Re-roofing a three-bedroom house in South London runs from about £6,500 to £19,000 including VAT, depending almost entirely on what goes back on. The house size sets the floor; the covering sets everything above it.
What a three-bed terrace costs
A South London terrace roof is typically 45 to 60 square metres. On London rates, including VAT:
- Concrete tile: £6,500 to £12,000
- Artificial or fibre-cement slate: £8,000 to £14,000
- Clay tile: £9,500 to £16,000
- Natural slate: £11,000 to £19,000
Those figures assume a full strip and recover: old covering off, battens and membrane renewed, new covering laid, ridge and flashings made good. They are not covering-only prices.
The concrete-tile range sits below the UK three-bed average of £9,600 to £15,600 including VAT, which looks wrong for London until you note that a terrace carries only 45 to 60 square metres against the 65 to 75 of a semi. That is a roof a third smaller, with no exposed flank walls to detail, which more than offsets the London uplift on labour and waste.
A semi costs more because the roof is larger
A three-bed semi carries roughly 65 to 75 square metres, around a third more roof than a terrace, with two more exposed edges to detail. Concrete tile lands at £9,500 to £17,500 including VAT, clay at £14,000 to £23,000, and natural slate at £16,000 to £28,000.
The jump is not just area. Verges, valleys and a second gable each add labour and lead, and none of them scale neatly with square metres.
Why "clay is the cheap option" is wrong
Checkatrade's own prose describes clay as the cheapest tile, while its per-square-metre table prices clay at the same level as natural slate and above concrete. The table is right and the sentence is wrong. Clay plain tiles are small, so a square metre takes far more of them and far more time to lay.
The correct installed-cost order is concrete, then fibre-cement slate, then clay, then natural slate.
Why South London quotes lean towards slate
Much of the Victorian and Edwardian stock across Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham was built in natural slate, and slate is the most expensive mainstream covering. On a three-bed semi the material difference alone is £3,000 to £5,000 or more, before VAT. Victorian roof complexity also pushes the labour share up: an itemised breakdown puts labour and services at around 55% of project cost on an ordinary job, and at 55 to 60% on a complex Victorian roof.
There is a saving worth asking about. A good roofer will salvage and reuse the sound slates off your own roof, which materially cuts the material bill. Ask whether the quote assumes salvage or all-new slate. The two are thousands apart and the quotes will look nothing alike.
It is also worth understanding why a roof full of apparently fine slate still needs stripping at all: the slate outlives the underlay and the nails holding it on, which is set out with the component lifespans in the answer on how many years a roof usually lasts.
A conservation area often removes the cheap option
Southwark has 48 conservation areas and Lambeth has 65, nine of them carrying Article 4 directions. A genuine like-for-like re-roof, with the same material, the same profile and the same colour, is generally not development at all under section 55(2)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, so it needs no permission anywhere. Change the material and you may be materially affecting the external appearance, which does.
Article 4 directions are written per area and there is no national list, so check the specific direction for your address with your borough rather than assuming.
There is a separate trap in the Building Regulations. Approval is required where a new covering increases the weight of the roof covering by 15% or more. Swapping slate for concrete tile does exactly that.
Why published per-square-metre figures disagree
Checkatrade prices concrete tile at £120 to £230 per square metre excluding VAT; BestBuilders prices the same covering at £80 to £120 including VAT. That is close to a twofold gap. Checkatrade's figures read like a full strip and recover with sundries, BestBuilders' like covering only. Reality sits between them, which is why a range beats a single number.
What to check before you compare totals
Ask every roofer whether VAT is included, and whether scaffolding (£800 to £1,500 on a London terrace), skips (£350 to £650) and a pavement licence (£150 to £600 in inner London) are in the figure or coming later. Those three are published cost-guide figures and exclude VAT, unlike the composite totals above. A quote that includes all three looks worse and often is not.