The short answer
Check a roofer by asking for a trading address or registered company details, a written itemised quote, the guarantee in writing, and examples of finished work you can see or ask about. Look the company up on the Companies House register if it is a limited company. Be wary of anyone who pressures you, demands cash up front or offers a price that is only good today.
Start with who they are and where they are
A roofer who stands behind their work gives you a name, a phone number that gets answered and a way to find them again. Before anything else, ask for the full trading name and the address the business operates from. Some firms work from a yard or an office, and others cover a wide area from a home base. Both are normal. What matters is that the details are real and that they match across the quote, the van, the website and the paperwork.
If the business is a limited company, its details sit on the public Companies House register. You can search it free, and it shows the registered name, the registered office and whether the company is active. A sole trader will not appear there, so ask instead for the name they trade under and a landline or mobile you can ring back.
Look at how they behave on first contact. A good roofer will ask what you can see, where the roof is and what has happened to it. They will offer to come and look rather than quoting from a phone call. A price given sight unseen, for a roof the roofer has never stood under, is a guess presented as a quote.
Quick identity checks
- A full name and a phone number that is answered, not only a messaging handle.
- A business name that is the same on the quote, the vehicle and any online listing.
- For a limited company, a registered name you can find on Companies House.
- A willingness to explain who will actually be on your roof.
Ask for a written quote that says what is being done
The single most useful document is the quote. A proper one is on paper or email, names the address of the job and describes the work in words you can follow. It should say what the roofer will strip off, what goes back on, which materials are being used and what happens to the waste. Our guide to what a roofing quote should include goes through the list item by item.
Vagueness is the usual sign of trouble. A line such as "re-roof, labour and materials" with one figure beside it tells you almost nothing. If a dispute comes later, nothing in it says what was promised. Compare that with a quote that names the slate or tile, says whether the lead at the chimney is being replaced, and states who arranges the scaffold.
A fixed price in writing is better than a verbal figure. Where the price could change, for instance because rotten timber is found once the old covering is off, the quote should say how that would be handled and that you will be told before extra work starts. If you are weighing several firms, read how many roofing quotes to get before you decide.
See the guarantee in writing
Plenty of roofers say "it's guaranteed" on the doorstep. Only a document counts. Ask for the guarantee on paper, and read what it says it covers, for how long and who stands behind it. A workmanship guarantee covers the quality of the fitting. It is a different thing from a manufacturer's warranty on the slate or tile themselves.
Ask what you would have to do to make a claim and whether the promise survives if the firm changes hands or stops trading. Those are awkward questions, but a roofer with a real guarantee has answered them before. Our page on what a workmanship guarantee covers explains the usual limits.
Be careful with large numbers and open-ended phrases. A guarantee that claims to cover everything for a very long time, with no paper to back it, is a sales line. Ours runs for ten years and is issued on paper, so you can read the wording before you say yes.
Look at past work, and ask about it
Photographs on a website are a start, but they are easy to borrow. Better evidence is a finished roof you can see or a job the roofer can describe in detail. Ask which job was the most similar to yours, what was found when the roof was opened up and what was done about it. Someone who has actually done the work will talk about the lead in the valley, the state of the battens or the way the stone tiles were matched. Someone who has not will talk in generalities.
If the roofer offers to show you a recent job, go and look from the pavement. Check the lines of the slopes, the tidiness at the ridge and hips, and whether the lead looks neat at the joint between roof and wall or chimney. Poor work tends to be most visible at the junctions, not on the open slope.
Treat online listings with a little care too. Read several, look at how the roofer answers criticism and take any single glowing line with a pinch of salt. Nothing replaces seeing the work, or speaking to someone whose roof it is.
Warning signs worth walking away from
Some behaviours should end the conversation. The first is pressure. A roofer who says the price is only available today, or that the roof will fall in unless you sign now, is selling urgency rather than describing a fault. A genuine emergency calls for a make-safe, not a signature on a full replacement. A leak gets made safe first, and the larger decisions follow at a sensible pace.
The second is a demand for cash, or for all the money before any work starts. Staged payments tied to progress are normal, and a deposit for special-order materials can be reasonable. Our page on whether a roofer should ask for a deposit sets out what to expect.
The third is the unprompted visit. Someone who knocks and says they noticed slipped tiles while passing may be right, but they have also given you no chance to check them. Say you will call back, and use the steps above.
- No address, no landline and no written quote.
- A price that changes between the phone call and the doorstep.
- Photographs of someone else's roof, or of a roof that is not visible from any public road.
- Reluctance to put the guarantee on paper.
- Any suggestion that you skip a permission that your roof needs.
That last one matters for older and listed buildings. A roofer who waves away listed building consent is leaving you holding the risk, and our pages on listed building consent for roof work and planning permission for roof work cover the basics. The home page shows how our own surveys work: we look at your roof, send you pictures of it, and quote once we have seen it.
