How to hire a roofer without getting done

A roof is one of the few jobs where getting it wrong costs more than doing it right. A bad repair hides water damage for two winters and you learn about it when the ceiling finally gives up. A bad re-roof means the whole thing comes off again in five years instead of thirty. The part of the industry that knows this is also the part that knows most homeowners don't verify anything before signing.

This is the process I use before recommending a roofer on RoofersBook. It takes about fifteen minutes and rules out roughly forty percent of the companies that walk up to your door. None of it requires legal training. Most of it is free.

The 90-second Companies House check

Companies House is free. Every UK limited company is in it. If a roofer gives you a company name, type it into find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk and look for four things:

1. Status is "active".Dissolved, struck-off, and "in liquidation" all mean you're hiring a ghost. Any warranty they sign today is worthless tomorrow.
2. Accounts are filed and recent. A company two years overdue on accounts is a company in trouble, and a company in trouble is a company that cuts corners to finish a job fast, or disappears mid-scaffold.
3. The director's other companies.Companies House lets you click a director's name to see every company they've ever held. If they've closed three roofing companies in the last five years and opened a new one last month, that's a phoenix — a deliberate pattern used to walk away from warranty claims and unpaid suppliers while keeping the same vans on the road.
4. No disqualification orders.Rare, but the check is free, and a director who was banned for three years for trading while insolvent is a director you don't want on your roof.

What this doesn't cover: sole traders. Many legitimate small roofers aren't limited companies and won't appear on Companies House at all. That's normal and legal. For sole traders you verify insurance and reputation instead — and unlike a limited company there's no corporate veil hiding them personally from liability, which is sometimes a good thing.

Insurance certificates, not insurance promises

Every roofer working on a UK home needs two types of cover.

• Public Liability Insurance pays out if their work damages your property or injures a third party. £2 million is standard, £5 million is better, anything under £1 million is not serious cover for roofing work.
• Employer's Liability Insuranceis a legal requirement under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 if they employ anyone at all, including a single labourer or apprentice. £10 million is the statutory minimum and most policies default to it.

"We're insured" means nothing. Ask for a copy of the certificate with the policy number and expiry date, then check the expiry date is in the future. Certificates are one page, take ten seconds to email, and a roofer who won't send one is telling you the answer.

If the job needs scaffolding and they're subbing it out, the scaffolder needs their own Public Liability cover and CISRS-qualified operatives. Falls from height are the single biggest cause of fatal injury in UK construction. Your home insurance will not cover a scaffolder falling off an uninsured scaffold on your property, and your family will not cover the legal aftermath.

Trade bodies: which ones actually matter

Most trade body stickers on a van are marketing. These are the ones with real audits and a working complaints process:

• NFRC — National Federation of Roofing Contractors. Members are vetted on health and safety, insurance, and workmanship, and the NFRC runs a consumer complaints route that leads somewhere. Real trade body.
• CompetentRoofer — government-backed Competent Persons Scheme. Lets qualifying roofers self-certify that a replacement roof meets Building Regulations Part L. If your roofer is a member they can issue the compliance certificate at completion without you needing separate Building Control approval, which saves you £300–600 and two to six weeks.
• FMB — Federation of Master Builders. Broader than roofing but members are audited and the FMB runs a Find-a-Builder directory. Legitimate.
• TrustMark— the government-endorsed umbrella scheme that certifies several smaller trade bodies. "TrustMark registered" means the roofer's trade body (usually NFRC or FMB) is inside the scheme, not an independent certification.

What's not a trade body, in my view:commercial matching platforms such as Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark. Those are useful products, but they are paid lead-generation platforms rather than trade associations — their business model is introducing homeowners to trades who subscribe to the platform, and a roofer appearing on one is a sign they pay to be there, not that an independent technical body has audited their workmanship. That's a different thing from NFRC or FMB membership, which involves a documented trade-body assessment.

I'd personally weight a high star rating on a commercial matching platform differently from a trade-body accreditation — not because ratings are worthless, but because they are measuring a different thing (homeowner satisfaction with the introduction and the job, rather than an inspection against a technical standard). If you find a roofer on one of those platforms, cross-reference them against the Companies House and insurance checks above before signing anything. That costs nothing and it works.

The deposit question

Roofing jobs split into two cases for the deposit conversation.

For repairs under £1,500, a reasonable deposit is zero. Materials are generic, the job is one or two days, payment on completion is standard. If a roofer insists on a deposit for a £400 tile replacement, you're not talking to a roofer, you're talking to a salesman.

For re-roofs and larger jobs, a materials deposit of 10 to 25 percent is reasonable, specifically to cover bespoke slate, leadwork, and ordered-in tiles that the merchant won't take back. Above 25 percent is a red flag. Above 50 percent before any work starts is where deposits become scams: the roofer disappears with your money and the materials never arrive.

The never-acceptable signals, in any deposit conversation:

• Cash only.
• Payment to a personal bank account instead of the company account.
• Pressure to pay before a written quote is signed.
• "Staged payments" that front-load money before any physical work has started.
• Invoicing through a different company from the one that signed the quote — a tax dodge and a liability dodge.

Quote vs estimate — and what a real quote looks like

Legally, a "quote" in writing is binding if accepted. An "estimate" is an educated guess. Most UK trades use the words interchangeably and the legal distinction matters less than you'd expect — what matters is whether you have a document that specifies scope in enough detail to enforce.

