What a roofing quote should include: the line items to look for
You have two or three quotes open and they all say “new roof”. Here is the list to hold them against, and what each missing line is hiding.
A roofing quote should describe the work, not just put a figure on it. Look for what is being stripped and what is being kept, the underlay and the battens, the fixing specification, the flashings, the scaffold weeks, the waste, the VAT position, the payment stages, and the company’s own registered details.
The short version
- “New roof” is not a specification. Whether the battens and underlay are renewed or quietly left in place is the difference between two quotes that read the same.
- Ridge and hip tiles have to be mechanically fixed even where they are also bedded in mortar. A quote that says only “bed ridge in mortar” is describing a standard that changed.
- “Scaffold included” with no number of weeks in it has not fixed anything. Scaffold is hired by the week and the weeks are the risk.
- A provisional sum is an allowance, not a price and not a ceiling. A good one names the item, the assumed quantity, the rate the extra is priced at, and who decides.
- Every quote should carry the trading name, a real address and, for a limited company, a company number you can look up in a minute.
Start here
The quote is the contract, so read it like one
Whatever the quote says is what you have bought, and whatever it leaves out is what you will argue about in week three. Under section 50 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, anything written or said to you about the service becomes a term of the contract if you took it into account.
Start at the top of the page. Regulation 8 of the Provision of Services Regulations 2009 requires a provider to make available its name, its legal status and form, its geographic address, its trade register details, its VAT number where it is registered, and its general terms and conditions. Few roofing quotes carry all of it, and the missing pieces are rarely the boring ones.
The company number, and what it is for
If the name on the quote ends in Ltd there is a company number behind it, and the number is worth more than the logo. Companies House is free and takes a minute. It gives you the incorporation date, the registered address, the directors, whether the accounts are overdue, and whether a company of that name has been dissolved and started again. Check that the trading name on the quote and the legal name on the register are the same entity.
You can do that with this firm: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. A sole trader has no company number and there is nothing wrong with that, but then you want a real geographic address on the paperwork rather than a mobile number and an email.
Separately, and whichever firm you are weighing up, ask whether it holds public liability insurance and ask to see the certificate rather than take it on trust. If one is produced, make three checks on the document itself. The trading name on it matches the name on the quote. The policy dates cover the period you will be working. The level of cover is stated.
What the total is a total of
A figure with scaffold, waste removal and VAT still to come is not the figure you will pay. Get one number covering everything the job cannot be done without, with the parts listed underneath. A single line and a single figure is the whole problem. Why two quotes for one roof land so far apart is a question of scope before it is a question of price.
The roof itself
The line items that describe the actual roof
What is being stripped, and what is being kept
Two different jobs are sold under one heading. A strip means the old covering comes off, the battens and underlay with it, and the roof is rebuilt from the rafters up. An overlay, or re-cover, means the new covering goes on over what is there, or onto the battens that are there. The finished photographs are identical. The roofs are not.
Ask the quote to say it in words: strip existing covering, battens and underlay back to the rafters, remove from site and dispose, or overlay existing. Then read it for what is kept, item by item. Underlay, battens, ridge, verges, flashings, gutters, fascias and soffits. Anything the quote does not mention is being kept, and it will be the oldest component in your finished roof. Weight belongs here too: slate to concrete puts more load on the same rafters.
Two things follow. A like-for-like re-covering usually needs no consent, which is a separate question. And under regulation 23 of the Building Regulations 2010, renovating more than half the surface area of a thermal element brings it into scope for an upgrade to current standards. For one element the trigger is more than 50%. The 25% figure you may have heard is a separate test, for the whole building envelope. On a full strip that can mean insulation work Part L requires, which the quote either allows for or does not.
The underlay, by name and type
“New felt” specifies nothing. Bitumen felt resists vapour, so the roof is ventilated at eaves and ridge to shift the moisture that gets past it. A breathable membrane lets vapour out through the sheet, which changes the ventilation strategy for the whole roof. Swapping one for the other and changing nothing else is how lofts start dripping in February.
So ask for the product name and the type, and whether the underlay is being replaced at all. On an overlay it often is not, and old felt sagging between the rafters and torn at the eaves is frequently why the roof is letting water in. A new covering over failed underlay is a new-looking roof with the fault still in it.
Battens: renewed or re-used
The quote should say which, in those words. Battens carry every tile and take every fixing, and a batten nailed once, weathered for forty years and nailed again is not the same component as a new one.
