Storm damage to a roof: the first 24 hours

Stay off the roof and stay out from under it. In the first 24 hours everything useful is done at ground level: get the water contained inside, photograph the damage and the debris before you tidy anything away, then ring your insurer. The roof itself waits until the wind has dropped.

The short version

The Health and Safety Executive says not to go on any roof in poor weather, and puts the wind speed that affects your balance at 23mph. That is a fresh breeze, not a gale.
Do not touch it, and do not let anybody else touch it either. While the wind is up, nobody should be on that roof today, including us.
Photograph the debris before you clear it away. The tile on the lawn is the evidence that it came off during the event.
If the chimney is leaning or the roof line has visibly dropped, your first call is the council rather than a roofer. It has a statutory power to act on a dangerous building.
Ring your insurer before you authorise anything permanent. Emergency work to stop further damage is expected. A rebuilt roof, before anyone has assessed it, is not.

Start here

Nobody goes on the roof, and that includes us

Before you fetch the ladder. The Health and Safety Executive is blunt about this. Its published position is: “Do not consider going on any roof in poor weather conditions such as rain, ice, frost or strong winds (particularly gusting) or if slippery conditions exist on the roof.” The same page puts a number on it: “Winds in excess of 23mph (Force 5) will affect a persons balance.” That is the regulator talking about trained people at work, not about you in your slippers.

23mph is the figure to hold on to, because it is far lower than anybody guesses. Somebody at the back door thinking it has died down a bit is very often standing in wind the HSE says will affect their balance. Force 5 is a fresh breeze. On a wet pitched roof it is enough to kill you.

Now put that figure next to the one the insurance industry uses. The Association of British Insurers describes a storm as involving gusts of at least 55mph. So the threshold for calling it a storm is 55mph and the threshold for wind affecting your balance is 23mph. Between those two numbers sits a wide band of weather that is not a storm as far as your policy is concerned and is already too windy for anyone to be up there. That band is where the accidents happen, because it is the weather people think is fine.

Do not touch it, and do not let anyone else touch it either

The second half is the part nobody writes down. It is easy to accept that you should not climb up. It is harder to turn down a firm standing in your drive that afternoon offering to go up and sort it now. Say no. A firm offering to climb onto a wet roof while the wind is up is telling you about how it gets its work, not about how urgent your roof is.

A tile that has already gone cannot go again. Water coming through the ceiling is dealt with from inside. The genuine emergencies are structural, and those are a council matter before they are a roofing one. That applies to us too, which is why we will say we are coming when it drops.

What you can safely do, and what you cannot

What you can safely do in the hours after storm damage, and what nobody should be doing at all
Action	Safe?	Why
Look at the roof from the garden with binoculars	Yes	No work at height, and binoculars show more than a ladder does
Photograph from ground level, or a neighbour’s garden with permission	Yes	A second angle is worth having
Photograph from an upstairs window	Yes	Often the only view of a valley or a lower roof
Look in the loft with a torch for daylight and wet timber	Yes, with care	Stand on the joists, never between them. The hazard is the ceiling, not the height
Buckets down, furniture moved, carpet lifted	Yes	The most useful thing you can do today
Clear a ground-level gully or the bottom of a downpipe	Yes	Ground level, and a gully backing up against the wall does real damage
Ladder to a gutter	Only in dry, still conditions	The HSE does not ban ladders. It expects level, stable, secured, a competent user, and minutes rather than hours
Ladder in any wind, rain, ice or frost	No	The HSE position quoted above covers exactly this
Walking on a pitched roof	No, ever	Roof work is almost one in five deaths in construction, and those are people who do it for a living
Walking on a flat roof, garage, outbuilding or rooflight	No	Treat every roof as fragile until proved otherwise. Rooflights are invisible when wet
Fixing a tarpaulin over a hole	No	It only works fixed above the breach and dressed under the courses above, which is a roofer’s job in decent weather

The tarpaulin gets its own piece: what a temporary roof cover actually does. The short version is that water already inside the structure keeps arriving for a day or more regardless of what is over the hole.

