How much do roof repairs cost per square metre?

Pricing by the square metre assumes an area of covering: old material stripped, new laid, edges made good. That fits a section of worn slope, perhaps the run of tiles beside a dormer, or a flat roof where the surface has bubbled and lifted. It fits a lone slipped tile badly, because most of that job is getting to the roof, not covering any of it.

The numbers below are national averages drawn from one published guide, so they help you judge a quote and say little about your own house. Several local factors push them up or down: how tall the building is, how narrow the street, how steep the pitch, and whether the existing covering is easy to buy or has to be matched by hand. Each changes what a roofer brings to site and how many hours the work takes. Two houses with identical tiles can therefore sit at opposite ends of the same range.

Checkatrade's roof repair guide, updated in October 2026, publishes these typical UK rates. Its table was last updated in June 2026, and every figure excludes VAT.

EPDM is a rubber-type membrane, while GRP is glass-reinforced plastic cured in place as one skin. Slate leads the table because each slate must be matched to its neighbours and fixed by hand, which slows the work. Concrete tiles come lowest, with bitumen close behind. Within any covering, the figure for your roof lands somewhere inside the range, and the survey is what places it.

Imagine a single cracked tile above a bedroom. Its area is a fraction of one square metre, so multiplying by a rate would give a sum nobody would travel for. What you pay for is the visit: safe access, tracing why the tile cracked, fitting a sound one with its fixing, testing the ones beside it and leaving the site clean. That is why we price a small repair as one total.

Other published guides show how wide the spread is. For comparison, Less gives £150 to £500 for small flat roof repairs (last updated March 2026). Labour is published separately: Checkatrade lists roofers at roughly £35 to £45 an hour, or £280 to £360 a day. A half-day fix and a three-day fix sit far apart, whatever the area. Once a repair runs to several days across a wide section, the area rates in the table start to apply.

Certain repairs run along a line rather than across an area. Checkatrade prices ridge tile work and lead flashing work alike, at £50 to £70 per metre. Ridge tiles cap the very top of the roof where the slopes join, and lead flashing is the metal weathering that seals a roof to a chimney or wall. Refixing a ridge to BS 5534, with proper fixings so the tiles are not left to mortar alone, is charged by the number of metres involved.

Length therefore decides the figure. A short run of lead beside one chimney and a long run along a party wall are different quantities of work, and the survey establishes which you have. Lead is shaped by hand to follow the joint, so the quality of the finish counts for as much as the footage. Our ridge tile repairs page sets out how those jobs are done, and the finish is checked before we pack up.

A price is only useful if you know what sits inside it. Find out whether VAT is in the total, because gov.uk gives the standard rate as 20 per cent, and the Checkatrade rates above leave it out. Find out whether scaffolding is included, because access can take a big bite out of a modest job: Checkatrade's scaffolding guide gives about £875 per month for a typical semi. Find out who takes the waste away.

Once the survey is done, one price arrives in writing alongside pictures of the roof as it stands. If the covering has aged past the point where a repair will last, you hear that too, with the pictures to prove it. For more reading, try the roof repair cost page, the answer on scaffolding for roof repairs or the roof repairs service itself. If the real choice is between fixing and replacing, see is it cheaper to repair or replace.