Few people know what a roof repair should cost until a leak forces the question, and by then it is hard to judge a number. A single cracked slate and a failed chimney flashing both look like small jobs from the ground, yet one can cost a couple of hundred pounds and the other several times that. This guide prices the common repairs one at a time, using typical UK ranges from published cost guides, then explains what moves a price: access, scaffold, the roof's age and how much has to be taken apart to reach the fault. None of these is a Beacon price list. Your fixed quote follows the survey.
Here we price the common jobs across every roof type; if yours is a tiled roof and the question is single tiles, access and scaffold, the guide to tiled roof repair costs goes into that in more detail.
How roof repairs are priced
A repair price is made of four things: labour, materials, access and the call-out itself. Materials are usually the smallest part. A replacement slate costs a few pounds and a handful of clips or nails costs pennies. What you are paying for is the time on the roof, the skill to find the actual fault, and the means to get there safely.
Access is where small jobs grow. A repair at the eaves of a bungalow can be reached from a ladder. The same repair on a ridge three storeys up needs a tower or scaffold, and that can cost more than the repair. Typical UK figures for hiring a tower or scaffold for a single-slate repair run from £300 to £800, which is why a "£150 job" sometimes arrives with a much larger total. Always ask whether access is included.
The second driver is what has to be disturbed to reach the fault. Replacing one tile on a modern roof means lifting the tiles around it and sliding a new one in. On an older roof with brittle tiles or nibs that have worn away, lifting neighbours can break them, so a one-tile repair turns into five. A decent roofer will tell you this before starting, and photograph what they find.
Finally there is the diagnosis. The visible stain on a ceiling and the hole in the roof are often a metre or more apart, because water runs along the underlay and rafters before it drips. Finding the real entry point takes time, and that time is part of the price. Our guide to finding and fixing a roof leak explains how it is traced.
Slate and tile repairs
Slate and tile repairs are the most common small jobs, and the ranges are modest when access is easy. For a single natural slate, one published cost guide gives £100 to £250 for the labour plus £5 to £25 for the slate itself. That figure assumes the slate can be replaced from a ladder or roof ladder (a ladder hooked over the ridge that spreads your weight on the slope). With a tower or scaffold it climbs, as the earlier range of £300 to £800 for access suggests.
Why does a single slate cost so much more than the slate? Because slate is fixed with nails that hold it from above and are hidden by the course over them. To replace a cracked one, the roofer slides a tool under the course above, cuts off or draws the old nail and fits a hook or clip, called a tingle, to hold the new slate. It takes skill, and it is fiddly. For clay and concrete tiles the job is easier, but the principle is the same: the work is the access and care, not the tile.
A slipped tile often has a cause. Rusted nails, perished battens (the timber strips the tiles hang from) or a roof that has settled can mean the next tile is already loosening. If a few tiles have moved, the sensible question is whether the roof is failing in general. We lean towards repair wherever it will last, and we say so plainly when patching has stopped being sensible. Our storm damage to roofs guide covers repairs after high winds.
Chimney repairs: leadwork, flashings and repointing
Chimneys are the most frequent source of leaks that are not obviously a missing tile. The stack takes the weather on all four sides, and the junction where it meets the roof is sealed by leadwork, strips of lead dressed into the brickwork and over the tiles. If that lead lifts, cracks or is badly sealed, water gets in beside the stack and stains the ceiling below.
Published figures for replacing chimney leadwork average about £570, in a range of £350 to £920. Another guide puts full four-sided chimney flashing at about £525 without scaffold, rising to around £1,000 when scaffold is needed. The gap between those numbers is access once more. A chimney on a gable end of a bungalow is a different job from a central stack on a three-storey house.
Repointing, which means renewing crumbled mortar between the bricks, is priced separately. One guide gives a typical figure of about £750, another £450 to £1,200, and a third a wider £500 to £2,000 for chimney repair in general, averaging about £750. Rather than quote one figure, it is safer to see these as a band that depends on stack height, the number of faces needing work, and whether the pot and the flaunching (the mortar bed that holds the pot) need rebuilding as well.
