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What Is EBR-01? What Homeowners Should Know About the "Spray Foam Standards" Website
- 3 days ago
- 14 min read
Declaration of interest: Remove Sprayfoam Limited has been named on a "Non-Compliant Contractors Register" published by the website discussed below. That is what prompted us to look into it, and readers should weigh what follows with that in mind. We have therefore limited ourselves to statements that can be checked, and linked the sources so you can check them yourself. This article is drawn from publicly available material reviewed between 30 July and 3 August 2026. We take no position on the commercial disputes between the other parties referred to here, and we have not independently verified the claims those parties make about each other. Nothing in this article should be read as an allegation of fraud or criminal conduct, or as a claim that Revive Maintenance owns or operates the Spray Foam Standards website. Where ownership or motive has not been established, we say so. We invite corrections supported by documentary evidence and will update this article where appropriate.
If you are getting quotes for spray foam removal, you may be shown a certificate called EBR-01. A website called Spray Foam Standards presents it as the UK's independent removal standard, describes itself as the official digital platform for the industry, and publishes both an approved contractor directory and a register of companies it considers non-compliant.
Words like standard, official and compliant carry a lot of weight when someone is trying to protect a mortgage and choose between quotes running into thousands of pounds. So it is worth setting out plainly what EBR-01 appears to be, what it does not appear to be, and how much weight a homeowner should put on it.
What EBR-01 appears to be, and what it is not
Start with what it is not, because that is the part most likely to change a decision. As of 3 August 2026 we have found no publicly available evidence that EBR-01 is a British Standard, a statutory requirement, part of the Building Regulations, or guidance issued by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Property Care Association, UK Finance, the British Standards Institution, Trading Standards or any recognised group of mortgage lenders.
Those bodies do publish material, and it is free. RICS has a consumer guide on spray foam in residential property. The PCA has published an inspection protocol developed with lenders, surveyors and other specialists. It is intended to help surveyors and lenders assess individual properties, and the PCA says surveyors inspecting spray foam in situ should follow it. The House of Commons Library maintains an impartial briefing on spray foam and mortgages. We found no reference to EBR-01 in the official materials we reviewed, and our searches found no independent source establishing it as an official or generally required UK removal standard.
What it appears to be is a privately created voluntary scheme with its own certificate, its own approved contractor list and its own register of companies outside it. There is nothing improper about that in principle. Private schemes and trade associations are a normal part of the construction sector, several of them are genuinely useful, and any contractor is free to write a method statement and issue a completion certificate for its own work. On this the site agrees with us. Its own footer states that EBR-01 is not a statutory body and is a voluntary industry code. That sits awkwardly beside the "official" badge and the "definitive independent industry standard" claim carried in the same footer.
The difficulty is the distance between what a scheme is and how it is described. A voluntary private certificate and a nationally recognised standard are read very differently by someone who has just been told their mortgage depends on the work being done properly.
That distance is hard to measure here, because we could not find the standard itself. We could not locate a complete technical specification setting out removal tolerances, timber inspection procedures, moisture testing thresholds, the qualifications an inspector must hold, or how certification decisions are reached. What is publicly visible describes a broad sequence of assessment, removal, inspection, documentation and certification. Those are sensible stages, but a list of stages is not a technical standard.
Nor could we identify the legal entity behind the body the site calls the EBR-01 Code of Conduct Council, its members, its funding, its declared commercial interests or its appeals procedure. The site says it is registered in England and Wales without naming the company, which anyone could otherwise verify in seconds on the Companies House register. If the Spray Foam Standards website is operated by a UK-registered company, the trading disclosure regulations generally require that company to publish its registered name, company number, place of registration and registered office address on its website. A name like "EBR-01 Code of Conduct Council" tells a consumer nothing about whether that council is a limited company, a trading name, a panel of named professionals or a brand controlled by a commercial contractor.
The site also performs commercial lead-generation and booking functions. Alongside information about the standard, it publishes a certification booking page, a compliance badge page, a cost estimator, a contractor finder and a postcode lookup. Those functions are relevant when assessing the independence of an organisation that also decides which contractors are described as compliant.
What "non-compliant" does and does not tell you
To most people that phrase suggests a broken regulation, a failed official inspection, a sanction from a regulator, or unsafe work. On a privately run register it can mean something much narrower, which is that a company is not part of that particular scheme. An organisation writing its own code does not make every business outside it non-compliant in the ordinary sense of the word.
The register illustrates the point itself. Among the companies named on it is Remove My Spray Foam Ltd, an active business incorporated in April 2023 that is also listed by TrustATrader as vetted and approved, with published customer reviews. That does not prove that the company satisfies EBR-01 or that the register entry is incorrect. It does, however, illustrate why homeowners need to understand exactly what "non-compliant" means, which rule is said to have been breached and what evidence supports the designation. We have no connection with the company and take no position on the quality of its work. Its similar name should not be confused with Remove Sprayfoam Limited.
