Do I need planning permission to replace a roof?
The planning answer is usually no. The building regulations answer is always yes, and one question to your roofer decides how much work that means for you.
Usually not. Stripping a roof and re-covering it in the same material is not development at all, because it does not materially affect the external appearance of the house, so there is no planning application to make. The answer changes if you switch to a visibly different covering, or if your house sits in a conservation area.
The short version
- A like-for-like re-roof is normally not development under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, so there is nothing to apply for and nobody to notify.
- Swapping natural slate for concrete interlocking tile can materially affect external appearance, and that is where planning permission comes back into it.
- A re-roof is notifiable building work whatever the planning answer. Most homeowners never see a building notice, and the reason is Schedule 3 of the Building Regulations 2010, not an exemption.
- Ask every roofer who quotes: are you registered under a competent person scheme for roof coverings, and will you notify building control and send me the certificate? If not, somebody has to serve a building notice, and that somebody is normally you.
- Conservation areas and National Parks restrict permitted development, and an article 4 direction can remove it. Confirm your own address with your local planning authority before anyone orders a tile.
Start here
Replacing a roof is usually not development at all
The reason most re-roofs need no planning permission is not that they are permitted development. It is that they are not development in the first place, and that is a stronger position to be in.
Section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines development as building, engineering, mining or other operations, or a material change of use. It then says that works which affect only the interior of a building, or which do not materially affect its external appearance, are not development. A roof stripped and re-covered in the same material falls straight into that second limb. It never enters the planning system at all, so there is no application, no fee, no eight-week determination period and no neighbour consultation.
That is a different thing from permitted development, and the difference is worth holding on to. Permitted development is a right the Order grants over work that genuinely is development, and it can be taken away. Not being development cannot, because there is nothing there to remove. The Planning Portal puts the practical version at the top of its roof page: work to the roof of a house that does not materially affect its external appearance will usually not require planning permission.
Everything then hangs on the word materially, which does not mean "at all". Every re-roof changes the look of a house a little: clean tiles, fresh mortar, a ridge line straight for the first time in thirty years. None of that is material. Material is a change somebody walking past would read as a different roof on the same house. For the five permission regimes side by side, see planning permission, building regulations and listed building consent.
The tile question
When changing the covering does need permission
The change most likely to turn a re-roof into development is swapping one type of covering for another, and the classic is natural slate replaced with concrete interlocking tile.
Stand in the road and look at why. Natural slate is a small, thin, flat unit laid in double lap, so the roof reads as a fine dark grid with almost no shadow in it, and the colour shifts from slate to slate. A concrete interlocking tile is a large unit with a bold profile, laid single lap, in one flat pigment, throwing a coarse shadow every course. Same house, same pitch, same rafters, and from the pavement it is a different building. That is a material change of external appearance, and it works in reverse too: putting slate back on a concrete roof is also a change, because "it looks better" is not one of the limbs of section 55.
Then there is the genuinely arguable middle: natural slate replaced with a fibre cement slate of the same size and lap, or a plain clay tile replaced with a matched flat concrete tile. At three storeys up you would struggle to tell, and reasonable officers disagree. When a case is arguable, do not argue it after the scaffold has come down. The choice is worth making on its merits too, which is concrete against clay and natural slate against fibre cement slate.
How to get the answer in writing
Ring the planning duty desk at your council, describe the existing covering and the proposed one, and ask them to confirm by email. Most authorities will, and it costs nothing. If the job is significant, apply for a lawful development certificate instead. That is not a planning permission. It is a formal ruling that you did not need one, and it is what a buyer's solicitor asks for when the sale is halfway through.