If the structure itself looks unsafe

This is a different problem and it gets a different phone call. A chimney leaning out of plumb, a stack that has shed its pots, a bulging gable or parapet, a ridge line that has visibly dropped, masonry sitting loose above a pavement: none of that is a roofing job at three in the afternoon. It is a dangerous structure, and it may be dangerous to people who are not you.

Ring the council and ask for building control or the dangerous structures officer. Section 78 of the Building Act 1984 gives a local authority the power to take immediate action itself where a building or structure is dangerous and immediate action is needed to remove the danger. It is a real power, it exists in every district in England and Wales, and it costs nothing to ask for it. Almost no roofing page mentions it, which is odd, because on the night of a storm it is often the correct call. Get everyone away from underneath first, and if the masonry is over a public footpath say so when you ring, because that changes how quickly somebody comes out.

If there is a cable anywhere near it

A cable down in the garden, across the roof, or pulled away from the wall where it enters the house, stops everything else. Do not touch it, do not move anything it is touching, keep people back and ring 105, the national power cut number. It is free, works from a mobile and puts you through to your network operator.

Inside the house

Stop the water getting worse, and do it from indoors

Almost all of the damage a leak does is done in the first day, and almost all of it is preventable from indoors.

Isolate the electrics in that part of the house. Water tracks along joists and cables and comes out somewhere other than where it went in. Near a light fitting, a downlighter or a ceiling rose, switch the circuit off at the consumer unit rather than at the switch.
Get everything out from under it. Furniture, rugs, books, anything electrical. Wet carpet on a damp floor for two days is a bigger bill than most tile repairs.
Contain it. Buckets, a bin, a bowl. Put a tea towel in the bucket so it does not splash, and empty it before it needs emptying.
Go up into the loft with a torch, and stay on the joists. Look for where the water is arriving, for daylight through the roof, and for underlay holding water like a hammock.
Pull the wet insulation clear. Soaked mineral wool holds water against the ceiling plaster and stops it drying. Drag it off the wet patch. It is the most useful ten minutes in this list and hardly anyone does it.
Catch it in the loft rather than in the ceiling. A container under the drip, on a board across the joists, keeps the water off the plasterboard entirely.

A bulging ceiling. If a ceiling is sagging and heavy with trapped water, do not stand under it and do not push it. Left alone it can come down as one piece. Trade practice is to isolate the power, put a bin underneath, stand to the side and pierce it deliberately at the lowest point so the water runs out in a controlled way rather than the whole ceiling failing at once. That is our own view rather than published guidance, and if you are not comfortable doing it, keep everyone out of the room and shut the door.

What you should not do is start a permanent repair. Emergency work to stop further damage is expected of you. Stripping and rebuilding a roof before anybody has assessed it destroys the evidence and hands the insurer an argument for free.

Before you tidy up

Photograph everything, including what landed on the lawn

First, what we are and are not. We can quote for the repair and put in writing what we found and what caused it. We do not handle claims, we do not talk to your insurer for you and we are not loss assessors. This section is about what you gather, so that whoever does handle it has something to work with.

Photograph now rather than tomorrow, because roof claims are rarely declined on whether there was a storm. They are declined on the argument that the roof was already going and the storm was the occasion rather than the cause. The Financial Ombudsman Service, which decides these disputes, sets out the three questions it asks, in its own words:

“Do we agree that storm conditions occurred on or around the date the damage is said to have happened?”
“Is the damage claimed for consistent with what we generally see as storm damage?”
“Were storm conditions the main cause of the damage or were there other factors that meant the damage might have happened anyway?”

Read the third one again. The clause about other factors that meant the damage might have happened anyway is the whole argument, in the words of the body that settles it. A slipped tile on a roof with corroded nails and soft battens is, on that test, a roof that was going to shed a tile anyway.

Two things the ombudsman says that almost nobody repeats

The first is about who proves what. If your claim comes back declined for wear and tear, you are probably bracing yourself to prove a negative. You do not have to. The ombudsman tells insurers plainly: “if you’re relying on an exclusion then you must show that the exclusion applies. For example, if you think a flat roof has deteriorated, then you need to provide evidence to support this.”

