Does Home Insurance Cover Roof Repairs? The Three Questions

Does home insurance cover roof repairs? The short version: buildings insurance pays when a sudden, identifiable event damaged the roof, and does not pay when the roof simply reached the end of its life. Almost every refused claim in the country turns on which of those two happened, and the argument is rarely as one-sided as the rejection letter makes it sound.

What most homeowners do not know is that the burden of proof flips halfway through that argument. You have to show an insured event caused the damage. Your insurer has to show an exclusion applies. Those are different jobs, and insurers lose complaints when they skip the second one.

What buildings insurance normally covers on a roof

Standard buildings cover is written around named perils, sudden events with a date. For roofs, the usual list is:

• Storm damage. Tiles or slates stripped, ridge tiles lifted, flashing torn, a felt roof peeled back.
• Falling trees and branches, and impact from vehicles, aerials or satellite dishes.
• Fire, lightning and explosion.
• Malicious damage and vandalism, subject to the usual reporting conditions.
• Weight of snow, where a roof or structure collapses under settled snow.
• Escape of water damaging ceilings and interiors, though the failed component itself is often excluded.
• Accidental damage, but only if you bought that section. It is very often the section that saves a refused storm claim.

Where it gets specific is the roof covering itself. Cover is for the damage the event caused, not for bringing an aged roof up to modern standard. If half the slates were already loose, expect an argument.

What it will not cover, whatever the weather

• Wear and tear and gradual deterioration, sometimes written as “gradually operating causes”. This is the exclusion behind most refusals.
• Lack of maintenance. Blocked gutters, moss build-up, unrepaired flashing.
• Poor workmanship from an earlier job. That is a claim against the roofer, and our page on roofing guarantees and warranties covers the routes.
• Pre-existing damage you knew about, or should reasonably have known about.
• Frost and general weathering over seasons rather than in a single event.
• Flat roofs, in some policies, above a stated age or beyond a stated percentage of the total roof area. Check yours before you need it.

None of this is unusual or unfair. Insurance covers sudden and unforeseen damage, not upkeep. The problem is that insurers sometimes apply these exclusions without doing the work to prove them.

The three questions that actually decide it

If your claim is refused and you complain, the Financial Ombudsman Service applies a settled test. Its guidance for insurers, last updated on 18 December 2025, sets out three questions:

1. Do we agree that storm conditions occurred on or around the date the damage is said to have happened?
2. Is the damage claimed for consistent with what we generally see as storm damage?
3. Were storm conditions the main cause of the damage, or were there other factors that meant the damage might have happened anyway?

All three have to be answered yes. Question three is where most claims die, and it is also where insurers most often overreach.

The aerial photo problem

This is the most useful thing on this page, and it is in the ombudsman’s own words to insurers.

If your insurer declines the claim on the grounds that the roof had deteriorated, it has to evidence that. The ombudsman is explicit that where a surveyor’s report relies on an aerial photograph rather than a proper inspection, and the photo does not clearly show the deterioration, it may not accept that the exclusion has been fairly applied.

Drone and satellite imagery is now routine in claims handling because it is cheap. If your rejection letter refers to an aerial image, or to a desktop assessment, ask directly whether anyone inspected the roof at close quarters, and ask for the full report rather than the summary. That single question changes the footing of a lot of complaints.

The storm definition gap

Insurers frequently quote a wind speed threshold. The Association of British Insurers defines a storm as gusts of at least 55mph, which is Force 10 on the Beaufort Scale, or torrential rain at 25mm an hour or more, or snow at least 30cm deep in 24 hours, or hail heavy enough to damage hard surfaces. Any one of those, not all of them.

The ombudsman does not apply a fixed number. Its definition is that a storm generally involves violent winds usually accompanied by rain, hail or snow, but it accepts there can be a storm without high winds, and that rain, hail or snow on its own can amount to one. Where a policy defines storm by the Beaufort Scale, the ombudsman takes that into account, but says it is not the only factor.

That gap matters. A gust of 50mph is below the ABI threshold and squarely inside Force 9, which is where the Beaufort Scale itself starts predicting slates and chimney pots coming off. If your claim was refused purely on a wind-speed reading, it is worth challenging.

Two other practical points from the guidance. The ombudsman uses EuroTempest and WeatherNet for historic weather data, and the nearest station may be miles away, so what you experienced can reasonably differ from the record. And a Met Office named storm is treated as a good indication that conditions were genuinely stormy.

Flat roofs get treated differently

Be realistic here. The ombudsman is unlikely to uphold a complaint where it decides the flat roof was already in a poor state of repair at the time of the storm, that this would or should have been clear to you, and that the storm merely highlighted the existing problem.

That is a fair test, and it is why documentation matters more on a flat roof than anywhere else on the building. Our guides to flat roof problems and repairs and the best flat roof material cover what deterioration actually looks like, so you can spot it before an insurer does.

If the storm route fails, the claim may not be dead

Two things insurers are expected to do, which they do not always do.

First, check the accidental damage section. The ombudsman has investigated cases where declining the storm claim was reasonable, but the damage was covered under accidental damage instead. If you pay for that section, ask for it to be considered explicitly.

Second, check the whole policy. The ombudsman expects insurers to look at every part of the cover, not just the storm heading, including internal and external buildings damage and any damage to contents underneath the leak.

There is also the matching question. If the repair is accepted but the new tiles do not match the old ones, that is a recognised category of complaint rather than something you simply have to accept.

How to give your claim the best chance

Before anything happens. Keep dated evidence that the roof was sound. An inspection report is the strongest form of this, and our pages on roof inspections and surveys and how often to inspect a roof explain what a useful one contains. Photographs of a clean, intact roof in good weather cost nothing and are worth a great deal two years later.

Immediately after damage. Photograph everything from the ground before any work starts, note the date and the weather, and keep any debris. Do not go up there yourself; the storm damage roof repair page sets out the safe sequence.

Make safe, but do not rebuild. Policies expect you to prevent further damage, and emergency work to make the roof watertight is normally covered. Permanent repairs authorised before the insurer has inspected can be refused. Our emergency roof repair page covers what counts as making safe.

Get your own report if it is declined. You are entitled to obtain your own professional evidence. Clear, detailed reports explaining the expert’s reasoning and supported by photographs are, in the ombudsman’s words, the most persuasive evidence. A written roofer’s assessment beats an argument every time, and our guide on how to read a roofing quote helps you tell a real report from a sales document.

The complaint route, and the deadlines

If the insurer will not move, complain formally in writing. It has 8 weeks to send a final response. If it does not, or you disagree with it, you can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free.

You then have 6 months from the date on the final response letter to bring the complaint to the ombudsman. Miss that and it usually cannot help you. The final response letter itself has to tell you about that right.

The underlying limits are 6 years from the problem happening, or 3 years from when you became aware, or reasonably should have become aware, that you had cause to complain.

So does it ever pay for a whole new roof?

Sometimes, when a single insured event has damaged enough of the covering that a patch repair is not a reasonable reinstatement. It will not pay to replace a worn-out roof because a storm took three tiles off one slope. If you are in that position, the honest answer is that you are looking at a replacement you fund yourself, and our roof replacement cost and roof repair cost pages will tell you what that should look like. Be wary of anyone who knocks on the door after a storm offering to “handle the insurance”, a tactic covered in roofing scams and rogue roofers.

Frequently asked questions

Does home insurance cover a leaking roof? It covers the damage a leak causes if a sudden insured event, such as a storm, created the opening. It does not cover a roof that has been leaking gradually because it is old or poorly maintained, and it usually will not pay to fix the underlying defect. Finding the source matters, which is why our how to find a roof leak page is worth reading before you call the insurer.

Will my insurer pay if only a few tiles came off? Possibly, but check your excess first. A handful of slipped tiles often costs less to fix than the excess, and a claim on the record can affect future premiums. Our slipped roof tile repair cost page gives you the comparison you need to decide.

My claim was refused for wear and tear. Can I challenge it? Yes. The onus is on the insurer to show the exclusion applies, not on you to disprove it. Ask for the full surveyor’s report, ask whether the roof was physically inspected or assessed from an aerial photo, and get your own roofer’s written assessment with photographs. Then complain formally.

Does buildings insurance cover a flat roof? Usually, but many policies impose conditions such as a maximum age or a limit on what proportion of the total roof area may be flat. Read the schedule. And be aware that a flat roof already in poor repair before a storm is the clearest case in which a claim will fairly fail.

What wind speed counts as a storm for insurance? The ABI uses gusts of at least 55mph, Force 10 on the Beaufort Scale. The Financial Ombudsman Service does not apply a fixed threshold and will consider all the evidence, so a refusal based only on a wind reading below 55mph is challengeable.

How long do I have to complain about a refused roof claim? The insurer has 8 weeks to give you a final response. From the date on that letter you have 6 months to take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The service is free to use.