Where they are renewed, the quote should say the battens are graded to BS 5534 and give the size. Graded battens are marked along their length, so you can check that yourself while the roof is open. Re-using them can be reasonable on a sound dry roof, but written down rather than left as a silence. It is a common reason one price sits below another.
The fixing specification, and why the ridge matters
A roof needs a fixing specification worked out for the actual site. Under BS 5534, the code of practice for slating and tiling, how the tiles are held down is calculated from the wind loading on that building: exposure, height, pitch and the tile used. A quote silent on fixings has probably not had that calculation done.
Look hardest at the ridge and the hips. Every ridge and hip tile has to be mechanically fixed, whether or not it is also bedded in mortar. Mortar bedding is still allowed. Mortar on its own is not. So a quote that says “bed ridge in mortar” and stops there is describing an older standard, and the ridge is the line most likely to end up on the lawn. A dry ridge system is mechanically fixed by design, and the quote should say which you are getting, a dry ridge or a mortar-bedded ridge. Perimeters need the same treatment, because eaves, verges and abutments are where uplift concentrates.
Flashings: new lead, re-used lead, or something else
“New lead flashings” without a code number specifies nothing. Lead sheet is sold by code, a thickness designation under BS EN 12588: the higher the code, the thicker the lead. Thickness also limits how long a piece can be, because lead moves with temperature and an over-long piece splits along the fold. A cheaper lead line can mean thinner lead in longer pieces, which looks the same on the day and fails in a few years.
Then how it is fixed. Lead let into a raked-out joint and wedged is the detail that lasts; lead stuck to the face of the brickwork on a bead of sealant is cheaper and wholly dependent on that sealant. And whether the old lead comes off at all: re-dressing sound lead is sensible, but “re-dress existing lead” and “renew flashings in Code 5” are different lines.
| The line as written | What it can mean | What to ask for |
|---|---|---|
| New roof | Anything from a full strip to new tiles over forty-year-old battens | Strip to rafters, or overlay? List what is kept |
| Re-felt and batten | Usually a full strip, but not always back to the rafters | Are all battens new, and graded to BS 5534? |
| New underlay | Bitumen felt or breathable membrane, which are two different systems | Which product, and does the ventilation change? |
| Bed ridge in mortar | Mortar as the only fixing, which BS 5534 does not accept on its own | How are the ridge and hip tiles mechanically fixed? |
| New lead flashings | Any thickness, any length, fixed any way | What code, and are they chased in or surface-fixed? |
| Scaffold included | An unstated number of weeks | How many weeks are allowed, and what happens after that? |
| Rubbish removed | Anything from a booked skip to a van and no paperwork | Who removes it, and what is their carrier number? |
| A figure with no VAT line | Inclusive, exclusive, or not chargeable at all | Is VAT in this number, added, or not charged? |
The other half of the money
The lines that are not roofing at all
Scaffold, waste and access are not roofing, and on a re-roof they are a large part of what you pay for. They are also the easiest lines to leave vague.
Scaffolding, stated as weeks
Scaffold is charged as an erect-and-dismantle figure plus hire by the week, so the question is never whether it is included. Get five things in writing: how many weeks are allowed, who provides it, who pays for extra weeks if the job overruns, who pays when the delay is weather, and whose contract it sits on. Book it yourself and the hire period becomes your risk.
Two more surface later. Scaffold on or over a public footway needs a licence from the highway authority, which has a lead time and a cost. And it must be inspected at least every seven days and after anything likely to have affected it, which on an exposed coastal job is not a formality. Who carries which duty, including the client duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, belongs in writing, along with whether scaffolding is included and who is liable if it is not.
Waste, skips and who carries it away
A stripped tile roof produces a great deal of heavy waste, charged by weight as well as volume, so it is a real line rather than an afterthought. On an overlay it disappears entirely, which is part of the gap between two quotes.
Ask three things. Where the skip goes, because one on your own drive needs nobody’s permission and one on the highway needs the highway authority’s, and putting it there without permission is an offence under section 139 of the Highways Act 1980. Who takes the waste away. And their waste carrier registration number, which you can check on the public register of waste carriers, searchable by name, number or postcode.
That last one is not busywork. Under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 the occupier of a domestic property keeps a duty of care over waste produced there, and must take all reasonable measures to see it goes only to an authorised person. If your old roof turns up in a lane, that is why it can come back to you.
