome.
January 2021 – Bridgend Council announces that the Arbed programme will be expanded to the Ogmore Valley and eastern Porthcawl. This is before any work has been carried out to repair the damage caused in Caerau. Unlike previous phases of the programme, this phase of Arbed is largely led by the Welsh Government with little involvement by BCBC.
March 2021 – Bridgend Council’s Cabinet are told that no agreement has been reached on repairing the damaged properties.
Officers say the energy companies are refusing to take part as they don’t believe they have liability. The Welsh Government also said Arbed was administered by BCBC so isn’t their responsibility.
It was concluded that there were few avenues open to get funding or compensation as most of the previous schemes had closed and many of the contractors involved had gone out of business.
In an email to the same affected householder from 2015, the Chief Executive of Bridgend Council, Mark Shephard, says the confusion over which scheme the householders received work under continues to cause delays in finding a lasting solution (email image).
September 2021 – Huw Irranca-Davies submits a written question in the Senedd asking for information on the homes affected by the scandal (though this was already public knowledge, as cited in various BCBC reports).
The Welsh Government claims the work was undertaken as part of UK Government schemes (CESP and ECO) and that BCBC submitted a proposal “on how best the issues can be resolved” which was “under consideration”. Their answer ignores the properties that received work under their own Arbed scheme.
As far as I can tell this is the first time the Caerau issue has been formally acknowledged and raised publicly by any MS from any party in the Senedd, years after the first issues were reported.
October 2021 – Philip White dies in hospital from Covid-19. At the time of his death, he was facing an Adjudication Panel for Wales hearing for possible Code of Conduct breaches. The suspected breaches related to a failure to properly disclose personal interests and possible abuse of position.
No findings from the aforementioned Ombudsman investigation have been published to date and it’s unclear at this moment in time if they’ll ever be published.
November 2021 – A year after the first official Bridgend Council report into the scandal, Audit Wales confirm that they were not undertaking an investigation (email image link). Meanwhile, the internal audit report is deemed confidential and has never been published because any issues arising with the council’s procurement processes “have been addressed” (email image link). Update: the internal audit is eventually published in January 2022 after a funding package to repair the damage is announced.
In response to a question from Huw Irranca-Davies (the first oral question on the Caerau scandal as far as I can tell), the Welsh Government Minister for Climate Change, Julie James (Lab, Swansea West), criticises the UK Government’s decision not to take responsibility for their role. She adds that the Welsh Government would only wish to intervene in Caerau “subject to legal advice”.
A quote from the Minister features on the front page of that week’s copy of The National:
