Most South London roofers work out at £300 to £400 a day, or £35 to £45 an hour. Treat both figures carefully, because the day rate is rarely what ends up on your quote.
What a roofer costs in London
Treat the range above as a bracket to test quotes against rather than a rate anybody has measured. No publisher puts out a London-specific roofer day rate, and the ones that appear to are extrapolating. Checkatrade's national figure is £280 to £360 a day, excluding VAT, updated April 2026. The London numbers that circulate come from directories and contractor blogs, and they disagree wildly, from £228 a day at the low end to over £500 at the high end. We pitch the range at the top of the national figure because London labour consistently sits there, but anyone quoting you a precise London average is guessing.
Why the day rate rarely appears on your quote
Checkatrade puts it plainly: it is more likely your roofer will charge for the job rather than an hourly or day rate, particularly for standard repairs. Their own repair pricing is built per square metre or per linear metre, and that is how most roofers price.
There is a sensible reason for it. A roofer who quotes per day carries the risk of the weather; a roofer who quotes per job carries it too, but you both know the number in advance. Fixed pricing is normal in roofing and is not a warning sign.
Use the day rate to sanity-check a quote rather than to predict it. If a roofer describes four days of work and the labour line reads £4,500, the arithmetic is worth a question.
What a two-person team costs
Expect £400 to £600 a day for two people, not double a single rate. Most roofing needs a pair, one working and one feeding materials up and keeping the site safe, but the second person is often a labourer or apprentice rather than a second qualified roofer. A quote built on two full roofer day rates is worth querying.
The smallest job worth calling out for
Around £170. That buys up to five slipped tiles where access is straightforward, excluding VAT and access equipment. The same five tiles cost about £500 once scaffolding is needed and the tiles are hard to source.
Access is the swing factor, not the tiles. This is why it pays to bundle small jobs: if the scaffold is already up for a chimney repair, having the gutters cleared and a few slates re-bedded at the same time costs a fraction of calling someone back out.
A figure to ignore
You may come across roofer hourly rates of £18 to £25. Checkatrade's own roof tile replacement page still shows them, from a table dated February 2025, while the same publisher's April and June 2026 tables say £35 to £45. The old figure is roughly half the current rate and it is still live on the internet. If a quote appears to be built on it, something is wrong. Either the figure is stale, or the work is not what you think it is.
What moves the number
- Access. A roof reachable from a ladder costs dramatically less than one needing a scaffold. Scaffolding on a London terrace runs £800 to £1,500 for two to four weeks.
- Covering. Natural slate takes longer to lay than concrete tile and the material costs more. Much of South London's Victorian stock is slate.
- Pitch and height. Steeper and higher means slower, and it changes the safety equipment required.
- Waste. Stripping an old roof generates one or two skips, and London skip hire is roughly double the north of England.
- The highway licence. Scaffolding over a pavement needs a licence from the borough, typically £150 to £600 in inner London. Ask whether it is in the quote.
Comparing quotes sensibly
Three written quotes is the usual advice and it holds here, but compare what is in them rather than the totals. One quote including scaffolding, waste and the highway licence will look worse than one that excludes all three and adds them later. Ask every roofer to state whether their figure includes VAT. Published cost guides usually exclude it, and 20% on a £10,000 re-roof is not a rounding error.