A storm leaves a roof in one of two states. Either the damage is plain to see from the pavement, with a gap in the slope, a ridge on the lawn or a chimney pot in the road, or it is hidden, and shows itself a day later as a brown stain spreading across a bedroom ceiling. In both cases the sequence that follows matters. The roof has to stop letting water in. The damage has to be recorded properly while it is still fresh. And the permanent repair has to be planned around what the storm actually did, not around a guess. This guide covers the first two stages in detail and sets out how the third follows from them. It is written for owners of houses, flats and small commercial buildings in and around Bath, where stone parapets, lead gutters and old slate roofs give wind more to work on than a plain modern tiled slope does. For the insurance side, our separate guide to the insurance claims route after roof damage covers the policy wording and the claim itself. This page is about the roof.
Reading the damage: what wind does to a roof
Wind rarely attacks the middle of a roof first. It gets under the edges and the high points, then works inwards. That is why the damage from a gale tends to follow a pattern, and why knowing the pattern helps you describe what you can see.
At the ridge, the pieces along the top of the roof are bedded in mortar or held with clips. Mortar that has cracked and crumbled over the years lets a ridge tile lift, and once one goes the next is exposed. The same applies at the verge, the sloping edge above a gable end, where the covering is fixed to the wall plane and takes the full force of wind coming across the face of the house. Along the eaves, the bottom row of slates or tiles can lift if the nails have corroded. On a slate roof a slipped slate may hang by one fixing, which is more dangerous than one that has fallen cleanly.
Chimneys come next. A stack stands up into the wind, with lead flashings dressed around its base. Wind can peel a flashing back, tilt a pot, or loosen the flaunching, the mortar fillet that holds the pots in place at the top. In Bath, tall stone stacks on terraces are shared with neighbours, which makes it harder to tell whose problem a damaged stack is.
Flat roofs and gutters have their own failures. A parapet gutter is a lead trough running along the foot of a stone parapet, and it can lift or tear at a drip or lap. A box gutter is a trough sunk between two slopes or into the roof structure. Both can fill with debris blown in by the storm, then overflow into the building rather than away from it. A flat roof membrane can billow and tear at an upstand, and a split in it may not show until it rains again.
From the ground you can often see gaps, displaced ridge pieces, a sagging gutter or a bent television aerial. From inside, look for fresh staining on ceilings, damp on a chimney breast, or drips in the loft. Water often travels along a rafter before it appears, so the wet patch can appear well away from the hole.
The make-safe visit: stopping further damage first
The make-safe is the first job, and it is a limited one. Its purpose is to stop water and falling material doing more harm until a proper repair can be planned. It is not the repair itself, and a good make-safe is designed to be removed or absorbed into the permanent work.
What it involves depends on what the storm did. A few displaced slates may be re-fixed or covered. A torn section of flat roof may be patched with a temporary membrane. A larger hole may be sheeted over with a heavy-duty tarpaulin fixed to battens, and a chimney that has become unsafe may be taken down to a stable height, with the debris cleared. If a lead flashing has been peeled back, it can often be dressed down and held in place for the time being. Our guide to temporary roof repairs goes through the methods and how long each one lasts.
Leaks and storm damage get priority from us, and the first aim is to get the roof sheltered. Before anything is done, the roofer should look at the roof from a safe position and decide how to reach it. On a three-storey Georgian terrace that may mean a scaffold tower or a mobile platform rather than a ladder, and in some cases the first visit is limited to securing what can be reached safely. Working on a wet slate roof in a gale is dangerous for the roofer and does not lead to good repairs.
What you should do before anyone arrives
Keep people out of rooms below visible damage. Move furniture and electrical items away from drips, and put buckets or bowls under them. Should water reach a ceiling rose or light fitting, switch the circuit off at the consumer unit rather than the wall switch, and do not use the light until it has been checked. Do not go onto the roof yourself. A fall from a wet roof is a far worse outcome than a wet ceiling.
If slates or tiles are on the ground, leave them where they fell until they have been photographed, and then pick them up carefully, because broken slate edges are sharp. Keep the pieces. They show what the covering was, and slate in particular can help to match a repair.
Photographs and records that carry weight
Evidence is easiest to collect in the first hours, before the make-safe changes the scene and before the debris is cleared. It does not need to be elaborate. Clear, dated, honest records are what a loss adjuster, a surveyor or a neighbour dispute will rely on.
Start from a distance. Stand where you can see the whole elevation and take a wide shot, so the damaged area is in context. Then come in closer: one photograph of each damaged feature, taken from the best angle you can reach safely. Use the zoom on your phone rather than climbing for a closer view. A photograph from the ground at full zoom shows a missing slate perfectly well.
Inside, photograph every stain, drip and wet patch, with something in frame to show scale, such as a door frame or a tape measure. Photograph the loft too if you can reach it safely from the hatch, since daylight showing through the underside of the roof is useful evidence in its own right.
Write a short note while the details are fresh. It should cover:
- the date and approximate time the damage was noticed, and when the worst of the weather passed
- what you saw and heard, such as a bang, a crash or running water
- what you did to limit the damage, including any moved furniture or placed containers
- the names of anyone you have spoken to, with the day and time
Keep every receipt for emergency work, buckets, hire and drying. Do not discard damaged materials until you have been told you can.
Weather records add to this. The Financial Ombudsman Service has published a case where the ombudsman reasoned from local weather reports on the day, together with the damage itself, and found wind chiefly responsible for tiles coming off. Note the date, and keep any screenshot of a weather warning or local forecast. It may help later.
What the roofer's record should contain
When a roofer attends, the visit should leave you with a written and photographic record, not just a repaired roof. That record is the document that links the storm to the damage. If it is vague, it is weak. If it is specific, it is useful to you whoever reads it.
A good record names each affected part of the roof and says what is wrong with it. "Roof damaged in storm" tells a reader nothing. "Six natural slates displaced on the north-facing slope above the rear bay, with the lead soaker at the abutment lifted" tells them where to look and what to expect. It should also give a view on cause, set out without trade jargon. If the nails holding the slates had corroded, the report should say so, because pretending otherwise helps nobody and an insurer's assessor will check. If the covering was sound until the wind took it, the report should say that too.
The record should describe what was done on the day, including any materials left in place and what is still outstanding. It should list what needs to be done for the permanent repair, and it should say which parts are urgent and which can wait. If the make-safe is designed to be removed, it should say so, so that nobody leaves a tarpaulin in place for months on the assumption that it is a repair.
For our own visits, we photograph your roof and the damage in detail, and a written scope and fixed price follow. The photographs are of your own roof, so they show what is actually there, in sharp enough detail to see nail corrosion, cracked slate or a split in the lead.
Be careful about what a roofer can and cannot say for you. A roofer can say what has happened and what most likely caused it. They cannot promise that an insurer will accept the claim. The wording of the policy, the excess, and the insurer's own assessment decide that, and anyone who guarantees the outcome is guessing.
From make-safe to a lasting repair
Once the roof is sheltered, the permanent repair is planned from the record. This is the part where the principle of putting a roof right as it was built comes in. A storm repair is easy to do quickly and badly. The aim is a repair that looks and performs like the rest of the roof.
On an older roof, matching is the main issue. Slate is graded by thickness, size and colour, and a weathered slope will show a new, differently coloured slate for years. Salvaged slate, taken from the same roof or from reclaimed stock, often gives a better match. Clay and stone tiles have the same issue with colour and profile. On a listed building or a roof in a conservation area, the repair should keep the same material, as the Bath Preservation Trust has stressed in casework where it backed the swap from artificial slate to natural Welsh. Our page on like-for-like roof repairs sets out how that matching is done.
Ridge repairs are subject to a standard. Under BS 5534:2014 a ridge, hip or verge unit should not depend on mortar for its hold, and a mechanical fixing is expected. A storm that lifts a mortar-bedded ridge is a good moment to rebed it with proper fixings or a dry-fix system.
Lead needs attention too. A flashing or valley that has been lifted may have work-hardened and cracked where it was bent, in which case it is better replaced than flattened back.
MyBuilder's roof repair cost guide (2026) gives £500 to £1,500 as the typical UK range for storm damage fixes, and puts major repair work at £2,500 or more. Scaffold, access and matching materials can move a Bath job either way. Your fixed quote follows the survey, once the roof has been seen.
Bath conditions, consent and who to call
Bath adds practical points that a general guide does not cover. Heritage status in Bath is layered: World Heritage Site status across the city, a conservation area over about half of it, and listed buildings by the thousand. If your house is listed, urgent make-safe work to stop a leak is one thing, but permanent changes to the covering, chimney or dormer require listed building consent from the council, and anyone who skips that step commits an offence. B&NES wants a conversation first, and it makes no exception for repairs after an emergency. A call to its conservation team about the repair you intend to carry out is a sensible step. The B&NES page on listed buildings gives the contact details.
Building Regulations are not normally triggered by a storm repair. Building Regulations only come in once a large share of the roof is affected, and a handful of slates or a patched flashing is far below them. If a storm has stripped a large area and stripping the whole slope is the sensible course, that changes, and we handle the notification where it applies.
Shared structures are worth a thought. On a terrace, a party wall stack or a shared parapet gutter serves more than one house, and a failure on one side can leak into the next. If the damage involves a shared feature, tell your neighbour and, in a flat, your freeholder or managing agent before work begins. Our guide to roof repairs in flats deals with that in more detail.
Finally, think about what the next storm will find. Pigeons and gulls dislodge slates and block gutters, and a roof that has just been repaired is worth protecting. Our page on bird proofing for Bath roofs covers that. For the repair itself, see our roof repairs service.