The PCA Is Setting a Standard for Spray Foam Removal: What Homeowners Need to Know

On 27 August 2026 the Property Care Association announced that it is creating a membership category for spray foam removal contractors. It is the first time a recognised UK trade body has proposed competency requirements, independent auditing and compliance monitoring for the firms that take the foam out, rather than for the surveyors who inspect it.

If you have spray foam in your roof and you have been putting off dealing with it, this is worth understanding before you start ringing round for quotes. It does not change the law. It does change how easy it will be to tell a competent contractor from an opportunist.

What has actually been announced

The Property Care Association is the trade body covering damp, timber, waterproofing and related property care work. Its members are audited, and PCA contractor members are automatically listed under the government-endorsed TrustMark scheme.

The PCA already runs a register of surveyors qualified to inspect spray foam, and it led the cross-industry group that produced the inspection protocol most valuers now use when they find foam in a loft. Its homeowner guidance is one of the few genuinely neutral resources on the subject. What it has never covered is removal itself.

The new membership is intended to close that gap. Reporting in Mortgage Solutions sets out what it will bring: defined competency requirements, independent auditing, compliance monitoring, technical guidance and training, in a part of the market the PCA itself describes as unregulated. Roofing Today reported that a stakeholder meeting in September opens the consultation on the final framework, with the scheme expected to go live shortly afterwards.

James Berry, the association's deputy chief executive, was careful about how he described the aim. This is not statutory regulation and the PCA is not claiming it will be. It is an independently audited benchmark that homeowners, surveyors and lenders can point to, in a market where no such benchmark currently exists.

Why a trade body felt the need

The reasons the PCA gave are worth repeating in full, because they describe tactics that are being used on people right now.

Berry said the association has received reports of homeowners being told their property is on a "national database" of homes that will lose value unless the foam is removed. There is no such database. He also said pensioners have been shown fake identification bearing the PCA's own logo by people describing themselves as surveyors, despite the fact that PCA members do not currently offer spray foam removal at all.

That last detail is the useful one for anyone reading this. Today, a PCA logo on a removal firm's paperwork or ID is not evidence of anything, because the membership category does not exist yet. If someone produces one, check it against the association's own member directory before you go any further.

The pattern is not new. Trading standards teams in Devon, Somerset, Essex and Scotland have all issued warnings about cold-calling removal firms, and the HomeOwners Alliance has been pressing the government to act, pointing out that a large share of affected households are elderly and are being targeted precisely because they are frightened about their mortgage or their equity release.

The problem has not gone away

None of this means spray foam concerns are overblown. A joint PCA and HomeOwners Alliance inspection programme covering more than 500 homes found around 35% had at least one defect caused by the installation. The House of Commons Library briefing, updated in July, still records that a quarter of the largest mortgage providers and every equity release lender surveyed will not lend on a property with retrofitted spray foam.

Roughly 250,000 UK homes are thought to have it. So there is real demand for removal, and where there is real demand and frightened customers, the market fills up quickly with people who should not be doing the work. That is the gap the PCA is trying to close.

What the framework is expected to require

The detail is not published yet and will be settled through the consultation that opens this month, so treat the following as the direction of travel rather than as final rules.

Two areas have been widely discussed within the industry. The first is a minimum trading history, understood to be around two years of active trading before a contractor can be considered. That will not guarantee good work on its own, but it gives auditors something to audit and it makes life harder for firms that dissolve one company and reopen under a new name when the reviews turn bad, which has been a recurring pattern in this sector since 2024.

The second is transparency about the condition of the roof covering once the foam is off, and homeowners should pay close attention to this one because it affects what a quote ought to include.

Roofing felt: the part of the job that gets hidden

Closed cell foam sprayed straight onto bitumen roofing felt bonds to it. When the foam is taken off, the felt very often comes away with it, or is left torn and perished after years sitting behind a vapour barrier. In older roofs the felt was frequently near the end of its life before the foam ever went on.

A poor removal job patches the worst of it with tape or offcuts, signs the certificate and leaves. The homeowner finds out the following winter, when water starts tracking down the rafters, or two years later when a valuer lifts the loft hatch and asks who signed the roof off.

The expectation under the new framework is that contractors report the condition of the felt or membrane honestly and in writing, rather than repatching a failed one and presenting it as sound. In a proportion of cases that will mean the correct recommendation is a full re-roof rather than a repair. Nobody wants to hear that, and it is a much larger bill, but it is the answer that holds up when the property is next surveyed. The PCA's existing guidance makes the same point from the other end: foam should never have been applied to a roof that was already near the end of its life.

What to do if you are getting quotes now

Until the scheme is live, the checks that matter are the ones you can do yourself.

Ask each firm whether it intends to apply for PCA membership and where it is in the process. Ask how long the company has traded under its current name, then confirm that on Companies House, including whether the directors have previously dissolved similar companies. Ask what happens if the felt turns out to be perished, and whether the quote includes a written report on the condition of the membrane and timbers rather than just the foam removal itself.

Ask your own lender directly what it requires, rather than accepting a contractor's account of what lenders want. Get a survey from someone with no financial stake in the removal. And treat any of the following as a reason to stop: a cold call, a reference to a national database, ID you cannot independently verify, pressure to sign the same day, or a request for money before anyone has been up into the loft.

The short version

A recognised standard for spray foam removal is coming, and it is overdue. It will not be law, it will not be in place for every contractor overnight, and it will not stop anyone from removing foam badly. What it will do is give homeowners, surveyors and lenders a single independently audited list to check against, which is more than the sector has had at any point in the last four years.

Until it launches, nothing changes about the basics. Verify the company, verify the paperwork, and be suspicious of anyone who found you rather than the other way round.

Worried about spray foam in your roof, or unsure whether the firm quoting you is who they say they are? Get in touch with Spray Foam Advice Hub or book a free spray foam safety check.