How to price a roofing job: repairs, flat roofs and full re-roofs

Roofing pricing spans two different businesses wearing one harness: the £300 same-week repair and the £12,000 re-roof that books a month of your life. Pricing them with the same instincts is how roofers end up cheap on the big jobs and slow on the small ones. Split the methods and both sides get sharper. Here is the structure, with 2026 figures to check your own against.

Ranges below are typical UK figures. Tile type, pitch, access and region all move them, and heritage work is its own market. Keep the structure, use your own numbers.

Repairs: price the visit, then the work

Small repairs, slipped tiles, a cracked ridge, a leaking valley, are visit-dominated: the ladder time and the getting-there often outweigh the ten minutes with the trowel. So price a minimum call-out that makes a small job worth doing, £150 to £250 in most areas, and let the materials ride on top. A roofer doing three £180 repairs a day is running a better business than one driving forty minutes to do a £60 tile swap “while passing”.

The repair quote is also where photos earn their keep, because the customer cannot see their own roof. A phone shot of the slipped tiles or the cracked flashing, attached to the quote next to the price, turns “£220 seems a lot for a tile” into “no wonder it leaks”. Sight unseen becomes seen, and the price stops being an argument.

Flat roofs: per m², by system

Flat roofing prices cleanly by area once the system is fixed: felt, GRP or EPDM each carry their own rate. Typical 2026 supply-and-fit ranges sit around £70 to £110 per m² for GRP and £60 to £90 for EPDM on a straightforward garage or extension, with boards, trims and outlets itemised. Deck condition is the honest unknown, so say in writing what happens if the deck is rotten when the old covering comes up: a per-sheet replacement price agreed in advance turns the bad-news call into a one-line variation.

Full re-roofs: strip the price into phases

A re-roof quoted as one number (“£11,500 all in”) is a coin-flip against whoever texted a smaller number. Structure it instead:

• Scaffold, supplied and struck: £950
• Strip existing roof and dispose: £1,400
• Timber repairs, allowance stated per metre: £300
• Membrane, batten and re-tile, per m² count shown: £6,800
• Ridge, verge and flashings: £780
• New guttering and fascias: £820 (optional, ticked or not)

Now the customer can see that the £950 scaffold exists for every bidder whether they show it or not, that the timber allowance is an honest cap rather than a hidden gamble, and that the cheaper text message probably “forgot” three of these lines. Itemised pricing reads as competence; the principle is the same as what to put on a quote that wins.

Scaffold deserves special mention: always its own line, never absorbed. It is a big, verifiable, third-party cost, and showing it plainly is the fastest way to explain why a proper re-roof cannot cost what the man at the door quoted.

Staged deposits are non-negotiable at this size

On five-figure work, money structure matters more than the day rate. Take 20% on acceptance, by card, the day they say yes: it funds the scaffold booking and the tile order, and it commits the customer before your month is blocked out. Then invoice the strip when the roof is felted and watertight, and the balance at completion. A £1,600 deposit and two stage payments protect both sides; a roofer waiting on £12,000 at the end is making an unsecured loan to a stranger. Run your percentages on the free deposit calculator and put the schedule on the quote itself.

The add-ons roofers forget to offer

Guttering and fascias while the scaffold is up, ridge re-bedding, a moss treatment, the extended workmanship guarantee: each is dramatically cheaper for the customer while access already exists, and they know it. Priced as tickable options on the quote, they get chosen at rates that turn an £8,000 job into a £9,300 one without a single sales conversation. The scaffold is the argument; the tick box just lets the customer agree with it.

Speed still wins, even at this size

Homeowners collect two or three roofing quotes and then wait, sometimes weeks, for them to arrive. The full, itemised, photographed quote that lands the same evening sets the standard every later quote gets judged against. Snapquo built for roofers keeps your rates, scaffold and extras as saved items, builds the quote before the ladders are back on the van, takes the staged deposit at acceptance, and chases politely until there is an answer. The first few documents are free, so the next survey is the obvious place to try it.