Completion certificate
Do you get a building control certificate for a new roof?
The short answer
Only if the work needed building control in the first place. Many re-roofs fall below the thresholds and have no application, so there is no certificate to receive. Where a re-roof is notifiable, the registered building control approver or the council inspects the work and signs the work off with a completion certificate once it is satisfied. Ask before work starts whether your roof is one of those jobs and who will deal with the paperwork.
When a new roof comes with a certificate, when it does not, and what to keep in the folder for the day you sell.
A certificate follows an application, never the reverse
People often expect every new roof to come with a building control certificate, in the way a boiler or an electrical job might. In practice a certificate exists only where an application was made. Per the Planning Portal, building control does not normally have to be told when under 25 per cent of the total building envelope is affected and less than 50 per cent of the roof. Many ordinary re-coverings sit below those lines, and so have nothing to certify.
Arun District Council's website includes replacing roof coverings on both pitched and flat roofs in its list of alterations that need approval, and points to its building control team, or your roofer, to confirm how a given job is treated. Both statements are worth reading together: the national thresholds describe when approval is not normally needed, and the council is the place to check an individual roof.
Our page on re-roofing and Building Regulations sets the thresholds out in full.
Jobs that do need an application
Approval is expected when a job crosses the limits above, when structural alterations are carried out, when the new covering would perform in a fire in a markedly different way, or when it is at least 15 per cent heavier than the old covering. Replacing a solid conservatory roof also needs approval, and so does the removal of a chimney breast.
Those are the usual reasons a roof ends up with a certificate, and the list is short enough to check against your own job in a couple of minutes. A change of weight from slate to concrete, a roof opened up to a new structure, or a re-roof that forms part of a larger scheme such as a loft conversion all lead to building control.
Part L adds the energy side. Where a re-roof exceeds the renovation thresholds in Approved Document L, parts of the roof may have to be brought up to a better insulation standard, which building control then checks as part of the sign-off.
Who inspects the work and when
Two routes exist. You can use the council's own building control team, or a registered building control approver, which is the private route and is overseen by a regulator under the registration scheme that came into force on 6 April 2024. The choice is yours, though it is often made for you by whoever manages the job.
Whichever route, an inspector visits at set stages: usually once the structure is exposed and the new covering and insulation are in. Arun's team sets completion inspections for Monday to Wednesday, asks for a day's notice and cannot take requests for a visit on the day itself. Booking ahead therefore matters, and it explains why a scaffold often stays up a few days longer than the tiling takes.
Where the work is notifiable, we explain what the inspector needs to see and handle the notification, so the visit is lined up with the stage of the roof and not discovered afterwards.
What to keep for a future sale
A solicitor acting on a sale or a remortgage may ask what paperwork exists for work done to the roof. Where a certificate was issued, keep it with the deeds. Where none was needed, the invoice, the quote and the photographs of the work show a buyer what was done and when.
The absence of a certificate on a roof that needed one is the situation to avoid. Retrospective regularisation is possible but costs more and takes longer than doing it at the right moment, and a surveyor may flag it.
Keeping a note of the covering, the underlay, the fixings and the date also helps the next owner, who might want to know what is on the roof before a loft conversion or a solar installation, and it saves a surveyor guessing from the ground.
Questions to put to your roofer before the work
A short list covers most of it. Does my roof need a building control application? If so, who is making it, and who is paying for it? Will an inspector visit, and at what stage? What certificate or paperwork will I have when the job is finished?
Get the answers in writing, alongside the price, so nobody has to rely on memory. If a roofer says it will be sorted out later, ask for that in writing too. The quote we give is one overall sum, and where the job is notifiable it says so, so the answer is not a surprise halfway through. You can read more about the process in our roof replacement section.
A roofer who says that paperwork is never needed on a new roof, or who cannot say whether yours is a notifiable job, has not looked at it properly. The council's building control team will tell you how your roof is treated if you phone before the work begins.
Related questions
Certificate questions
Can I ask for a certificate after the roof is finished?
Sometimes, but it is harder. Where work needed an application and none was made, the council can consider a regularisation application, which usually means opening up the work to inspect it. Phoning building control before the work starts is the cheaper route.
Does a guarantee replace a building control certificate?
No. A contractor's warranty is a promise about their own workmanship. A completion certificate is a record from the building control body that the work met the regulations at the time. A buyer may care about both, and one does not stand in for the other.