What happened to BS 8208?

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The British standard BS 8208-1:1985 Guide to assessment of suitability of external cavity walls for filling with thermal insulants. Existing traditional cavity construction. Is a verbose title but describes exactly what you would expect it to do.
When BBA certificates were issued for cavity wall insulation products during the late 80s and 90s they would reference conformity to this standard as evidence that a product and installation of said product conformed to building regulations.

The standard was withdrawn on 2009 but products approved approved to this standard by the BBA continued to be installed with reference to this standard for many years after.
Anyone working in the industry should have been very familiar with this guidance.

For the Cosytherm product in my walls, it is quite explicit:


Cosytherm whitewhool Agrément certificate

Clearly if CIGA or a surveyor check for conformity to 'industry standard' they would have to take into account this standard as the BBA certificate is the chief instrument to judge building regulations compliance.

I've demonstrated quite clearly that our install did not conform to this standard and this had been backed up formal chartered surveyors.

What replaces BS 8208?

If the standard was withdrawn. What standard replaces it?

After 2009 there is no standard. It was assumed that the competent person scheme operator which is authorised by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government would develop their own industry standards.
However, I'm not aware of any publicly available standard which directly takes over from the british standards. Neither the BBA CASS or CIGA deal specifically with issues of impermeable paint and electrics in the cavity etc.

A KIWA Agreement certificate which was issued for a product in 2019 makes reference to a CIGA guide from 2003! It's incredible to think that after the industry and CIGA was pulled up in front of parliament that their guidance has never been updated.

CIGA guides which are 18 years old appear 'good enough' for new certificate


CIGA have also issued a number of Technical notes over the years, some of which are hidden away of their website, the guidance is good but totally ignored by the CIGA inspectors who visited my house. The are also not dated , not formally authorised, version controlled and contain no review date.

CIGA technical notes appear informal , undated and hidden away on their website


PAS will fix it?

PAS 2030/2035 is the standard all Green Deal Installers and all ECO Installers must be compliant with.  And it is a mandatory requirement for companies wishing to install Cavity Wall insulation and external wall insulation under an ECO scheme.

The BSI retrofit standards which certainly has some good intentions in terms of whole house assessment and ventilation. The diagram has a little box in the right lower corner that causes me concern "Non BSI standards" with reference to SWIGA, and 'NIA'.


Peter Rickaby details the positive changes but what independent scrutiny is there of 'Non BSI' standards 

We know that CIGA have authorised 100s if not 1000s of partial fills/topups which are against BBA and system designer guidance and in some examples shared with me (if not all) without the proper building control application.   This does not bode well for a self certification scheme operator.

The lack of scrutiny is concerning. I can only assume that pressure from Net carbon targets transferred to BEIS and ofgem has lead to self serving companies with appalling track record such as CIGA to be offered a Trustmark.
Having spoken to the CEO of Trustmark , it seems that everyone is banking on the notion that PAS  2030/2035 will provide the quality and the Quality mark will provide redress and consumer schemes will be adequate to deal with consumer confidence and redress - but there seems to be little appetite for review exactly what is wrong with the current redress system.

As far as I can see. The detailed independent verified standards for CWI assessment do not exist. And for redress , Trustmark redress appears to be a wrapper the deeply flawed ADR process which
offers no public transparency or accountability of flaws in the product, industry or the self certification scheme because all the proceedings are covered by a confidentiality agreement aka 'gagging clause'.


As usual I am not an industry professional, just a concerned home owner

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