Before the quote, not after. Asbestos cement is common in garage roofs, soffits and rainwater goods on anything built or altered before 2000. It is a separate waste stream with its own handling rules and it does not go in a skip. Get it identified before anyone prices the work: found once the scaffold is up, it means a delay, a specialist and a variation.
Access, working hours and the state of your house
None of this is roofing and all of it causes arguments. The quote or its terms should say when the work starts and roughly how long it takes, what hours the crew are on site, where materials and the skip stand, whether the drive is blocked, whether they need water or power, and whether anybody needs to be at home. Two more on terraces: whether access is needed over a neighbour’s property and who asks them, and what protection goes over the drive, the conservatory roof and the planting.
The shape of the money
VAT, supply and fix, and provisional sums
Three things decide what the figure at the bottom actually is: whether tax is in it, who is buying the materials, and how much of it has genuinely been fixed.
The VAT position, stated one way or the other
Every quote should say which of three things its figure is. Inclusive of VAT. Exclusive of VAT, with VAT to be added. Or not chargeable, because the trader is not registered. Those are three different amounts of money, and a VAT line added in small type is often the whole difference between the cheapest quote and the dearest.
A trader whose taxable turnover sits below the VAT registration threshold does not add VAT and is doing nothing wrong. The rarer red flag is the opposite: VAT charged on a quote carrying no VAT number. Some work is not at the standard rate at all, and which rate applies to yours is its own subject.
Supply and fix, or supply only
Supply and fix means the contractor buys the materials and installs them. Supply only means you buy them and pay somebody to fit them. The gap between those two numbers buys four things. The first is price movement: on supply and fix a material price rise between quote and start date comes out of the contractor’s margin, and on supply only it comes out of yours.
The second is the shortfall. A merchant take-off rarely allows for waste and breakage, and roofing generates both: cut tiles at every hip and valley, damage in transit, slates that split under the nail. The order runs short mid-job, with the scaffold up and the roof open.
The third matters most: who is responsible when something fails. The Consumer Rights Act gives you repeat performance where a service was not carried out with reasonable care and skill, at the trader’s cost, expressly including the cost of any labour or materials. On supply only the materials half of that remedy is gone, because those materials were never theirs to supply, and you are left arguing product against workmanship.
The fourth catches people out on insulation. The zero rate on energy-saving materials applies only where they are installed by the person supplying them, so buying the insulation yourself and paying somebody to fit it can cost more tax, not less. The same reading applies to an insulation quote. And membranes, clips, ridge systems and fixings are tested as systems, so mixing components across manufacturers can void the system warranty.
What a provisional sum actually means
A provisional sum is an allowance for work that cannot be measured until it is exposed. It is not a price and it is not a ceiling. It sits inside a fixed price without making the whole thing fixed, which is why it has to be written properly.
On a roof the honest ones are few and predictable. Rafter ends or a length of wall plate. Repointing a chimney once the scaffold reaches it. Rotten decking on a flat roof. An unknown substrate under an old covering.
A good one has four things in it: the item, the assumed quantity, the rate the extra will be priced at, and who decides the work is needed. Without those it is a blank cheque with a figure written on it for comfort. It should also move both ways. If the allowance was for ten rafter ends and three needed doing, the total comes down, and the downward adjustment is the half that gets left out.
The number of them is a better signal than their size. One or two on a re-roof is normal and honest. Several large ones means the price has not really been fixed, and the better answer is a strip-and-inspect stage with a re-price after it.
There is a legal edge too. The Consumer Rights Act’s list of terms that may be unfair includes a term giving the trader discretion to decide the price after the consumer is already bound, where no price and no method of working it out was agreed. That does not make a loose provisional sum void. It makes it open to challenge, which is reason enough to write it properly at the start.
Once it is open
What happens when something is found under the tiles
On a roof that has not been off in forty years something nearly always turns up, and the quote should say what happens then.
A legitimate extra is a discovery: rot in a rafter end, a dropped purlin, an unsound chimney nobody could reach until the scaffold went up, soft decking, asbestos cement in an outbuilding roof. An illegitimate extra is anything countable before the scaffold went up. The area, the pitch, the valleys, hips and abutments, whether there is a chimney, whether there is side access. If it was countable at quote stage, it should have been counted at quote stage.