Weight is a separate question, and not a planning one
A change of covering changes the load on the rafters, which has nothing to do with planning. The Planning Portal's building control note says approval under the Building Regulations is likely where the replacement tile is significantly heavier or lighter than the existing one, and advises checking with a structural engineer or surveyor first. Concrete interlocking tile is generally heavier per square metre than natural slate, and a structure sized for slate in 1900 was not sized for it.
| The job | Planning position | Building regulations | Check first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strip and re-cover, same tile | Not development, appearance not materially affected | Notifiable | Is your roofer registered under Schedule 3 paragraph 16 |
| Natural slate to concrete interlocking tile | Most likely to be a material change of appearance, so permission may be needed | Notifiable, plus the weight change | Ask the planning duty officer before ordering the tile |
| Rooflights in the existing plane | Permitted development under Class C, inside the limits | Notifiable | The 0.15 metre limit is measured off the original roof |
| Dormer, or the roof raised | Class B, and Class B is not permitted on article 2(3) land | Notifiable and structural | Conservation area or National Park |
| Solar panels on the slope | Its own class, not Class C | Notifiable, and outside Schedule 3 paragraph 16 | Who notifies building control for the panels |
| Flat roof re-covered, insulation upgraded | Not usually development, nobody can see it | Notifiable, thermal element rules bite | What insulation is on the quote |
Permitted development
Class C, and the 150 millimetres that catches people out
Permitted development only starts to matter once you are doing something to the roof beyond re-covering it, and for most roof work the class you want is Class C.
Class C of Schedule 2, Part 1 of the General Permitted Development Order covers any other alteration to the roof of a dwellinghouse, which in practice usually means rooflights in the existing plane of the slope. Two limits matter. The alteration must not protrude more than 0.15 metres beyond the plane of the slope of the original roof, measured from the perpendicular with the external surface of the original roof, and no part of it may end up higher than the highest part of the original roof. Class C also excludes chimneys, flues, soil and vent pipes, and solar equipment, which has its own class in Part 14, covered in permitted development for rooflights, dormers and solar.
"Original" is not "existing", and the Planning Portal blurs the two
The Planning Portal's roof page states the limit as 150 millimetres from the plane of the existing roof slope. The Order says original. Those are not the same word, and on some houses they are not the same plane.
Original has a fixed statutory meaning: the building as it was built, or as it stood on 1 July 1948 if it went up before that date. On a house nobody has touched, original and existing are the same surface and the distinction changes nothing. On a house that has already had a dormer put in, an outrigger raised, or a rear slope rebuilt at a different pitch, they are different surfaces. If a previous owner lifted a section by 200 millimetres under a permission, a rooflight projecting 150 millimetres above the existing plane projects 350 above the original one and sits outside Class C entirely.
So before you rely on the 150, find out whether the roof you are standing on is the roof the house was built with. Old deeds, a previous decision on the council's planning register or an aerial photograph will tell you, and a roofer who has been in both kinds of loft can usually tell from the timber, because the joint shows.
Some houses have no Class C rights at all
Part 1 of Schedule 2 grants rights to dwellinghouses. A flat does not get them, and neither does a building containing flats, so a maisonette owner planning rooflights is making a full householder application whatever the dimensions say. The same goes for a house created out of a shop, office or agricultural building under a change-of-use class, and for a house built under Part 20 of the Order.
On newer estates, permitted development rights are routinely stripped out by a condition on the original permission for the whole development, sitting in a decision notice you have never read. It is on the council's planning register under the estate's application number, and it is free to look at.
Protected areas
Conservation areas, National Parks and article 2(3) land
Being in a conservation area does not stop you re-roofing. It changes which permitted development rights you still hold, and it makes like-for-like the safe route and a change of material the risky one.
The Order gathers the protected designations into one defined term. Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Order defines article 2(3) land as land within: (a) an area designated as a conservation area under section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990; (b) an area of outstanding natural beauty; (c) an area specified by the Secretary of State for the purposes of section 41(3) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; (d) the Broads; (e) a National Park; and (f) a World Heritage Site.
Limb (b) needs a note: areas of outstanding natural beauty were renamed National Landscapes in 2023. Same designation, same map, and the Order still uses the old wording.
What actually changes on article 2(3) land is narrower than most people fear. Class B, which covers dormers and enlargements of the roof, is not permitted there at all, so a dormer in a conservation area is a planning application and there is no argument about it. Class C is not excluded, so rooflights inside the 0.15 metre limit survive. Section 55 survives too: a like-for-like re-cover in a conservation area is still not development.