The second is about aerial photographs. Drone and satellite imagery is now routine in claims handling, and a refusal is often built on one picture. The ombudsman says: “Sometimes we see reports where the roof hasn’t been inspected properly and the insurer has relied on an aerial photo. Unless the photo clearly shows deterioration, and this is explained in the report, then we may not be persuaded that you’ve shown the exclusion fairly applies.” If that is the basis of your refusal, quote it back.

What to photograph, in priority order

The debris on the ground, before you clear it. Tile fragments, ridge sections, torn felt, mortar, lead. This is the evidence that the material came off during the event, and it is the first thing people tidy away.
The roof, wide and close, from the ground and from upstairs windows. Wide shots establish the extent, the zoom establishes what failed.
The inside. Stained ceiling, wet insulation, damaged contents, water in the bucket. This links a roof defect to an actual loss.
Anything you already have from before. A dated photograph of the roof taken before the storm is the most valuable item in a roof claim, because it answers the third question outright, and almost nobody has one. That is the point of the pre-winter checks you can do from the ground.
Receipts. Emergency work, a hotel night, a dehumidifier hire. Often recoverable, but only if evidenced.

Use the phone, because phone photographs carry the date automatically. And if you cannot say when the damage happened, that is not fatal. The ombudsman’s position is that “if the customer doesn’t know when the damage happened, because they were away or the damage wasn’t noticeable straightaway, it’s reasonable to look further back in the records.”

What actually counts as bad enough weather

Three thresholds are in play and they do not agree with each other, which is why so much of what you will read on this is wrong.

Three different thresholds for bad weather, and what each one is actually for
Whose threshold	What it says	What it decides
Health and Safety Executive	Winds over 23mph affect a person’s balance, and nobody should be on a roof in rain, ice, frost or strong winds	Whether anyone can safely be up there. The regulator’s position
Association of British Insurers	Gusts of at least 55mph, rain of at least 25mm an hour, 30cm of snow in 24 hours, or damaging hail	Nothing on its own. An industry reference point your policy is not obliged to use. Read your own policy’s definition
Financial Ombudsman Service	“A storm generally involves violent winds, usually accompanied by rain, hail or snow”, and it says explicitly that rain, hail or snow on its own can constitute a storm without high winds	Your complaint, if it gets that far and the policy does not define the word

Nearly every page ranking for these questions presents 55mph as though it settled the matter. It does not. The body that decides the dispute applies a looser test of its own, and checks the weather for your location rather than your region.

Which piece of evidence answers which question is set out in what evidence to gather for a roof insurance claim. If the roof is not yours alone, because you rent or hold a lease, start with who is actually responsible for storm damage to a roof.

The order matters

Who to call, and in what order

Ordered by what is irreversible, not by what feels urgent.

105, if a cable is involved. Nothing else happens first.
The council, if the structure looks dangerous. Ask for building control or the dangerous structures officer. Every council website carries an out of hours number.
Your insurer, before you authorise anything permanent. Most buildings policies have a 24 hour claims line and many arrange emergency make-safe themselves. Ask what work you are authorised to instruct, whether they need to inspect before repairs, and what the excess is. Write down who you spoke to and when.
A roofer, for make-safe and a written report on what failed. Not to rebuild the roof today. A written description of the failure, from somebody who has actually looked at it, is what answers the third ombudsman question.
A plasterer, later. The ceiling comes after the roof, and after it has dried out.

Do not have the roof permanently rebuilt before the insurer has seen it or agreed a process, because you will have removed the evidence and paid for the privilege. And do not pay a cash deposit to somebody you met today.

When you ring us, Thomas comes out, looks at it properly and puts in writing what he found and what it would take to put right, itemised, at no charge for the visit. You can ask for a written quote or just get in touch and describe what you are looking at, and if it is a chimney or masonry problem rather than a covering problem, that is brickwork and repointing rather than roofing.

If somebody knocks

The 14 day right, and the trap inside it

Storm damage brings people to your door, and they arrive fast. The ones who are not genuine rely on you agreeing to something on the doorstep while you are still rattled. If you sign for building work at your own door, having not asked that person to come, you get 14 days to cancel, counting from the day after you gave the go-ahead. A trader who takes an off-premises contract and fails to give you the required cancellation information commits a criminal offence, punishable by a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale. Not a technicality. An offence.

