Almost every pitched roof ends up facing this decision, and it is rarely as clear as a leaking ceiling suggests. A drip tells you water is getting in. It does not tell you whether the cause is one cracked tile, a worn lead flashing or an underlay that has given up across the whole slope. The right answer depends on the cause and how far it has spread, so this guide works through the test we apply on site. It looks at the covering and its age, at the layers beneath it, and at what repeated repairs would cost compared with a new roof. Every pound figure here is a typical UK range from third-party cost guides, quoted so you can weigh the options. None is an Empire price. Repair is the right call more often than people expect, and where it is, that is what we recommend.
Three tests that settle most cases
Before comparing prices, ask three questions about the roof in front of you. They sort most situations without any calculation.
How old is the covering, and what is it?
Age on its own never condemns a roof. A natural slate or clay roof laid well can outlast a modern concrete tile, and a young roof can fail early if it was fixed badly. Age matters because it tells you which parts are likely to be tired together. We cover typical lifespans on our page about how long a roof lasts, and the point to carry from it is that the covering, the fixings and the membrane beneath rarely wear out at the same moment.
Is the failure local or general?
This is the strongest test. Trouble confined to one area, such as the slopes beside a chimney or a single valley, points to a repair. Trouble spread across several slopes points the other way, because a repair fixes the place you can see and leaves the rest ageing at the same rate.
What does the cheaper route cost over the next few years?
A repair is cheaper today. Whether it stays cheaper depends on whether it ends the problem or only postpones it, and that is a question of cause. A repair that removes the cause is good value. A repair that treats a symptom of general wear is the first of several.
If the answers are young covering, local fault and a clear cause, repair. If they are old covering, general fault and several causes, start pricing a new roof. In between, the sections below help you place yours.
When repair is the right answer
Plenty of roof faults are small, and plenty of roofs carry on for years after a sound repair. We repair where repair works, and these are the situations where it usually does.
A handful of slipped or cracked tiles or slates is the plainest case. If the battens (the timber laths the covering hangs from) are sound and the nails have not corroded across the slope, replacing the broken pieces restores the roof. On a slate roof, one loose slate can be secured invisibly from below with a tingle, a small metal strip. A cracked ridge tile, failed bedding at the verge (the finished edge along a gable) or a lifted section of hip can also be remade without touching the main slopes.
Leadwork is the other common local cause. A flashing is lead worked over the junction between roof and chimney or wall, and soakers are the lead sheets that lie under the slates or tiles beside it. These split, lift and pull away because lead moves with temperature, and a chimney stack with failed leadwork leaks around its base while the rest of the roof is dry. On chimney leadwork, MyJobQuote (September 2026) reports typical UK prices of £150 to £250 to patch, with a full replacement averaging about £570. A moss-laden valley or a blocked box gutter, the lead-lined gutter that sits behind a parapet, is the same sort of fault.
On price, MyBuilder's roof repair guide (2026) gives typical UK prices: replacing a few tiles or stopping a small drip costs £100 to £300, and repairs in general average £150 to £1,500. A moderate job runs £500 to £1,000, and storm repairs usually fall at £500 to £1,500. Those numbers are a long way below a new roof, which is why a roof with a local fault should be repaired first and judged afterwards.
When repair stops being the sensible choice
The signs that repair has run its course are about the layers under the visible surface, not the surface alone.
Underlay is the sheet that sits on the rafters, beneath the battens. An old roof can have tarred felt gone brittle and split, and where it has perished the roof depends on the covering alone. A tile or slate roof is not watertight by itself; it sheds most water and relies on the underlay for the rest. When the underlay has failed across a slope, every wind-driven shower finds a way through, and repairing the tiles on top does not touch the real fault.
Fixings are the second layer. Iron nails that have rusted through let slates slip in rows rather than one at a time, and a roof dotted with tingles from earlier visits is telling you the nails are giving up everywhere. Lifting a few slates to look at the nail heads takes a minute and answers the question. If many are corroded, each repair buys only until the next slate lets go.
Timber is the third. Rotten battens do not hold a nail, and a sagging ridge or a dip in a slope suggests a rafter or purlin under strain. Structural movement is a reason to open the roof and not to patch over it. Persistent damp in the loft, with dark staining on the rafters or a musty smell, shows that moisture has been entering over a long period and the timber may be affected.
