Where each mortgage lender stands on spray foam

What actually changes a lender's decision

Assertion does not move a mortgage underwriter. Evidence does, and only sometimes.

Where a lender is reported to assess spray foam case by case, what is consistently described as helping is a specialist inspection report addressing the specific things a surveyor cannot assess through the foam: the type of foam present, whether ventilation has been maintained, the condition of the accessible timbers, and any moisture readings taken. RICS's own consumer guide, published in March 2023, sets out a similar list: the product's BBA or KIWA certificate where available, the installer's warranty, a condensation risk assessment, thermal calculations, photographs from installation if they exist, and moisture readings from a current inspection. The Property Care Association publishes a Sprayed Foam Insulation Inspection Protocol, developed with the RPSA and also dated March 2023, written specifically so a surveyor can assess an individual roof on its merits rather than reject a property on sight because foam is present.

What does not appear to move a case-by-case lender, based on reported outcomes, is a generic building survey that simply notes the foam is there without assessing it, a verbal assurance from the current owner, or a certificate from the original installer on its own with nothing addressing the roof's current condition.

And here is the plain limit on all of this: nobody, not a surveyor, not a removal company, not a broker, not this website, can guarantee that any lender will approve a mortgage, a remortgage or an equity release application, before or after removal. The lending decision belongs to the lender. What good evidence does is remove the specific objection that a lender cannot honestly ignore, that the timbers cannot be inspected, and put the most persuasive case in front of an underwriter who still makes their own decision.

How this has moved since 2024, in one timeline

Nothing here amounts to a fix, and it is worth being clear about that rather than implying momentum that has not arrived.

• November 2024. The BBC reported that around a quarter of the UK's largest mortgage providers would not lend on a home with spray foam in the roof, and that every equity release lender it surveyed refused outright. This is the single most cited figure in the entire market, including on this page.
• March 2025. The UK Government confirmed, via a House of Commons Library briefing, that there is no financial help available for spray foam removal. Homeowners are funding this themselves.
• June 2025. Government engagement with mortgage lenders on the issue was reported to be ongoing, without a published outcome.
• March 2026. A ministerial roundtable with lenders was reported to have taken place, addressing the mortgage and lending barriers spray foam creates.
• May 2026. A follow-up to that roundtable was reported, again without a published change to any individual lender's lending policy.
• July 2026. Press coverage continued to describe the underlying problem as growing rather than easing, with the number of affected homeowners still commonly cited around 250,000.

Read across eighteen months, the pattern is government attention without a lending policy change. No lender in the table above is reported to have publicly softened its spray foam position between November 2024 and September 2026. The one genuine development affecting homeowners directly is on the removal side, not the lending side: the Property Care Association opened a membership category for spray foam removal contractors on 27 August 2026, the first independently recognised benchmark for removal work specifically, reported in Mortgage Solutions.