What does change is the tolerance for a change of material. The authority has a statutory duty to pay special attention to preserving or enhancing the character of the area, and roofscape is one of the first things a conservation area appraisal describes. The slate-to-concrete swap that passes without comment on a 1970s estate is the thing that draws an enforcement letter on a Victorian terrace. What changes in practice is in re-roofing in a conservation area.
A conservation area is automatic and restricts a fixed list of classes. An article 4 direction is different: a council decision over a defined area, which can remove almost any permitted development right, including ones a conservation area leaves alone. There are thousands in England and nobody will have written to you about yours. How to check your own address is in article 4 directions and what they mean for your house.
Whatever this page says, confirm your own case with your local planning authority before work starts. Designation boundaries do not follow street lines, and the body that decides planning is not always the one that decides building control. Inside a National Park, planning sits with the Park Authority and building control with the district council: two questions, two organisations, one roof.
If the house is listed, stop here. Works affecting the character of a listed building need listed building consent, and carrying them out without it is a criminal offence rather than a paperwork problem. Permitted development is not a defence, and neither is the fact that you were putting back what was there. Speak to the conservation officer before anybody orders a tile. The same principle covers mortar and render, set out in listed building consent for repointing and rendering.
The half nobody mentions
A re-roof is notifiable building work, and there is a way round the building notice
Whatever the planning answer turns out to be, replacing the covering of a roof is building work under the Building Regulations 2010, and it is notifiable. Almost nobody realises it, because almost nobody has ever filled in a building notice for a re-roof. That is not because re-roofing is exempt. There is a second route, and whether your job takes it depends entirely on who you hire.
Start with the default. Regulation 12 says a person intending to carry out building work must give the relevant authority a building notice, or an application for building control approval with full plans. That second phrase used to be called a full plans application and older guidance still says so; it is the same thing under a newer name. Either way it means an application before work starts, a fee, and building control turning up to inspect. Then read regulation 12(6): you are not required to give either one where the work is described in column 1 of the Table in Schedule 3 and is carried out by a person described in the corresponding entry in column 2. That is the door, and roof coverings go through it.
Schedule 3, paragraph 16
Column 1 of paragraph 16 of Schedule 3 to the Building Regulations 2010 reads: "Installation, as a replacement, of the covering of a pitched or flat roof and work carried out by the registered person as a necessary adjunct to that installation. This paragraph does not apply to the installation of solar panels."
Column 2 names the bodies whose registered people may do it, and it names exactly two: "A person registered in respect of that type of work by NAPIT Registration Limited or the National Federation of Roofing Contractors Limited." No others. Those two operate the competent person schemes the legislation puts next to roof coverings, and that is the whole list. So there are two roads out of your driveway and only two.
- Your roofer is registered with one of them for roof coverings. They do the work, they self-certify that it complies, and they notify the council themselves. Gov.uk's guidance on using a competent person scheme says the scheme member tells the local authority and you should receive your certificate within eight weeks of the work being completed. No building notice, no inspection appointment, nothing to apply for.
- Your roofer is not. Then somebody has to give the council a building notice or a full plans application before work starts, and building control will want to inspect. There is a fee and an appointment, and the duty sits with the building owner rather than the contractor unless your contract says otherwise. That is you.
The one question to ask before you sign anything
Ask every roofer who quotes: are you registered under a competent person scheme for roof coverings, and will you notify building control and send me the certificate? Both halves matter: being registered is not the point on its own, and lodging the notification is what produces the piece of paper.
If the answer is no, that is not a reason to walk away from an otherwise good quote. It means you serve the building notice yourself, and you want to know that before the scaffold goes up rather than eight years later, when a buyer's conveyancer asks for building regulations sign-off. Ask everyone the same question and keep the answers with the quote. The three routes are compared in building notice, full plans or a competent person scheme, and what a quote should contain is in what a roofing quote should include.
Solar panels sit outside paragraph 16
The last sentence of paragraph 16 is the one people skim past: it does not apply to the installation of solar panels. If panels are going on in the same job, a roofer's roofing registration does not cover that part of it. Microgeneration installations have their own entry in Schedule 3 with a different list of bodies, and a firm can easily be on one and not the other. That is the gap things fall through, so ask in writing who is notifying which part to whom.