A quote you can actually use includes:

• Materials by name and brand."New slate roof" is not a quote. "380m² of Cupa H12 natural slate, 50×25mm treated battens, Permo Forte breather membrane, new clay ridge tiles bedded in 3:1 mortar" is a quote.
• Labour broken out."Fourteen days on site for a two-man crew" gives you something to compare between quotes.
• Scaffold and skip itemised separately. These are third-party costs the roofer passes through, and hiding them inside a lump sum is how bad quotes get padded.
• Waste removal.Old felt, nails, and cement-fibre sheeting have specific disposal routes. Asbestos cement in particular is a licensed waste stream and cannot go in a regular skip. "We'll take it to the tip" is not a plan.
• VAT status.If the roofer is VAT-registered the quote shows VAT separately. If they're not, the quote should say so clearly. A quote that's ambiguous on VAT can become twenty percent more expensive the day after you sign.
• Validity period. Material prices move. Thirty days is normal. Longer means the roofer is absorbing the risk, which is a good sign.

What the contract should say

For any job over about £2,000 a written contract is sensible. For anything over £10,000 it's essential, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 applies whether or not you have one — so don't let a verbal agreement become an excuse for doing whatever.

Clauses worth making sure are in there:

• Start date window, not a fixed date.Roofing is weather-dependent and a roofer promising a fixed start date in writing is either lying or going to be late anyway. "Within two weeks of deposit, subject to weather" is the honest version.
• Payment stages tied to visible progress, not to calendar dates. Deposit → scaffold up → strip complete → new covering fitted → final payment. Milestones, not dates.
• Snagging period.Usually 14 days after completion, during which the roofer returns to fix anything you've spotted. Write it in.
• Workmanship warranty. Two years is the floor, six to ten years is good, and twenty-five-year warranties happen but are usually insurance-backed through the NFRC — ask to see the actual IBG (insurance-backed guarantee) paperwork before you pay a premium for it.
• Materials warranty.This comes from the manufacturer, not the roofer, and typically runs 10 to 50 years depending on product. The roofer should hand over the paperwork at completion. If they can't, the warranty isn't real.
• Clean-up and site reinstatement.State it explicitly. Otherwise you'll find nails in your lawn for a year and a patch of churned mud where the skip was.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015applies automatically to any service bought by a consumer. It says trade work must be performed with reasonable care and skill, within a reasonable time if no time was agreed, and for a reasonable price if no price was agreed. If something goes wrong, your statutory remedies are, in order: ask for the work to be redone, then ask for a price reduction, then for a refund. A written contract doesn't give you these rights — the law does — but it makes enforcement straightforward instead of an argument.

Nine walk-away signals

I've seen all of these. Most of them come in pairs.

1. Cold-caller at the door saying "we were doing a job down the road and noticed your roof". Nobody notices your roof from the road.
2. "Spare materials from another job" discount. Those materials don't exist.
3. "This price is only good today". Roof prices don't move daily.
4. Cash only.
5. Payment to a personal bank account.
6. No written contract offered, even when asked.
7. Won't show insurance certificates.
8. Van with a mobile number and no company name or registered address.
9. Deposits demanded in person before any paperwork is signed.

Any single one is enough to walk away from. Two means you're the target, not the customer. None of this makes you paranoid — it makes you the boring customer, and bad actors avoid boring customers because boring customers keep records.

If it goes wrong

First, write it down.

Photos of the work, dates and times, copies of every quote and invoice, screenshots of text messages. Have the difficult conversations in email, not on the phone, so there's a record. Contemporaneous notes are evidence in a way that later recollection is not.

Second, use the Consumer Rights Act.

Write to the roofer asking for the work to be redone within a reasonable time. If they refuse, or the redone work is also defective, you're entitled to a price reduction or — for serious failures — a refund. You don't need a solicitor to write this letter. Citizens Advice has a template.

Third, escalate.

• If they're a trade body member, complain to the trade body. NFRC, FMB, and CompetentRoofer all have formal complaints processes that can compel a member to remedy work or face expulsion.
• If you paid £100 or more by credit card, Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the card company equally liable with the trader. Phone them. Don't email — phone.
• For disputes under £10,000 in England and Wales, the Small Claims track of the County Court is designed to be used without a solicitor. Fees are £35 to £455 depending on value, and you can file online through Money Claim Online.
• Report suspected rogue trading to the Citizens Advice consumer service, which passes qualifying complaints to Trading Standards.
• If a roofer threatens you, or you think you've been defrauded rather than just let down, that is a police matter, not a Trading Standards one.

Most of this never has to happen. But the homeowners who get done are the ones who didn't know it could.

How RoofersBook applies this checklist

Every roofer we list has been checked against Companies House: active status, accounts filed on time, no disqualified directors, no phoenix pattern in the director history. For featured listings we also ask for current insurance certificates and verify trade body membership where a roofer claims it. That's the bar.

None of that makes a roofer guaranteed to do good work — only past behaviour on past jobs does — but it rules out the companies that can't pass a basic paperwork check, which is most of the bad actors. If you want to browse by area, the city directory is the place to start. If you want three quotes for a specific job, the quote form takes about five minutes and the brief goes to roofers who actually cover your postcode and do the work you need.