Roofers in Arundel

Arundel is dominated by its castle and by its 19th-century Roman Catholic church, later the cathedral, and it stands at the lowest point where the river Arun could be bridged. The parish lies largely on chalk, and the High Street climbs steeply up the spur on which the town is built. Roofs here are not laid out on a flat plan. They step up and down a hillside, often with the eaves of one house sitting just beneath the ridge of the next, and that shapes almost every decision a roofer makes: where the ladders go, how the scaffold stands, and where the water from one roof ends up when it leaves the gutter. A house on the High Street and a cottage in a side lane might be a hundred metres apart and need entirely different handling, even if the roof fault looks the same from the pavement.

1.1 Getting up a steep street

Under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980, scaffolding that stands on the highway needs a licence. The licence comes from West Sussex County Council as highway authority, which asks for at least 10 working days' notice and charges £266 for a month's scaffold. On a narrow hillside street that notice period is worth knowing before you set a date for the work. We plan access during the survey, tell you what the roof will need, and fit the programme around the licence. On a short job, a roof ladder or a tower may do instead, and where we can avoid a scaffold altogether on a repair, we will. Chimney work, a full re-roof or anything near the eaves of a tall house is different, and the scaffold then protects the people working and everyone passing underneath. We keep the working area as tidy as the street allows, and everything comes away with us at the end.

1.2 Gutters on a falling site

Where one roof drains onto the next, or onto a steep path, the downpipe route matters as much as the gutter. A gutter on a hillside terrace needs a proper fall towards its outlet, and rainwater should leave the building without running down a neighbour's wall. Brett Martin's installation guidance gives a fall of 1mm for every 600mm, with brackets no more than 900mm apart, and FloPlast's MiniFlo guide uses 1:350, so the figure depends on the system. On older roofs we also look at the lead behind the gutter and the condition of the fascia board. Our pitched roofing page explains how a tiled or slated slope is stripped and relaid when the covering has gone.

Arundel Conservation Area was designated in March 1975, according to the council's own statement, and Arun District Council's conservation areas page records no Article 4 Direction for Arundel, because the only ones it lists belong to Craigweil House in Aldwick. That does not make every roof a free-for-all. Putting back a covering like for like is not normally development that needs planning permission, but alterations to a listed building's character call for consent, and Arundel has plenty of old buildings that deserve a look at the list entry first. The council's conservation officer is the right person to ask. Planning decisions here sit with the district council, and building control is Arun's too, or a registered building control approver.

3.1 What lies behind a Georgian front

Although few buildings at first sight date from before the 18th century, the council's guidance says there is a good deal of concealed Tudor timber work, and many buildings have foundations that go back to medieval times, when Arundel grew as a market settlement. For a roofer that means surprises. Under a plain tiled slope there can be old rafters, a hand-cut purlin or a timber that has been cut into at some earlier date for a chimney or a stair. We open up only what a repair needs, and photograph what we find so that the quote is based on the real roof. If we find timbers that have been weakened, we show you the pictures and explain what a sound repair involves, which sometimes means the work grows and sometimes means it stays the size it was.

3.2 St Nicholas and the cathedral

The parish church of St Nicholas contains the Fitzalan chapel, and the Roman Catholic cathedral stands over the town. Church of England churches in use go through the faculty system, and Roman Catholic churches in use follow their own denomination's procedure, so neither route involves a householder. For the houses around them, the question is simpler: is the building listed, and does the work go beyond a repair that puts back what was there? If you are unsure, ask before the scaffold goes up. Planning rules and consent routes can change, so the council's planning team is the place for a firm answer, and we are glad to wait for it. A roof that has stood for two centuries will cope with a few extra weeks. Slipped slates and loose cappings on a listed roof are another matter, and a temporary repair to stop a leak is always sensible while the consent question is being settled.