A plain split of roof jobs into those that are safe from the ground, those that need a ladder and a trained crew, and the one kind of roof nobody should ever step on.
A cracked slate or a gutter full of moss looks like a Saturday morning job. The ladder is in the shed, the roof is only a storey up, and the repair itself might take ten minutes. What changes the picture is the fall. A roof is a sloping surface made of overlapping pieces that were never designed to carry a person, and the ground below a Thanet terrace may well be a paved yard or a concrete path.
This piece sets out where the line sits. First comes the rule that professional crews work to, quoted word for word, because it explains why a roofer sets up the way they do. Then the checks you can make without leaving the ground or the loft hatch, which tell you far more than a climb would. After that comes the one roof type that is dangerous even for an experienced person, and a short list of jobs that belong with a roofer from the start. If the roof is already letting water in, our page on roof repairs and emergency work has the phone number and the WhatsApp route, and there is a plain guide to when a roof leak is an emergency.
The rule that roofers work to
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 are the law behind how scaffold towers, edge protection and harnesses end up on a job. Regulation 6(3) puts the aim in one sentence. In its words, an employer must, "so far as is reasonably practicable," take "suitable and sufficient measures", and the aim is to stop any person "falling a distance" that is "liable to cause personal injury."
Notice the order of the words. The duty is to prevent a fall, not to survive one. That is why a roofing crew puts up a scaffold with a guard rail before anyone steps near an eave, and why a harness is the last resort rather than the first idea. The regulation is written for employers, so a householder on their own ladder is not bound by it in the same way. The thinking still carries over to a garden ladder.
Put into home terms, it gives you three questions to ask before any roof job:
- Can the job be done from the ground, from a window or from inside the loft, so that nobody leaves the floor at all?
- If not, is there a platform, such as a scaffold, that stops a slip turning into a fall?
- Is the job small enough that one person on a ladder can do it without overreaching, leaning off the rungs or carrying a load up?
If the honest answer to the first two is no, the job is not a DIY job. A single misjudged step on a damp pitch ends in a drop, and no tile is worth that. The sections below show how far the first question can take you, and it takes you further than the ladder would.
What you can learn from the ground
Stand well back from the house, across the road or at the end of the garden, and look along each slope in turn. A pair of binoculars turns a small crack into a visible one. Do this in daylight, after the rain has stopped, and keep your feet on the pavement or the lawn.
These are the things worth noting down, and a phone photo of each is better than a memory:
- A slate or tile that sits lower than its neighbours, or a gap in a course where one has gone.
- A ridge, meaning the capping that runs along the very top, with dark gaps under it or a section that has shifted.
- A chimney stack with a pot leaning out of line, or crumbling mortar at its top, which is called flaunching.
- Lead flashing, the metal strips along a wall or chimney joint, lifted at an edge or bent back.
- A gutter sagging between brackets, a downpipe joint that drips, or green staining on the wall below an outlet.
- Moss growing in thick cushions, which holds water against the covering.
Walk round the outside of the house and check the walls under the eaves. A dark streak on the brickwork usually means water has been running out of the wrong place for a while. Soffits, the boards under the eaves, that are stained or sagging point the same way. Nothing here needs a ladder, and the photos show a roofer where to look first.
From the loft hatch with a torch
The underside of a roof tells a clearer story than the top. A loft is also the one place where you can see where water is getting in, because it leaves marks on the timber as it runs. Go up in daylight with a good torch, and only if the hatch is easy to use and you can see where the joists are.
- Stand on a board laid across the joists, or on proper boarding. Ceiling plasterboard between the joists will not carry you.
- Shine the torch at the timbers above the stain on the ceiling below, then follow the line of the rafters uphill. Water runs downhill along timber before it drops, so the entry point sits higher than the mark.
- Look for dark tide lines on the timber, shiny wet patches on insulation or on the back of the underlay, and any chink of light coming through the covering.
- Check round the chimney breast and the roof edges, where the lead or the mortar can fail.
- Switch off the light and look for daylight coming through. A pin of light at midday is a gap.
