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Trowbridge was a cloth town, and the roofs still say so. The old centre carries tall former woollen mills and their ranges — long, wide, heavy spans in stone and slate, later patched and re-covered in sheet and felt, many of them now converted to flats, offices and storage. Around them stand the clothiers’ Georgian houses and the terraces of weavers’ cottages, stone-built with steep pitches, and beyond them the estates that have gone up since the war, trussed and tiled and comparatively straightforward.
That mix is what makes the risk here unusual for a town of this size. A domestic re-tile on a modern estate is one thing. A mill roof is another entirely: a large span at real height, often over an occupied conversion or a business, frequently with fragile rooflights, aged sheeting and a volume of water coming off it that will do serious damage the moment it goes anywhere unplanned. And the historic stone stock in the middle of town brings listed buildings, conservation-area constraints and matching materials that cost a multiple of the modern equivalent.
The exposure a Trowbridge roofer really carries, then, is the gap between the size of the invoice and the size of the thing underneath. Apex is a Bristol-based commercial broker; we arrange roofing cover that takes account of what you are working over, presented to underwriters by a named broker rather than a form.
The three layers of Trowbridge building stock produce three quite different claims profiles. Setting out which of them your turnover actually comes from is what gets a roofing risk taken seriously.
Fragile surfaces on old industrial roofs. ageing cement sheeting and the rooflights set into it will not carry a person, and on a mill roof the fall distance is far greater than on a house. Staging, running boards, harnesses and proper edge protection are the controls an underwriter will ask about, and treating every old sheeted roof as fragile until proved otherwise is the position insurers expect.
The volume of water a big roof moves. a large-span roof collects a great deal of rain and puts it through valleys, box gutters and internal downpipes. Disturb that during a repair, or leave a temporary covering that fails, and the water goes into the occupied floors below rather than harmlessly on to the ground. This is the difference between a domestic leak and a five-figure third-party claim.
Wind and winter on exposed spans. a wide, high roof takes serious wind loading, and part-fixed sheeting or a temporary covering that lifts becomes other people’s damage rather than just your own lost materials. How a large roof is left secured overnight is the single most useful thing you can demonstrate to an insurer.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 govern every job. On large-span industrial roofs with fragile sheeting and rooflights, the fall-prevention plan is the first thing HSE would look for.
CDM 2015 duties apply on larger contracts, and on a mill conversion or a commercial refurbishment you may hold contractor or principal-contractor status.
Hot-works permits and a fire watch after completion are standard insurer conditions for torch-on and bitumen work, and in many wordings they are conditions precedent.
Listed building consent and conservation-area controls govern materials and detailing on much of the older town-centre stock; fitting the wrong covering is a legal problem as well as a commercial one.
Asbestos is very common in old industrial roof sheeting, rooflights and bitumen products in a town with this much former mill building; establish what is licensable before anything is cut.
A worker steps on an ageing rooflight on a mill roof and falls through — employers’ liability responds, and an HSE investigation into work-at-height planning follows.
A temporary covering on a large span fails in the night and water goes into the flats or offices converted beneath — public liability for their damage, contract works for your own unfinished work.
Stone slate or lead on a listed frontage is damaged during a strip and has to be replaced with matched material — a third-party claim priced at heritage rather than modern rates.
Material comes off a scaffold into a narrow town-centre street and injures a pedestrian or damages a vehicle — public liability responds.
A torch used on a flat or low-pitch section ignites dry timber in an old building hours after you leave — a hot-works claim, decided on permit and fire-watch discipline.
Work at height and hot works put roofing in the hazard band a large part of the market declines outright, so refusals say more about the insurer than about your business. We place the trade with underwriters who write it deliberately and can tell a domestic slater from a large-span industrial contractor.
Yes, subject to conditions — usually a permit and a fire watch for a set period after you stop. In Trowbridge the version that matters is heat work on flat and low-pitch sections of old mill and commercial buildings, often over occupied conversions, and the wording should reflect that.
On a mill conversion or a commercial refurbishment you may carry contractor or principal-contractor duties under CDM 2015. Tell us when you take that on, because the role changes what is being underwritten.
Ladders, towers, gas kit and hand tools can be covered against theft from site, van or premises, subject to security and overnight-storage conditions that should match how you really work.
Yes — it is legally required if you employ anyone, including labour-only sub-contractors, and large-span sheeting and re-covering work is always crewed.
Yes, and it is worth separating the two on the proposal. A big industrial or converted-mill roof means greater heights, fragile surfaces, occupied space underneath and far more water moving through the structure, so both the likelihood and the size of a claim change. Some wordings restrict work above a stated height or on fragile surfaces, so we check those limits against the buildings you actually go on.
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.