The insulation trigger, briefly
A roof is a thermal element, and re-covering it renovates that element. Regulation 23 of the Building Regulations 2010 pulls Part L into the job once you renovate more than half the element's surface area, which a full strip and re-cover clears easily. One correction while you are here: Part L works in U-values, not millimetres, so there is no legal depth of loft insulation, and the 270mm figure repeated everywhere is the Energy Saving Trust's recommendation rather than a Building Regulations requirement. The rest is in Part L on a re-roof or loft conversion, and what actually goes in is on our insulation page.
Corrections
Three things the internet keeps getting wrong
"You never need planning permission to replace a roof"
Wrong twice over. A change that materially affects external appearance is development, and slate to concrete interlocking tile is the standard example. And separately, permitted development rights can be taken away, by an article 4 direction or by a condition on the original permission for the estate. Neither is unusual.
"A like-for-like re-roof does not need building regulations"
Wrong. Replacing the covering of a pitched or flat roof is notifiable building work, full stop. The reason nearly nobody fills in a building notice is Schedule 3 paragraph 16, which is a route around the notice for roofers registered with one of two named bodies. That is a different thing from an exemption, and the difference shows up on the day you sell.
"The limit is 150mm above the existing roof"
The Order says original, not existing, and it is the Planning Portal's own page that puts "existing" into circulation. On an unaltered house it makes no difference. On an altered house it changes the answer, and altered houses are exactly the ones where somebody ends up measuring.
Next steps
What to do, in order
None of this needs a consultant and most of it is free.
- Work out what you are standing under. An ordinary house, an unaltered roof and the same covering going back on puts you outside the planning system.
- Check the designations for your address before you order anything: conservation area, National Park, National Landscape or an article 4 direction.
- Pull the original planning decision for your estate off the council's online register and read the conditions. Removed permitted development rights hide there.
- If you are changing the type of covering, ring the planning duty officer, describe the old and the new, and ask for it by email. For anything significant, apply for a lawful development certificate.
- Confirm your own case with your local planning authority. This page states the general position in England and Wales, and your street can be an exception to it.
- Ask every roofer quoting whether they are registered under a competent person scheme for roof coverings and will notify building control. If nobody is, plan on a building notice and the council's inspection.
- Ask what happens to the insulation, and get the answer on the written quote rather than in a conversation.
- Keep the certificate somewhere you will find it in ten years. It is the cheapest part of the job and the one that costs you at sale.
If you want a second opinion on whether the roof needs replacing at all, or on whether the proposed covering suits the house, that is what a site visit is for. Thomas comes out, goes over it, and puts in writing what he found. What we cover is on the roofing page, and you can ask for a free written itemised quote without committing to anything.
Questions
Questions we get asked about this
Do I need planning permission to replace my roof tiles with the same tiles?
Almost never. A like-for-like re-cover does not materially affect the external appearance of the house, so it is not development under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and there is nothing to apply for. Conservation areas and article 4 directions are the exceptions worth checking first.
Can I change from slate to concrete tiles without permission?
Sometimes, and this is the change most likely to need it. Concrete interlocking tile reads very differently from natural slate at street level, and a material change of external appearance is development. Ask your local planning authority before you order the tile, and apply for a lawful development certificate if you want the answer on file.
Do building regulations apply to a re-roof?
Yes. Replacing the covering of a pitched or flat roof is notifiable building work. Schedule 3 paragraph 16 of the Building Regulations 2010 lets a roofer registered with NAPIT Registration Limited or the National Federation of Roofing Contractors Limited self-certify it instead, which is why most homeowners never see a building notice.
What if my roofer is not on a competent person scheme?
Then somebody has to give the council a building notice, or an application for building control approval with full plans, before work starts, and building control will inspect. That duty normally sits with you as the building owner, so agree who is doing it before the scaffold goes up.
How long should the building regulations certificate take?
Gov.uk says a competent person scheme member notifies the local authority and you should receive your certificate within eight weeks of the work being completed. Keep it. Your buyer's conveyancer will ask for it.
Who wrote this
Thomas Hannen
Thomas owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building and prices every job himself rather than sending somebody else. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. If you want to talk something through before you commit to anything, the site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
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