FENSA Inspection

Recently, I replaced all the windows and doors to my house using a local company. Most windows were installed well, but some windows had minor scratches/scuff marks which they replaced, but they replaced them with scratched ones. They replaced them again…with scratched ones. More importantly, I had one window where there was a draught coming through each of the 4 sides of the window, and when they put a new window-ledge in, they managed to crack the wall all the way down to the skirting board.

“FENSA is a government-authorised scheme that monitors building regulation compliance for replacement windows and doors.”

https://www.fensa.org.uk

I kept on giving them a chance to fix the issues but they often delayed. I thought I could complain to FENSA, but in hindsight, they seem useless. You can opt in for an inspection, but they may not inspect your property if they have done enough inspections for that particular company within the year.

When I received a FENSA certificate, I assumed that I would not be getting an inspection. The FENSA certificate should be their approval to say it has passed their standards, but receiving it without an inspection seems like it’s not worth the paper it is written on.

A few days later, I received another letter from FENSA. It was a duplicate certificate. How do you manage to send 2 certificates out? A bit of a shambles.

A few weeks go by, then I receive a call from some other inspection company saying they would like to come round for the inspection. I was quite excited for it, because surely they would fail the inspection and I could get them to reinstall windows that actually work, and fix the damage to the wall.

The guy that turned up was in a FENSA uniform which was confusing since that wasn’t the company that called. I thought FENSA was outsourcing the inspection, but he seemed like he was actually from FENSA. He “inspects” the downstairs windows, and by that, I mean he glanced at them and used some sort of electronic device against each pane of glass (he just pressed it against it and it beeped, no idea what it was actually doing). He then said “I think that’s all done then”, and I was like “erm, don’t you need to go upstairs?”.

So he goes upstairs and does the same with the bathroom and hallway, then he was about to go back down until I reminded him that he hasn’t looked in any of the 3 bedrooms. In one of the bedrooms, he used the device against 1 glass pane and was about to walk out, but I pointed out there was another 2 panes above the main window.

We get into the problematic bedroom, and I explain the problems with the draught, and the crack in the wall. For the draughts, he said he could see sealant around the windows so it was fine. I told him originally there was no sealant, but I got the window company back in to seal it. However, there were still a few sections where a draught was coming in, and if a draught is coming in, there must be an entry point outside the house too. He said he wasn’t gonna check outside. He basically said that he just checks there are windows, and there’s a decent amount of sealant around them. Any draughts or other damage are outside the scope of what they check. For the crack in the wall, he said it looked like the crack had been there a while, so he thought I was falsely blaming the window installers.

I expected FENSA to act as an Ombudsman that would step in to resolve disputes. I thought they would have a high standard of quality and actually carry out a thorough inspection. You know; get ladders out and check the minor details with fancy equipment. Then give you a certificate only if it passes their rigorous standards.

What happened was: they sent me a certificate to say it has passed (twice in fact), then sent someone round as a token gesture who couldn’t wait to leave as soon as he came through the door. Probably wasn’t even 10 minutes to check 9 rooms and 2 doors.

I thought it was like when software developers create a “Pull Request” for their peers to review against the “coding standards” and “best practices”, but all their colleague does is casually glance at it and click “approve”. There’s no real “quality gate”, people are just box-ticking without any thought to bypass the process.