Pitched roofing in Bognor Regis

A pitched roof is a stack of layers on a timber frame, and the layer that fails is rarely the one you can see.

A pitched roof is any roof with sloping sides that shed rain by gravity. It is the shape you see on houses all the way from Bognor seafront to the Downs villages. The timber frame comes first: rafters running up from the wall to the ridge, the line along the top where two slopes meet. Over the rafters go battens, thin timber strips that the tiles hang from, and under the battens lies the underlay, a membrane that catches whatever rain and wind-blown spray gets past the covering. The tiles or slates do the visible work. Each layer protects the others, which is why a fault in a hidden layer can appear as a stain on a bedroom ceiling and not as anything obviously wrong on the slope.

1.1 What the shape does well

Steep slopes clear water fast, and that is the whole idea. Rain has little time to sit on the covering, so a sound pitched roof with the right fixings sheds a heavy downpour without fuss. The space inside gives you a loft that can be ventilated and insulated, and the covering is made of small units, so a damaged area can be repaired or re-covered without touching the rest of the roof. That is a real advantage over a single-sheet membrane, where one failure affects the whole surface.

1.2 Where it lets you down

The drawbacks are practical ones. Working at height needs scaffolding on a two-storey house, and that adds to the bill. A pitched roof usually costs more to build than a flat roof over the same room, because of the extra timber and the access. Its edges, meaning the ridge, hips and verges, take the brunt of the wind, and moss, trapped leaves and a blocked gutter outlet can all go unnoticed from the ground. Many faults also hide beneath the covering until a ceiling stain gives them away. None of that makes the shape a poor choice, but it explains why a regular look from the loft and a proper survey before any decision are worth having.

1.3 Cut roofs and trussed roofs

Older houses, such as Victorian and Edwardian villas, tend to have cut roofs, built on site from rafters, purlins and braces. Houses from the later twentieth century onwards often use trussed rafters, factory-made triangles that work together as one unit. The difference matters when a loft is being converted or a roof opened up, because trusses should not be cut without an engineer's design. It also matters when a roof sags or spreads, since the cause is usually in the frame and not in the tiles. Our guide on whether to repair or replace a tiled pitched roof shows how we weigh up those signs.

A survey therefore starts underneath. We check the rafters for movement, the battens for softness and the underlay for tears, then go outside to look at the covering, the ridge, the verges and every junction with a wall or chimney. The photographs go with your written quote, so the verdict can be checked against the evidence before you decide anything, and shown to anyone you like.

On a coast open to the Channel, whether a tile stays put in a gale depends on how it is nailed, clipped and bedded.

Tiles do not stay on a roof by weight alone. Wind flows over a slope and pulls upward on the covering, and the lower the pitch, the harder that pull gets: Marley notes that where the pitch is less than 30 degrees the windward slope can be subjected to severe suction. Near the sea, with gales and driving rain a regular part of the weather, the fixings are what separate a roof that sits quietly through a winter from one that sheds tiles into the garden. BS 5534, the British Standard on how tiles and slates are fixed, sets the recommendations, and the current edition is BS 5534:2014+A2:2018.

3.1 Nails, clips and every single tile

Wienerberger states that every single-lap roof tile must have at least one mechanical fixing, and the same standard sets how the rest of the field is secured. A single-lap tile is an interlocking tile that overlaps only its neighbour, not the course below. Fixing specifications depend on the building's location, its altitude and its local exposure, so there is no one nail or clip count that suits every house. The standard also says its recommendations might not suit some old roofs, particularly where traditional or reclaimed materials are used, which is exactly why a surveyor looks at each roof as it stands.

3.2 Ridges, hips and verges

These details are cut to shape, capped and exposed on several sides at once. A hip is the sloping outside corner where two slopes meet. A verge is where the covering finishes against a gable wall. Since BS 5534 was revised in 2014, mortar by itself no longer holds the ridge and hip tiles; Marley's guidance is that bedded tiles and fittings should include mechanical fixings. Installing to the standard is not required by law, as Marley points out, but it is the benchmark any good roofer should work to.

3.3 Dry-fix systems

Dry-fix replaces mortar with clips, screws and ventilated seals along the ridge, hips and verges. BS 8612:2018 is the specification and test method for those systems. On a roof that has lost its ridge bedding more than once, dry-fix is often the neater answer, and it can be matched to the colour of the tiles. For ridge work alone, see our ridge tile repairs service.

Fixing is the part of a re-roof that nobody sees once it is finished, so it is also the part to ask about. Ask what is holding the tiles, ridge and verge, and ask for it in writing on the quote. Our guide to keeping tiles on in high winds explains each fixing type in turn, from nails and clips to ridge systems.

Most like-for-like re-covering needs no planning permission, but a handful of triggers can change that, and it pays to check before work begins.

Replacing a roof covering with the same material is not normally development in planning terms, because the work does not materially affect the external appearance of the building. That is the position under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The exceptions matter, though, and they are where owners tend to get caught: listed buildings, homes under an Article 4 direction and changes that alter how the roof looks. Arun District Council's Article 4 directions in the Bognor area remove no roof rights, one being a change-of-use direction and the other covering Craigweil House verges and hard surfaces.

5.1 Planning permission and conservation areas

Bognor Regis has several conservation areas, and the council's own dates are worth quoting correctly. Council records give The Steyne and Waterloo Square as designated in August 1979, then extended in July 1994; Aldwick Road in July 1994; Craigweil House in Aldwick in April 2009; and Felpham village in February 1985. A like-for-like re-roof in matching materials is rarely a problem in any of them, but a new covering in a different material, or any dormer, needs a conversation with Arun District Council's planning team first. Listed buildings need listed building consent for works affecting their character. Our guide to planning permission for a pitched roof covers the permitted development limits,, and any dormer is best raised with the planners before you commit to a design.

5.2 Building Regulations and insulation

Under the Planning Portal's guidance, you normally need no building control application if less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof is affected. It is needed where the work exceeds those limits, involves structural alteration, changes the fire performance of the covering or makes the roof covering 15 per cent or more heavier. Arun's building control page also lists re-covering pitched roofs as work needing approval, so ask Arun's team, or your registered building control approver, to confirm your case. If your job is notifiable, we take care of the notification and talk you through the consent route.

Insulation can come into it too. Under Approved Document L 2021, Table 4.3, a re-covered roof worse than 0.35 W/m²K (U-value, a measure of heat loss) should be upgraded towards 0.16, and the 2026 edition's Table 3.3 takes over on 24 March 2027 with the same figures. Two more checks come before any strip-out. Bats and their roosts are protected, and repair and replacement work on a roof can disturb them. And HSE says to treat any building constructed or refurbished before 2000 as containing asbestos until a check shows otherwise; garage roofs and soffits are the usual places.