If you find wet insulation, move it aside rather than pulling it up, and keep clear of any cable or junction box that looks damp. A damp patch that appears on still, cold mornings and not in rain can be condensation, not a leak; our note on condensation or a roof leak sets out the difference. Either way, what you have learnt from the hatch is what a roofer needs to know, and you have not put a foot on the roof.
A fragile roof is never a step
Some roofs break when a person stands on them. The Health and Safety Executive's guidance A14 describes roofs of asbestos cement as fragile every time. Corrugated sheets on a garage, a shed, an outbuilding or an older extension are the usual places you find them, and the surface can look sound, mossy and solid, then give way under a boot without warning. A fall through a roof like that ends on whatever floor lies below, with nothing in between to slow it.
HSE advice on finding asbestos tells owners to assume it is there if the building is older than the year 2000 or had work done to it before then. A garage or lean-to of unknown age falls under that, so treat its roof as fragile and dangerous until someone has confirmed what it is.
If you think a roof is made of asbestos cement sheet, do not step on it, do not scrub it, do not drill or break it, and do not put a ladder against the sheets. Ask a roofer to look at it from a safe position.
Rooflights in flat and industrial roofs are fragile as well, because the plastic ages and fails without showing it. Old glass skylights and patio roofs can crack under a footfall in the same way. Fragile coverings are the reason that roof access is planned and not improvised. For a commercial building, our guide to fragile roof safety goes through the same risk from a workplace angle.
Jobs that stay with a roofer
Some roof tasks are within reach of a careful person with a stable ladder, such as clearing a low gutter or refixing a loose plastic fascia end. Most roof repairs are not, and the reason is usually height, not skill. The table sets out the common ones.
| Job | From the ground | Goes to a roofer |
|---|---|---|
| Looking for a slipped slate | Yes, with binoculars | Refixing it |
| Checking the loft for damp | Yes, with a torch | Fixing the entry |
| Chimney flashing or flaunching | Photos only | Repair and relaying |
| Ridge or hip tiles | Photos only | Rebedding or dry-fixing |
| Moss on a pitched slope | Looking only | Any cleaning from the roof |
| Any asbestos cement sheet | Looking only | All of it |
On cost, a small repair is often cheaper than people expect. Which? Trusted Traders, in November 2025, gave a typical UK range of £75 to £400, ex VAT, for a small job of up to six broken or missing tiles of a standard type, and said prices sit towards the top end across London and the South East. MyJobQuote's average for replacing roof tiles, updated in October 2026, is around £215. Set against a hospital stay, that is a small number.
Where a roofer is needed, ask to see photos of what they found before you agree to anything. A season-by-season routine for checking from the ground is in our roof maintenance tasks for every season, and the rest of what we do across Margate and Thanet starts from the homepage.
Weather, ladders and telling someone
Choosing the day matters as much as the equipment. Wet slate and tile are slippery, moss is worse, and a frosty morning leaves a film on every surface. Wind catches a person on a ladder as it catches a sail, and it shifts loose tiles and sheets overhead. Met Office averages for Manston run to about 613 mm of rain each year, mean wind speed of 9.86 knots and 21.43 days of air frost, so a dry, calm, frost-free day is not a given in East Kent and is worth waiting for.
If a ladder is the right way to reach a low gutter or a fascia end, a few habits are worth keeping:
- Set it on firm, level ground, never on soft soil, gravel or a wheelie bin lid.
- Keep your belt buckle inside the rails, and move the ladder instead of stretching.
- Carry nothing in your hands as you climb; hoist tools up in a bag once you are in place.
- Have a second person at the foot, and tell someone else where you are.
- Keep clear of overhead cables, which run close to some eaves.
Never lean a ladder against a plastic gutter, because it will crush or slip. A stand-off bracket spreads the load against the wall instead. Any job that needs you to step off the ladder onto the roof is the point to stop and ring a roofer. Our guide on repairing a leaky roof covers how the permanent repair goes once you have gathered the evidence from the ground.
