Storm damage: what to do first, and who not to let on your roof

The first hour, in order

1. Get everyone away from the outside of the house, particularly below the damaged section. Tiles that have moved once will move again, and a slate falling two storeys is lethal. Do not stand in the garden photographing directly underneath loose material.
2. Do not go into a room with a sagging or bulging ceiling. Shut the door and keep everyone out. Water sitting above plasterboard can bring the whole sheet down at once, without warning.
3. Kill the power to any circuit where water is near lights, sockets or the consumer unit.
4. Move what you can and contain the water. Electronics and documents out of the way, buckets and towels under the worst of it, something waterproof over anything that cannot be moved.
5. Photograph everything before you touch anything. Wide shots, close-ups of the damage, the inside, and anything that has landed in the garden. Note the date and the storm. This is the most valuable ten minutes you will spend and the step people skip because they are stressed.
6. Call your insurer's emergency line before commissioning anything expensive, provided that does not mean letting water pour in for hours. Most policies have a 24-hour line and many will authorise emergency work.
7. Get temporary cover organised. If water is coming in, this comes before quotes, before comparisons and before anyone's paperwork.
8. Do not go on the roof. Not in the dark, not in the wind, not the next morning. See emergency roofing.

What buildings insurance actually covers

Buildings insurance normally covers storm damage. The argument is almost never about whether storm damage is covered. It is about whether what happened to your roof counts.

What a typical policy covers

• Damage to the structure caused by a storm, usually defined by wind speed and sometimes extending to heavy snow or torrential rain.
• Resulting water damage inside, such as ceilings and decoration. Contents sit under a separate section if you have one.
• Reasonable emergency work to prevent further damage, which is why you keep the temporary cover receipt.

What it usually does not

• Gradual deterioration. Insurance is for sudden events, not maintenance.
• Damage to a roof already in poor condition, on the argument that the storm revealed the problem rather than caused it.
• Fences, gates and sometimes outbuildings, frequently excluded or capped.
• The excess, which on some policies is higher for storm claims.

Read the actual policy wording rather than the summary document. The definition of storm in your policy is the thing the entire claim turns on.

The knock at the door

After every serious storm, a predictable set of people work door to door across the affected streets. Not all of them are dishonest. Enough are that the pattern is worth knowing cold.

The pattern

• I noticed from the road that you have tiles missing. Nobody drives past and diagnoses a roof. They are looking for houses to approach, and older residents in particular get targeted.
• We are working round the corner and have materials left over. There is no job round the corner.
• I can go up now and take a look, no charge. Once somebody uninvited is on your roof you have lost control, and damage gets created as well as found.
• If we leave it the ceiling will come through. Manufactured urgency, applied hardest to anyone who seems anxious or alone.
• Cash today and I can do it for half. No paper trail, no invoice, no comeback. And no legitimate roofer needs your decision inside the hour.
• A mobile number and no address on the vehicle, and paperwork with no company registration number on it.

Your cancellation rights

Most people do not know this. When you agree a contract at your home rather than at a trader's premises, consumer law normally gives you 14 days to cancel, for contracts above a low value threshold, and the trader must tell you about that right in writing. Where they fail to, the cancellation period is extended substantially and the failure is an offence in itself.

There is a specific trap. If you ask for work to start inside the cancellation period and sign to that effect, you can still cancel but may have to pay for what has genuinely been done. That is what doorstep traders rely on: get a signature, start immediately, then claim for a part-finished job.

If you have already paid and it has gone wrong, contact Citizens Advice, who pass reports to Trading Standards. Payments over £100 by credit card may carry additional protection through the card provider.

• Never let anyone onto your roof who arrived uninvited.
• Never pay cash up front to somebody who knocked on your door.
• Never sign anything on the doorstep on the day.
• If they are genuine, they will still be genuine tomorrow. Take the details and check them, or approach firms yourself instead. Our quote comparison is one way to do that, and how it works explains exactly what happens to your details.

From temporary cover to a permanent repair

Once the water is stopped the pressure is off, and that is the point to slow down rather than speed up.

1. Get the temporary cover on, same day if water is coming in.
2. Notify the insurer even if you are not certain you will claim. Late notification is itself a reason claims get reduced.
3. Get the damage assessed and photographed, and if you are claiming, get a report worded around cause.
4. Get two or three quotes. Storm work is exactly when people accept the first number because they are shaken, and exactly when they should not.
5. Check the whole roof while there is access. If a scaffold is going up anyway, dealing with the rest of the ridge, the verges and the flashings costs little next to doing it separately in two years.
6. Only then agree the work in writing, with materials and guarantee specified.

If the storm has exposed a covering that is genuinely finished, that is a different and larger conversation. Our guide ranges put a full re-roof on a terraced house at roughly £5,500 to £9,500 and a semi-detached at £7,000 to £13,000, and the cost guides set out what moves those figures.

For the work itself see roof repairs, and for the stack chimney repairs. In a conservation area or on a listed building, read conservation areas and listed buildings before agreeing materials, because like for like is not always your decision to make. And the checks in how to choose a roofer are worth more after a storm than at any other time.