Before publishing something that damaging, an independent standards body would normally identify the rule breached, the evidence relied on, the qualifications of whoever investigated and the date of the alleged breach, then offer the company a right of reply and an independent appeal. None of that reached us, and we have seen no evidence that Remove Sprayfoam Limited has failed an EBR-01 inspection, breached any statutory requirement governing spray foam removal, or been sanctioned by any recognised body. Our own entry appears to have gone up after we reported on the public dispute between Revive Maintenance and Better Home Hub, and several other listings are businesses connected to Better Home Hub. We cannot prove why any particular company was added, and the register is not confined to parties in that dispute. What is missing in every case we have looked at is the reasoning.
The practical point for a homeowner is that a listing either way on a private directory tells you very little about workmanship. Checkable things tell you more: how long the company has traded, what its Companies House record shows, whether its reviews link through to profiles you can actually read, and whether a surveyor independent of the contractor is willing to inspect the finished job.
Why it matters who is behind an advice website
A large part of the UK spray foam market runs through advice and comparison websites rather than through contractors directly. Some of those sites are genuinely independent. Some are owned by, or paid by, the contractor they recommend. A homeowner usually cannot tell which is which from the front page, and it changes the value of the recommendation entirely.
The Spray Foam Standards site presents itself as independent and unaffiliated with any single commercial contractor. It also describes Revive Maintenance as an EBR-01 Principal Compliance Contractor and features it prominently throughout. We have not obtained conclusive evidence of who legally owns or operates the site, and we are not asserting that Revive does. The Revive name is more complicated than it looks in any case, since several domains use a version of it and they are not all run by the same company, as our earlier article set out.
What is publicly visible is still worth knowing, and what follows comes entirely from what these websites publish about themselves. The approved contractor directory includes a site called UK Spray Foam Advice, which describes itself as an independent advisory service not tied to a removal company. It also publishes a page headed Our Partner, in the singular, and a further page given over to reviews of Revive Maintenance.
A website that directs users to one named commercial partner is, at minimum, acting as a referral channel, whether or not a referral fee changes hands. There is nothing inherently improper in that, and plenty of useful services work in this way. What matters is whether a homeowner reading the words "independent advisory service" would understand that the advice leads to a single contractor, and whether that relationship is disclosed clearly before the homeowner hands over their details.
Then there is the telephone number. On the pages we captured on 3 August 2026, the number 020 3435 8068 appeared on UK Spray Foam Advice, on countrywidesprayfoamremoval.co.uk, which is linked from a second approved directory listing, and on two Revive Maintenance websites: revive-maintenance.co.uk and sprayfoamremovalhelp.co.uk. It also appeared in third-party business directories against a spray foam removal business covering West Sussex. The presence of the same number across two approved listings and the contractor named as the Principal Compliance Contractor is a connection homeowners would reasonably want disclosed.
The most striking thing, though, is where EBR-01 itself appears. Revive Maintenance operates a website at sprayfoamremovalhelp.co.uk, and that site publishes a page for EBR-01.
A certified contractor might reasonably publish a page explaining the standard it works to, and that alone would prove nothing. But EBR-01 is presented to homeowners as an independent national standard, governed by a council that decides which contractors are compliant and which are not. Finding a page for it published by the single contractor that standard names as its Principal Compliance Contractor is something the publisher should be asked to explain.
None of this is hidden. It is on the sites themselves, for anyone who looks past the first page. That is rather the point, because most homeowners will not look past the first page, and the first page is where the word independent appears. Before you use any comparison or advice service, ask who owns it, whether a referral fee changes hands, and whether it ever puts forward a contractor outside its own network.
The BBC claim and the lender claim
The site publishes a panel headed "As seen in", stating that EBR-01 has been featured across major UK news and consumer finance publications covering the spray foam mortgage crisis. Six are named: BBC News, which carries a "featured" tag, Which?, This is Money, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and Mortgage Strategy. Beneath them sits a quotation attributed to BBC News Coverage, reading: "Thousands of homeowners are being refused mortgages because of spray foam insulation — experts say EBR-01 certified removal is the only route to mortgage approval."
A second panel, in the site's hero section, goes further. It is headed "As seen on / featured in", names BBC News as television and online coverage, and names Watchdog and Morning as a consumer affairs programme. Beneath that sits the claim that the site is the go-to directory for homeowners seeking EBR-01 compliant contractors, "as recommended during national TV coverage of the spray foam crisis".
Being reported on is one claim. Being recommended by a named BBC consumer programme is another, and we can find no record of any such recommendation. A claim that EBR-01 or its directory was recommended during national television coverage should be capable of being tied to a named programme, episode and broadcast date.
The named publications have reported on spray foam, mortgage difficulties or related consumer issues. That does not itself establish that any of them featured or endorsed EBR-01. What we cannot find is any BBC item that names EBR-01, or any BBC output containing the quoted wording.
The BBC's own reporting on this subject, published in November 2024 alongside research with the HomeOwners Alliance, found that a quarter of the UK's biggest lenders would not lend on homes with spray foam in the roof. It does not mention EBR-01. It also records industry experts telling the BBC that spray foam is an effective insulator when fitted properly, and that urgent action was needed to stop panicked homeowners needlessly turning to what the article called cowboy removal companies.
