Housing Agency official asked engineers: consider downgrade

A senior Housing Agency official suggested engineers downgrade a grant recommendation for a defective Donegal home – after withholding a report that showed severe pyrrhotite damage to the home that would have warranted the highest level of redress available.

Correspondence released under freedom of information shows the official asking DBFL Consulting Engineers – hired by the Housing Agency to assess applications to the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme – to consider downgrading the application. The homeowner concerned ultimately received a lower grant recommendation.

The Housing Agency initially refused to release this document and others. The proof of the official's intervention only emerged after the homeowner appealed the Housing Agency's response to her freedom of information request.

Earlier this month The Ditch reported that a senior Housing Agency official withheld crucial scientific evidence from the company hired by the agency to recommend levels of redress. The evidence, submitted by a chartered engineer hired by the homeowner, identified significant pyrrhotite damage to their home and recommended full demolition and rebuilding of her property.

'Has CE given any consideration to hybrid option'

In November 2023 the Housing Agency received evidence of pyrrhotite damage from the homeowner's chartered engineer but refused to consider it, telling the engineer they were "not in a position" to accept the information.

The agency withheld this evidence from DBFL Consulting Engineers, which the Housing Agency had hired to assess applications to the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme. This evidence showed severe structural damage requiring full demolition of the property.

Months later DBFL conducted its own assessment. The company initially recommended a minimum remediation involving the demolition and rebuild of the property’s external walls, documents seen by The Ditch show.

However in notes dated 17 April, 2024, a senior Housing Agency official asked DBFL to consider reclassifying some of these walls from medium to low risk, citing pre-2012 building guidelines. "Inner leaf is low risk and 9.9N,” they wrote in their notes on the report.

"Has CE given any consideration to hybrid option,” wrote the official, referring to a cheaper grant recommendation.

The official also made requests to DBFL about other aspects of the report, including how to format their findings.

"Consider moving this entire section in 5.3 above," they wrote in one note.

"This is a bit confusing, can it be termed differently," they wrote in another.

After the official's intervention DBFL issued a revised report on 25 April, downgrading their recommendation to the hybrid option suggested by the official – meaning the homeowner would receive less compensation than both their own engineer and DBFL had initially recommended.

The documents showing the official's intervention were released on 13 November after a freedom of information appeal.

The homeowner is now seeking additional documentation not included in the schedule of records released by the Housing Agency, including minutes from a 10 April meeting between Housing Agency officials and DBFL.

A spokesperson for the Housing Agency told The Ditch, "In accordance with the legislation which underpins the grant scheme, the Housing Agency considers recommendations provided by authorised officers who are competent engineers, engaged from a Capital Works Management Framework panel.

“These considerations take many forms. However, it is the competent engineer who ultimately provides the appropriate remediation option recommendation. To reiterate, for transitional applications from the previous grant scheme to the enhanced grant scheme, the Housing Agency takes into consideration the technical report referred by a local authority after their validation stage is complete.