The pattern to watch for is the repeat call. One leak mended is maintenance. The same roof leaking again in a different place the following winter, and again the winter after, is the roof telling you the cause is general. Our page on the signs you need a new roof sets out those warning signs in detail.
Repair costs against replacement costs over time
Putting numbers side by side shows when the balance tips. The numbers below are national bands: repairs from MyBuilder's roof repair guide (2026), and a full replacement, given in its new roof guide of the same year, at £5,000 to £12,000. The arithmetic is only an illustration, because a real roof does not repair itself on a schedule.
| Scenario | Spend, using typical UK ranges |
|---|---|
| One minor repair | £100 to £300 |
| One moderate repair | £500 to £1,000 |
| Three moderate repairs over a few winters | £1,500 to £3,000 |
| A major repair | £2,500 and upwards |
| Full replacement | £5,000 to £12,000 |
Read it this way. One moderate repair costs a small fraction of a new roof and leaves you with years of use if the roof is otherwise sound. Three moderate repairs begin to look like a deposit on a re-roof, and a major repair costing £2,500 or more starts to approach the lower end of replacement. At that point the question is whether the repair would leave a roof that you could expect to keep for some time. If the answer is no, the money is better spent on the whole.
Scaffold complicates the comparison, because a repair high on a three-storey house may need it. MyBuilder's guide reports about £1,125 for scaffolding on a full roof, and a repair that needs a platform loses some of its advantage. A second point is that a new roof is a one-off cost with a long period of use, while a string of repairs is a cost that recurs and is easy to ignore. Add up what you have spent on the roof in the last few years and the picture is often clearer. Our roof replacement cost guide takes the full price apart line by line.
Middle routes between a patch and a new roof
The choice is not always binary. Two intermediate jobs suit roofs where one part is far worse than the rest.
Replacing a single slope makes sense when the south-facing side has weathered badly and the shaded side is sound, or when one slope has taken storm damage. The covering, battens and underlay on that slope are renewed and the other side is left alone. It works best when the two sides are the same age and material, so the new work matches. We cover the practicalities in replacing one roof slope.
Stripping and recovering is the other option: old slates or tiles are taken off, fresh battens and underlay are fixed, and the sound pieces are sorted, relaid and made up with matching reclaimed ones. It suits natural slate and clay roofs where the covering is still good and the layers under it have failed, and it keeps the roof's appearance, which matters on older houses in Bath and the villages around it. See strip and recover for how it is done.
The Building Regulations enter at a different point for each. Re-covering that touches under a quarter of the whole envelope and under half the roof normally escapes approval, per the Planning Portal. A single slope may fall under that line and a whole roof will not, so ask your roofer which side of it the job sits on before work starts. Building control paperwork is ours to handle when the job is notifiable.
Both routes involve a cost of their own and a limit. A new slope next to an old one will always show a difference in age, and a part job leaves the rest of the roof still ageing. That is acceptable when the reason is sound and the plan is clear, and it is a poor choice if the real fault is across the whole roof.
What the survey decides, and the Bath factor
Only an inspection can choose between repair and replacement reliably, and photographs from the ground do not do it. We go up onto the roof and into the loft, since the underside tells you more than the top. We check the nails, the battens, the underlay and the timber around any staining, and look at the lead at every chimney, wall and valley. We take photographs of your own roof for you to look at. A written recommendation follows, and where a repair is enough, that is the job we quote. A standard roof inspection from an independent firm typically costs £150 to £250 according to MyBuilder's roof inspection cost guide (2026), though our own survey is free.
Bath adds questions a cost guide cannot answer. Bath is a World Heritage Site throughout, and its conservation area is about half the city. Like-for-like repairs rarely raise problems. If a listed house is getting a different covering, B&NES Council must give listed building consent first; in the conservation area, take any change of material to planning before you order it. That is one reason we match what is already there: slate stays slate and stone tiles stay stone, so the decision does not turn into a consent problem.
Once the recommendation is clear, a fixed price follows in writing. If the roof is borderline, ask how many more years a repair is likely to buy before the same question comes back. If the answer is replacement, the next steps are in our roof replacement service, and if it is repair, our roof repairs page is the better place to start.