FCA authorised · FRN 7249520117 325 0027Quote & buy →
Roofing out of Chippenham means three quite different kinds of building in the same week. There is the old town core — limestone and rendered frontages, clay tile and stone slate, narrow streets, listed buildings and a conservation area where what you put back has to match what came off. There is the ring of estate housing that has gone up around the town since the war, mostly concrete interlocking tile on modern trusses. And there is the farmland beyond it, where the work is profiled sheet, fibre-cement and rooflights on barns, stores and workshops.
The exposure is not evenly spread across those three. A re-tile on a modern estate house is a low-drama job. A stone-slate or plain-tile repair on a listed frontage in the town centre puts a tower or a scaffold over a pavement people are walking along, and puts you on a building where the reinstatement cost of getting it wrong is far above the value of your invoice. And an afternoon on a farm roof is the single most dangerous thing a roofer in a rural county does — falls through fragile cement sheets and rooflights kill more people in this trade than almost anything else.
Apex is a Bristol-based commercial broker. We arrange roofing cover that reflects that mix — heritage work, ordinary domestic re-covers and agricultural sheeting — and we present the risk properly, because the trade gets declined more often for a badly explained proposal than for anything it actually does.
The building stock around Chippenham splits fairly cleanly into three, and each one produces a different sort of claim. Telling an underwriter which of the three you spend most of your time on is worth more than any amount of general assurance.
Fragile surfaces. older fibre-cement sheeting and the plastic rooflights set into it become brittle with age and will not carry a person. On agricultural and older industrial roofs this is the defining hazard, and it is why staging, running boards, harnesses and edge protection are not optional extras. An underwriter who writes rural roofing will want to hear that you treat every sheeted roof as fragile until proved otherwise.
Heritage materials and matching. stone slate, handmade clay tile and lime bedding cost more, take longer and cannot be substituted freely on a listed or conservation-area building. If a heritage roof is damaged while you are working on it, the bill is set by the cost of matching it, not by what a modern equivalent would cost. Contract works sums insured should be set with that in mind.
Wind and winter work. exposed Wiltshire roofs and open farm buildings take real wind loading, and a sheeted or stripped roof left inadequately fixed overnight can be gone by morning — taking somebody else’s property with it. Temporary coverings, loose materials and stacked sheets are the recurring cause of storm claims that turn out to be liability claims.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 apply to every roof job, and on fragile surfaces they are the regulations that HSE will measure your job against if something happens.
CDM 2015 duties bite on larger contracts. If you hold contractor or principal-contractor status on a re-roofing scheme, tell your broker — it changes the risk being underwritten.
Hot-works permits and a fire-watch period after you finish are standard insurer conditions for torch-on, bitumen and heat-gun work, and they are conditions precedent in many wordings.
Listed building consent and conservation-area rules can govern the materials and the detail you are allowed to use in the historic core. Fitting the wrong covering is a contractual and regulatory problem as well as an aesthetic one.
A tile or a length of batten comes off a town-centre scaffold on to the pavement and injures a passer-by — public liability responds, subject to policy terms.
A worker steps on to an ageing rooflight on a farm building and falls through — employers’ liability responds, and an HSE investigation into the work-at-height planning is close to certain.
Stone slate on a listed frontage is damaged during a strip and has to be replaced with matched material — a third-party property claim priced at heritage rates rather than modern ones.
Weather gets into a stripped estate house overnight and ruins the ceilings, decoration and carpets below — contract works for your own unfinished work, public liability for the damage to the occupier.
Work at height and hot works put roofing in the bracket a lot of insurers decline outright, so the trade meets more closed doors than most. It is a market issue, not a verdict on your business. We place roofing with underwriters who write it deliberately and know what to ask.
Yes, subject to conditions — normally a hot-works permit and a fire watch for a set period after you stop. In and around Chippenham the sharpest version of this is heat work on old, dry structural timber in listed and conservation-area buildings, and we make sure the wording reflects how much of that you do.
On larger contracts you may carry contractor or principal-contractor duties under CDM 2015, and your liability cover should match the role you have actually accepted rather than the one you expected to have.
Tools, gas kit, ladders and towers can be covered against theft from site, van or premises. Rural work usually means overnight storage in the van at home rather than a secure yard, so it is worth checking the conditions attach to how you really operate.
Yes — it is legally required as soon as you employ anyone, including labour-only sub-contractors, which covers most of the casual crewing that goes on for a strip or a big sheeting job.
It should be. Fragile fibre-cement sheeting and brittle rooflights make farm roofs a materially different risk from domestic re-tiling, and some wordings restrict or exclude work on fragile surfaces altogether. Telling us how much of your turnover comes from agricultural and industrial sheeting means the policy is built around it rather than tripping over it at claim.
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.