If chimney work is the likely cause of your leak, our chimney repairs in Basingstoke page goes through the repairs in detail, and lead roofing and leadwork covers the lead side.
Ridge, hip and verge repairs
Ridge tiles are the caps along the top of the roof, and hips are the sloping ridges. Both were traditionally bedded in mortar, which cracks and falls out as the roof flexes and the weather works at it. Current standards, BS 5534:2014, require ridge, hip and verge components to be mechanically fixed, not held by mortar alone, and BS 8612:2018 covers dry-fix systems, where clips and fixings replace most of the mortar.
For a semi-detached house, one cost guide gives £900 to £1,600 for a dry ridge system, with scaffold adding £300 to £900. That is an install price for the whole ridge, not a patch, and a few loose ridge tiles will cost less to re-bed. We do not have a reliable published figure for dry verge work, so we will not guess one. If you suspect ridge trouble, the clue is often mortar crumbs in the gutter or a visible line of pointing that has gone dark and cracked. More detail is on our ridge tile repairs page.
Moss, cleaning and the call-out itself
Roof moss looks alarming, though it is seldom the leak itself. It holds moisture against the roof and can lift or clog tiles, and in gutters it blocks outlets. Hand cleaning with a biocide treatment is priced in one guide at £748 for a small roof, £863 for an average one and £978 for a large one, while pressure washing is £553, £638 and £723 respectively. Washing at pressure can damage the surface of some concrete tiles and blow water under the covering, so ask which method is being proposed and why.
The call-out is the cost of getting somebody out in a hurry. A typical UK emergency call-out is reported at £150 to £350 before materials, with another source giving £150 to £300 plus the repair, and the south-east can run 20 to 35% higher. That sets the floor for the bill when a roofer is needed urgently, outside working hours or without notice. If you are unsure what to expect, we cover this in how much an emergency roofer costs and out-of-hours roofing help.
| Repair | Typical UK range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Single slate replaced | £100 to £250 labour, plus £5 to £25 for the slate | Ladder or tower access, brittle neighbours |
| Scaffold or tower for a small repair | £300 to £800 | Height and access around the house |
| Chimney leadwork | £350 to £920, average about £570 | Number of sides, stack height, scaffold |
| Chimney repointing | £450 to £1,200 | Stack height and condition of the mortar |
| Dry ridge, semi-detached | £900 to £1,600, plus scaffold | Ridge length and tile type |
| Roof moss removal | £748 to £978 | Roof size and method |
| Emergency call-out | £150 to £350 before materials | Hour, distance and weather |
When a repair stops being the right answer
Every roof reaches a point where the next repair is money spent on a failing covering. The signs are broad rather than specific: tiles or slates slipping across several slopes, lots of cracked or delaminating pieces, daylight visible in the loft, nail sickness, or a series of repairs that keep returning. One repaired slate is a repair. Repairs on every slope are a roof that is telling you something.
We try not to push either way. Where a repair will do the job we say so, and where a roof has run its course we explain why. A re-roof is a very different spend from a repair, and the comparison is worth working out with a proper survey. Small repairs that stay under the Planning Portal thresholds seldom involve a building control application, but a bigger re-covering can, and the roof's insulation may then have to be upgraded. We handle the Building Regulations side where work is notifiable.
If a repair is going to be claimed on insurance, the cause matters as much as the cost. A sudden storm event and long-term deterioration are treated differently, and our guide on storm damage or wear and tear explains how insurers draw that line.
Getting a fixed price for your roof
The ranges on this page are for orientation. Your own roof will not sit neatly in any of them, because the access, the age of the covering and the cause of the fault vary house to house. The way to get a real number is a survey.
Ours is free. We go up, find the fault, and photograph it, so you see your own roof and not a description of one. You then get a fixed written quote showing what the repair involves and what it costs, including any access we need. If the repair carries our 10-year workmanship guarantee, that is written down as well, and we leave the property tidy, with rubbish removed. To book, phone 01256 213956, or WhatsApp a photo of the problem to that number. The wider service is described on our emergency and general repairs hub.
