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Bridgwater sits low on the River Parrett at the edge of the Somerset Levels, in an open, flat landscape with very little shelter between the roof you are standing on and the Bristol Channel. That is the first thing a roofer here works around: wind. Sheeting, loose tiles, scaffold debris netting and anything left un-fixed at the end of the day behave differently on the Levels than they do in a town with hills or trees around it.
The second thing is the covering itself. This was a brick and tile town for generations, and the clay double-roman and pantile roofs it produced are still on a large share of the older housing. They are brittle, they break under a foot in the wrong place, and matching a discontinued profile after a storm is often harder than the repair. Beyond the Georgian and Victorian core, the industrial estates around the town carry large flat and profiled-metal roofs, and the construction work drawn to this part of Somerset keeps demand steady.
The exposure that actually generates claims is not the fall, though that is the one insurers price hardest. It is what leaves the roof: a tile, a batten, a bag of nails, a sheet of felt in a gust — onto a car, a pavement or a person. Apex is a Bristol-based commercial broker and we arrange cover that reflects how the trade actually works, placed by a named broker who will present your risk properly to insurers who understand it.
An exposed, low-lying landscape. The Levels are flat and open, and a roof here takes the weather with almost nothing in the way. Wind is the practical constraint on when work can happen, the reason temporary coverings fail, and the mechanism behind most third-party damage claims: things leave the roof and land on something belonging to someone else. Storm call-outs come in concentrated bursts, and that is exactly when the pressure to cut corners on access is highest.
Clay double-roman and pantile roofs. Bridgwater’s brick and tile industry supplied roofs across the region for generations, and its characteristic clay profiles remain in service on a great deal of local housing. Old clay is fragile underfoot, it breaks when you traverse it wrongly, and finding a match for a broken run is a real part of the job. Working on it means accepting that a proportion of what you touch will need replacing whether you intended to touch it or not.
Water and flood. The town’s relationship with the Parrett and the Levels is a matter of record, and flood management is a permanent feature of local infrastructure. For a roofer, that shows up as pressure on rainwater goods, gutters and drainage during heavy events, and as work on properties where water ingress from above and water rising from below are being sorted out at the same time.
Industrial and commercial roofs. The estates around the town carry large-span flat, single-ply and profiled-metal roofs over working premises. Those bring hot works, fragile rooflights, and the fact that the client is trading underneath you — so a leak during a strip is a stock and production problem, not a decoration problem.
A Georgian and listed core. The old town has listed terraces and narrow streets where scaffolding stands on the pavement, needs a licence from the highway authority, and puts your work directly above people walking past.
Working at Height Regulations 2005 — the regulation that sits behind almost every roofing job, and the first thing an underwriter asks about.
Hot-works permit and fire-watch conditions from insurers wherever torch-on, bitumen boilers, hot-air welding or lead burning are used.
Fragile-surface duties: rooflights, fibre-cement sheets and old glazing are a leading cause of fatal falls in roofing, and cover terms usually reflect how you manage them.
CDM 2015 duties on larger contracts — on many domestic re-roofs you are the only contractor, which puts more of the duty on you than people expect.
Competent-person scheme evidence (NFRC, CompetentRoofer and similar) where you hold it, and Building Regulations notification for a re-roof that changes more than a limited proportion of the covering.
Scaffolding: a design or a compliant standard configuration, handover documentation, and a licence from the highway authority wherever it stands on a pavement or road.
Wind lifts temporary sheeting overnight and rain enters a property you had opened up — contract works and public liability, depending on what was damaged.
A tile or offcut leaves the roof and damages a parked vehicle or injures a passer-by in a narrow street.
Old clay tiles break underfoot during a repair and the run cannot be matched, turning a repair into a re-cover.
Torch-on work on an industrial flat roof ignites insulation or debris beneath the covering — hot-works permit and fire-watch conditions bite.
An operative steps onto a fragile rooflight on a commercial roof — employers’ liability responds, with RIDDOR and HSE involvement likely.
A specified covering fails prematurely on an exposed elevation and the client says the specification, not the workmanship, was wrong — professional indemnity territory.
Working at height and hot works make roofing one of the hardest trades to place, and many insurers simply do not write it. The answer is not a better story, it is a properly presented risk: what you actually do, what you do not do, how you manage access and hot works, and your claims record. Presented that way, the trade is placeable in the specialist market.
It can be, but it should be disclosed. Emergency work in bad weather is exactly when access is improvised and third-party damage happens, and an underwriter would rather see it described up front than discover it in a claim. Where you use temporary coverings, contract works cover is the clause that matters.
This is an everyday reality on old clay roofs and it is usually a contractual question rather than an insurance one. Set out in writing before you start that a proportion of existing tiles will break and how replacement is priced; that removes the dispute that otherwise becomes a liability argument.
Typically yes, subject to conditions — a hot-works permit and a fire-watch period after you finish, and often the client’s own permit system on top. Cover follows the conditions: if the permit and fire watch are not done, the position at claim is much weaker.
Yes. It is legally required if you employ anyone, and labour-only sub-contractors working under your direction count, which describes most roofing gangs.
Tools and owned plant can be covered against theft from site, van or yard, subject to security conditions. Hired-in access equipment usually needs its own cover, because the hire agreement makes you responsible for it while it is in your possession.
Tell us about your business and we’ll place it on the specialist market — or leave your number and a named broker calls you back, usually the same working day.