That last point deserves attention. The BBC's actual reporting contains a warning about homeowners being pushed towards unnecessary removal. The quotation displayed on the Spray Foam Standards website uses the BBC's name to tell homeowners that removal to a particular private standard is the only route to a mortgage. Those are not the same message.
We invite the publisher to identify the programme or article in which the quoted words appeared, the broadcast on which the recommendation was made, and the dates of each, and to do the same for the other five publications named. If the wording did not appear in BBC output, we invite them to say so and to remove it. Until then, Advertising Standards Authority guidance is the benchmark: marketing must not falsely claim endorsement by a body that has not given it, objective claims must be supported by evidence, and a trust mark should not be displayed without authorisation.
That claim about the only route to mortgage approval matters more day to day than the attribution does. As we set out in our guide to spray foam insulation and mortgages, there is no single national rulebook, and we have found no general lender policy requiring a homeowner to obtain an EBR-01 certificate. Lenders decide on their own criteria and on the professional evidence in front of them. That usually means the original installation paperwork, the condition and visibility of the roof structure, an independent survey, moisture readings, photographs, timber condition reports, any warranties or invoices, and the valuer's own judgement.
A certificate issued by a contractor or a private scheme may form part of that evidence. It does not bind a lender that has not agreed to accept it, and no removal company can promise that every lender will approve every property once the work is done. If a company tells you its certificate guarantees lender approval, ask it to produce written confirmation from the lender concerned.
What good spray foam removal actually looks like
Whatever certificate ends up attached to it, the work itself is what a surveyor and a lender will be looking at. As our removal guide sets out, a competent removal should protect the roof structure rather than damage it, expose the timbers sufficiently for a surveyor to inspect them, take out residual foam wherever that can reasonably be done, and avoid cracking tiles or splitting battens in the process.
What you are left holding afterwards matters just as much: clear before-and-after photographs, a written record of what was found and what was done, any visible timber defects identified rather than covered over, and a full completion pack that can be provided to a surveyor or lender. That documentation may help provide the evidence requested by a surveyor, valuer or lender.
Independent inspection should be welcome wherever a lender, surveyor or homeowner wants one. Where a lender requests independent evidence, a report from a suitably qualified surveyor with no commercial interest in the removal may provide greater assurance than a certificate issued solely by the contractor that performed the work. The lender ultimately decides what evidence it will accept.
What to check before you pay for anything
Ask who created the standard being quoted at you and whether you can read it in full. Ask whether your own lender requires it, then put that question to the lender or your broker rather than taking the contractor's word for it. The HomeOwners Alliance keeps a current picture of where lenders stand.
Look at who owns the website that recommended the contractor and whether that service takes a referral fee. Check the trading company on Companies House rather than just the brand on the website. Ask whether the surveyor signing the work off is independent of the firm that carried it out. Accreditations can be verified with the body that supposedly issued them, and review totals should link through to profiles you can read.
Be wary of anyone who guarantees a lender's decision, asks for money up front, or presses you to sign on the day of the survey. Logos, badges and official-sounding names are cheap to produce, so weight your decision towards written confirmation from your own lender and a report from an independent RICS surveyor.
The questions we are asking
Any of the following would help settle the matter, and we invite the operator of Spray Foam Standards to answer them with supporting documents.
What is the full registered name and company number of the organisation operating the website?
Who owns the EBR-01 name and the intellectual property in the standard?
Who sits on the EBR-01 Code of Conduct Council, and what qualifications do those members hold?
What commercial relationship exists between EBR-01 and Revive Maintenance, including any fee, commission, subscription or referral revenue?
Where can the complete EBR-01 technical document be read in full?
Which mortgage lenders have formally adopted or endorsed EBR-01, and where is that in writing?
On what basis is a company selected for the non-compliant register, and is it told before it is added?
Which published EBR-01 requirement did Remove Sprayfoam Limited allegedly breach, and on what evidence?
Who decided to publish that listing, and what independent appeal is available against it?
Which approved directory listings are commercially connected to Revive Maintenance or to each other, and how is that disclosed to homeowners?
Why does a page for EBR-01 sit within the operational website of Revive Maintenance, and who administers it?
In which BBC programme or article did the quoted wording attributed to BBC News Coverage appear, and on what date?
Which of the six publications named in the "As seen in" panel has published material identifying EBR-01?
On which broadcast, and on what date, was the EBR-01 directory recommended during national television coverage?
Any substantive response will be published in full or summarised fairly. Until credible evidence is produced, homeowners should not assume that EBR-01 is an official, government-backed, RICS-approved or universally lender-required removal standard. We would say the same about any certificate presented that way, including one carrying our own name.
If you have spray foam in your roof and you want to know where you actually stand, Remove Spray Foam has completed over 1,800 removals across the UK. We do not cold-call and we do not take payment up front. Every job starts with a free no-obligation site survey and a clear written quote, and finishes with fully documented before-and-after reporting you can hand to a surveyor or a lender.
Have you been shown a certificate or an approved-contractor claim you could not verify? Get in touch through our contact page and tell us about it.
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