Proper handling is four steps. You are told before the work is done. It is priced at a rate already in the quote, where there is one. You get a revised total in writing. Your agreement is recorded. A line added to the final invoice is none of those, and whether a builder can charge more than the quoted figure turns almost entirely on which steps happened.
Payment stages
The quote should set out when money is due and against what. The test is whether you could stand in the garden and satisfy yourself the stage is reached. On a re-roof that gives a natural set: scaffold up, strip complete, underlay and battens complete, covering complete, scaffold down and the site cleared.
A deposit is legitimate where it pays for materials ordered to your specification and not held in stock: natural slate, non-standard tiles, made-to-order rooflights and dry-fix components, lead in quantity, the scaffold booking. It is not payment for labour nobody has done yet. Pay it by credit card rather than bank transfer, because a card brings section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 into play and a transfer brings nothing. And agree at the start that a modest final sum is held back until snagging is done. Agree all three in writing before any deposits and staged payments for building work change hands.
Next
What to do next
Mark the quotes you have against the list. You are not picking a winner yet. You are working out what each one leaves you having to ask.
- Does it say what is coming off and what is staying on?
- Does it name the underlay, and say whether the battens are new or re-used?
- Does it say how the ridge, hips, verges and eaves are fixed?
- Does it give a code for the lead, and say whether it is chased in?
- Does it give a number of weeks for the scaffold, and say who is providing it?
- Does it say who removes the waste, and where the skip is going?
- Does it state the VAT position?
- Does it say what happens if something is found once the roof is open?
- Does it set out payment stages against work you can see?
- Does it carry the trading name, an address and, where there is one, a company number?
Then send the gaps back by email and ask for them in writing. It is a ten minute job that gets you quotes you can genuinely compare, and it tells you a good deal about how the other end works.
If the numbers still do not make sense once the scopes match, ask each firm why two quotes for one roof come out so differently on the lines that differ. If you are pricing brickwork, the same discipline applies to what a repointing quote should specify about raking out.
When you want somebody to look at the roof itself, Thomas comes out and prices the job himself, and both the site visit and the written itemised quote are free. That covers our roofing work, from a slipped tile to a full strip. You can ask for a written quote or get in touch, and if the roof has years left, he will say so.
Questions
Common questions
What should a roofing quote include as a minimum?
A roofing quote should say what is being stripped and what is being kept, name the underlay, state whether battens are new or re-used, give the fixing specification for ridge, hips and perimeters, give a lead code, give a number of weeks for the scaffold, say who removes the waste, state the VAT position, set out payment stages, and carry the trader's name, address and company number.
Is 'scaffold included' enough on a roofing quote?
No, scaffold is charged as an erect-and-dismantle figure plus hire by the week, so a quote that does not say how many weeks are allowed has not fixed that part of the job. Ask how many weeks are included, who is providing it, and who pays for the extra weeks if the work overruns.
What does a provisional sum mean on a builder's quote?
It is an allowance for work that cannot be measured until it is exposed, such as replacing rafter ends. It is not a price and it is not a ceiling. A properly written one names the item, the assumed quantity, the rate the extra will be priced at and who decides the work is needed, and it can be adjusted down as well as up.
Should there be VAT on a roofing quote?
The quote should say whether its figure includes VAT, excludes it, or is not subject to it because the trader is not registered for VAT. A trader below the registration threshold charges no VAT and is doing nothing wrong. VAT charged on a quote showing no VAT number is the thing to question.
Do ridge tiles still have to be bedded in mortar?
Mortar bedding is still allowed, but it cannot be the only fixing. Under BS 5534 every ridge and hip tile has to be mechanically fixed as well, so a quote that says only 'bed ridge in mortar' is describing an older standard. A dry ridge system is mechanically fixed by design.
Read next
Related advice
The guides below pick up where this one leaves off, and the roofing page covers the work itself and the places we cover, if you would rather have the job looked at.
- Why two quotes for the same roof come out so different
- Is scaffolding included in a roofing quote, and who is liable if it is not
- What VAT should and should not be on your building quote
- Deposits and staged payments: what is reasonable to be asked for
- Concrete vs clay roof tiles: which is right for your roof?
- Do I need planning permission to replace a roof?
- Someone knocked and said your roof is dangerous: what to do
Who wrote this
Thomas Hannen
Thomas owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building and prices every job himself instead of 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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