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Roof Repair or Insurance Claim? How to Decide
Insurers pay for sudden damage, not for a roof reaching the end of its life. Knowing which one you've got saves a wasted claim and a mark on your record.
- Storm and impact damage: usually claimable
- Wear, age and poor maintenance: usually not
- Photograph everything before any repair
- Compare the excess against the repair cost
- Make safe first — that's your duty
- We provide written reports for claims
What insurers pay for
Sudden, identifiable damage: a storm lifting tiles, a branch coming through, impact damage. What they generally exclude is deterioration — nail fatigue, perished felt, cracked mortar that's been going for a decade. If a roof was already at end of life, a storm that finishes it off frequently gets assessed as wear and tear, which is why evidence of prior condition matters.
Build the evidence early
Photograph the damage before anything is touched, from as many angles as you safely can. Keep the weather date. Get a written roofing report describing the damage and its cause. Then make safe — you have a duty to prevent further damage, and reasonable make-safe costs are normally recoverable. Keep those receipts.
- ▸Dated photographs before repair
- ▸Written report identifying cause
- ▸Make-safe receipts kept
- ▸Don't authorise full repairs before the insurer responds
The excess maths
If your excess is £350 and the repair is £450, claiming may cost you more over the next few renewals than paying it. Above roughly two or three times the excess it usually starts to make sense. We give you the repair figure in writing first so you can do that maths before deciding.
FAQs
Will you deal with my insurer?+
We provide the written report and photographs the insurer needs, and we're happy to speak to a loss adjuster on site. We're not claims handlers.
Does the insurer choose the roofer?+
Some policies push their own network. You are usually entitled to use your own contractor — check your policy wording.
What counts as storm damage?+
Insurers typically apply a wind speed threshold. A report that ties the damage to a dated weather event is far stronger than one that doesn't.
Related reading
Other pages homeowners usually look at alongside this one.
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