How much does a roof repair cost in the UK?

A roof repair is not one price. The cheap end covers work like refitting a handful of slipped tiles. The dear end covers repairs that call for scaffolding, fresh lead or a section of slope stripped and laid again.

Checkatrade gives repair prices by covering and by square metre, in a table it last updated in June 2026:

Checkatrade states that all of these figures exclude VAT, which has to be added. Take both sets as mid-market numbers. They assume a typical house with typical access. A single-storey property reached easily, a tall terrace beside a busy pavement and a listed cottage with handmade tiles might all sit on the same line of the table yet cost wildly different sums. Neither guide covers repairing damage inside, such as a stained ceiling or soaked loft insulation.

The sections below take a repair bill apart: covering, lengths of ridge or lead, access, then labour and tax. Our answer on roof repair cost per square metre goes further into the area figures.

The covering sets the starting rate. Concrete interlocking tiles are produced in volume, are simple to match and go on quickly, so they anchor the bottom of the table. Clay costs more, partly because older tiles differ in size and shade and the search for a match eats time. Natural slate tops the table: each one is nailed or hooked on, and swapping one halfway up a slope means working around the slates beside it.

The tingle makes slate repairs possible. It is a slim strip of lead or copper, nailed between the slates below, with its end hooked up to hold the foot of the replacement, since the new slate's own nail holes lie hidden beneath the course above. For two or three slates it is a routine job. Where dozens are sliding because the nails have failed, a roofer may suggest lifting the slope and laying it again with the sound slates reused, and the price shifts from repair rates towards re-roofing rates.

Matching adds cost too. Fresh tiles on an old roof can look different from the road for years. Salvaged tiles or slates that suit the roof are dearer and slower to find, and a conservation area or listed building may expect a close match.

Lifespan is the other half of the sum. Marley expects concrete tiles to last around 60 years, though it adds that this carries no warranty on how long they last. CORC puts slate that has been looked after at 100 years and more. Spending on a covering with decades left tends to pay back better than spending on one close to retirement.

A few repairs are priced by length, not area. Three terms matter. Capping tiles along the very peak form the ridge. Hips are the sloping runs of capping running down the external corners of a hipped roof. And the verge is the gable edge, where the tiles stop above the end wall. Checkatrade gives ridge tile repairs at £50 to £70 per metre. Checkatrade puts a dry ridge, capping held down with screws and clips on a dry-fix kit instead of a mortar bed, at around £800 for a semi.

Method moves the price. The 2014 revision of BS 5534 changed what slaters and tilers may rely on: mortar alone is no longer enough to hold ridge or hip tiles, so each capping tile also takes a screw or clip. BS 8612:2018 is the standard for dry-fix kits at ridge, hip and verge. Re-bedding in mortar and nothing more appears cheaper, but the capping is then secured by the very thing the standard stopped relying on, so our ridge prices include mechanical fixings.

Flashings and chimney lead

Lead flashing is the strip that waterproofs the joint between a roof and a wall or chimney stack. Checkatrade gives lead flashing repairs at £50 to £70 per metre. For chimneys, MyJobQuote (last updated 22 September 2026) shows a patch repair at £150 to £250 and replacement of all the chimney lead at £350 to £460 without scaffolding or £700 to £920 with it. What separates those two figures is access, covered in the next section. Lead is sold by code, which relates to thickness; the Royston Lead brochure limits code 3 to soakers and gives code 4 as the thinnest for flashings.

Access is often the largest swing factor. A single slipped tile on a bungalow can be reached from ladders and fixed quickly. That same tile three storeys up might need a tower or full scaffold, and the access then outweighs the repair. Checkatrade's scaffolding table (October 2026) gives about £875 a month for a semi-detached with two storeys, a terrace at £800, a detached bungalow at £1,000 and a detached house at £1,200, with a chimney scaffold around £660 a week.

Licences for scaffolding on the pavement

Poles standing on or reaching over the public highway need the highway authority's licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980. West Sussex County Council wants at least 10 working days' notice and charges £266 for one month. Hampshire County Council asks applicants to allow ten clear working days, with £211.90 payable for the opening two weeks. A repair that can wait should be planned around that delay.

Not every repair needs the full scaffold. Roof ladders, a mobile tower or a cherry picker will do for some jobs and not for others. Height, pitch, what lies underneath and the safety of passers-by settle which. Our guide to scaffolding for a roof repair sets out when each approach fits.

When comparing two prices, see whether each covers scaffolding. Leaving scaffolding out makes a quote look lower, but the saving vanishes if it comes back as an add-on.

Flat roofs have separate figures. A guide from Less, last updated in March 2026, puts small flat roof repairs at £150 to £500, meaning jobs like closing a split, refixing an edge trim or mending a blistered patch of felt. Checkatrade's rates per m² are £100 to £140 for bitumen felt, £120 to £170 for EPDM (synthetic rubber supplied as one membrane) and £130 to £180 for GRP (glass-reinforced plastic, applied wet and left to cure on the roof).

The real cost depends on what lies beneath. Where water has been entering for some time, the timber deck may have gone soft, and a patch on a sodden deck will not last. Cutting out rotten boards adds to the bill, and beyond a certain point covering the whole roof again costs barely more than chasing leaks across it. Lifespans inform that decision: Less gives torch-on felt 10 to 20 years, GRP 25 to 40 years and EPDM 30 to 50 years.

Falls and ponding water

Standing water long after rain means the roof is not draining. BS 6229:2025, which took over from the 2018 edition in December 2025, sets a minimum finished fall of 1:80, and designers commonly aim steeper, near 1:40, so the completed roof drains. Mending a roof that ponds without correcting the fall invites a repeat failure, so the answer is often new firrings (tapered timbers that form the fall) beneath a fresh covering, priced as a re-cover, not a repair. Under Part L of the Building Regulations, a new flat roof membrane counts as renovation, which can pull insulation into the job.

Labour comes next. Checkatrade gives roofers about £35 to £45 an hour or £280 to £360 a day, and slate roofers the same £280 to £360 daily. Minimum charges are common on small repairs, since the roofer must still drive over, set up and clear away whatever the job's size.

Then comes tax. VAT is 20 per cent as a standard rate, and Checkatrade's repair figures leave it out, so a £1,000 repair at those rates becomes £1,200 with VAT.

Repairs and Building Regulations

A minor repair needs no building control application. The Planning Portal says an application is not usually required when work affects less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof. Arun District Council goes further, listing re-covering work, pitched or flat, among the jobs needing approval. For anything bigger than a repair, check with the council's building control team.

First we climb up and look, photograph the fault and tell you whether a mend, a short-term patch or re-covering fits best. Afterwards our written quote shows one figure, priced good and fair. If repairs begin to stack up, our guide on whether it is cheaper to repair or replace a roof works through the maths, and our roof repairs page describes what we do.