Two things follow. If nobody gave you the cancellation notice, the 14 days does not simply run out: the period extends, up to a year. And if work has been done and you then cancel you would normally pay a proportionate amount, but you pay nothing where the trader never gave you that information.

Here is the trap. Those rights largely fall away where you specifically asked the trader to visit for urgent repairs or maintenance. If you rang round at eight in the morning and asked somebody to come out today, the cancellation right does not work the way it does for an uninvited caller. It still applies to extra services they sell you on the day, and to goods that are not replacement parts, but the core job sits outside it. That is also why a doorstep caller works so hard to get you to say “yes, come and have a look”.

On the day: do not let anybody up on the roof who you did not approach yourself, because you cannot check the photographs they come down with. Ask for the company name and number and look it up on Companies House while they stand there. Ask for everything in writing. If you have signed and gone cold on it, Citizens Advice sets out how to cancel building work and runs the consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133. That is also the only route to Trading Standards, because a consumer cannot report to Trading Standards directly, which catches people out constantly.

We do not knock on doors, which is a statement about how this firm gets work and nothing more. The full version, for a reader with somebody standing outside right now, is in somebody knocked and said your roof is dangerous.

The honest timetable is longer than anybody wants. After a widely reported storm every roofer in the county is booked out inside a day, and the ones who are not are the ones knocking on doors. Make-safe work happens quickly because it is quick. Proper repairs queue behind scaffold, materials and the weather, and a re-bedded ridge or a re-felted slope is a dry-weather job.

Drying out takes longer still. A soaked ceiling needs weeks before it is worth replastering, and one skimmed too early will crack and stain through. Leave the loft hatch open and be patient. Your insurer has eight weeks to answer a complaint before you can take it to the ombudsman, which tells you the pace of it all.

Once it is fixed, the useful habit is the cheap one: photograph the roof from the lawn every autumn and keep the pictures. Two minutes, and it is the evidence that answers the question that sinks most roof claims. As for why the damage happened where it did, wind lifts tiles rather than pushing them, hardest at the verge, the eaves and the ridge. And a named storm and its warning colour tell you two different things before the next one arrives.

Your next five steps

Contain the water, isolate the circuit, pull the wet insulation clear.
Photograph the debris before anyone tidies it, then the roof, then the damage indoors.
Ring 105 if a cable is involved, and the council if the structure looks dangerous.
Ring your insurer and ask what emergency work you are authorised to instruct.
Book somebody you approached yourself for once the wind drops, and ask for the cause in writing along with the price.

When you are ready for somebody to look at it properly, that is what our roofing work covers, from a single slipped tile to a full strip and re-cover. Thomas prices it himself and puts it in writing, and if it can wait until spring he will tell you that too.

Questions

Questions we get asked about this

Should I go up and look at the roof myself after a storm?

No. The Health and Safety Executive says not to consider going on any roof in poor weather, and notes that winds over 23mph will affect a person's balance. Look from the garden with binoculars and from upstairs windows instead. You will see more than you would from a ladder.

Do I call my insurer or a roofer first?

Your insurer, unless something is dangerous or a cable is involved. Emergency work to stop further damage is normally fine, but a permanent repair carried out before the insurer has seen the roof removes the evidence and can cost you the claim.

What should I photograph after storm damage?

The debris on the ground before you clear it away, the roof from the garden and from upstairs windows, and the damage inside. The debris matters most, because it shows the material came off during the event, and it is the first thing people tidy up.

What if I do not know exactly when the damage happened?

That is recoverable. The Financial Ombudsman Service says that where a customer does not know when the damage happened, because they were away or it was not noticeable straightaway, it is reasonable to look further back in the weather records.

Can I cancel roof work I agreed to at my door?

Usually yes. You have 14 days from the day after you gave the go-ahead, and if the trader never gave you the cancellation information in writing, the period extends and they have committed a criminal offence. It is different if you rang and asked for an urgent repair.

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.

Storm damage to your roof: what to do in the first 24 hours