If you’ve had three roofers round to quote on a re-roof in Alphington or Heavitree this summer, you’ll have noticed the range — one turns up in a transit with a ladder strapped to the roof rack, another sends a proper survey team out with photos of every hip and valley. Government is on the point of adding another way to tell them apart. NFRC, the National Federation of Roofing Contractors, has thrown its weight behind a new home improvement Approved Code Scheme, with customer payments tied to project milestones rather than handed over up front.
For a family firm like ours it isn’t really news — we’ve never asked for the full amount before a tile’s gone on, and we won’t start until the scaffold’s up and the felt’s on order. But it does mean homeowners get a proper yardstick, and it puts the pressure back on traders who take a deposit and vanish before the ridge tiles are bedded.
What a scheme like this won’t do on its own is check the technical detail, and that’s where it matters most on an older Exeter roof. A cowboy job shows itself fast: no dry verge system, felt laps under 75mm instead of the 100mm you actually need in our weather, batten gauge guessed rather than set out properly from the ridge down. We’ve re-roofed enough houses off Fore Street and out towards Pinhoe to know that most of the leaks we get called to are down to lazy detailing around chimneys and valleys, not the tiles themselves.
NFRC’s Gray Gibson made the point well — a badge on a website means nothing if there’s no substance behind it. Ask any roofer for their Competent Person scheme number, ask what lead they’re specifying (Code 4 is the minimum we’ll use around most stacks and valleys), and ask to see photos of a finished job with the scaffold still up, not just the marketing shots.
We’re glad to see rogue traders getting squeezed, and gladder still that our own way of working — clear quotes, staged payments, and materials specified properly the first time — already matches what’s being asked for. If you’ve got a roof in Exeter or anywhere across Devon that needs a straight answer rather than a hard sell, give Bailey and Sons Roofing a call or have a look at what we do at rooferexeter.co.uk/.