Roof grants
Can you get a government grant for a new roof in the UK?
A new roof covering is mostly a cost the owner plans for. Below: what to check on any grant offer, published prices, insulation VAT and the insurance route.
The short answer
No grant we can point you to pays for a new roof covering, so budget to fund the job yourself and treat any promise of free money as unproven until you hold it in writing. Schemes change and each has its own rules, so ask the scheme whether it covers the covering, the insulation or neither. Storm damage is a separate route, through home insurance.
4 min read · Part of Roof replacement
Checking a grant offer before you sign
Whoever runs a grant sets its rules and can change them, so any amount or eligibility test printed here would go stale quickly. What lasts is the list of questions that decides whether an offer is solid enough to plan a roof around.
- Does it pay towards the covering itself, or only towards insulation or heating work?
- Must approval come before work starts, and from whom?
- Is the money paid to you, or to the firm doing the work?
- Does the scheme restrict which firms may carry out the job?
- What becomes of your roofing contract if the application is turned down?
Take each answer from the scheme in writing, not from whoever is selling the work. An offer that demands payment up front, or names the one firm you must use, deserves extra questions before you sign anything. If you sign with us at home after a survey, you may cancel within 14 days, and to begin sooner you put that request in writing. Scheme rules and dates can change between your first enquiry and the day work starts, so check again before you sign. Do not commit to a roofing contract that hangs on a grant nobody has approved.
What a new roof costs without a grant
Three published guides show the scale of the bill. Each prices a different house and a different covering, so read the rows as separate sources, not as one range.
| Source | What it prices | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Which? Trusted Traders, November 2025 | Whole-roof replacement, average three-bedroom house, excluding VAT | £7,000 to £21,000 |
| HomeBuilding | Semi with three bedrooms, 65 m² of roof in plain concrete tile, insulation, scaffolding and labour all counted | £10,000 to £15,000 |
| MyJobQuote | UK average for a new roof | Around £5,250 |
Which? expects South East prices, a region including Kent and East Sussex, to be higher, and describes them as likely to sit near the top of its scale. HomeBuilding adds that a Welsh slate roof on the same semi might reach £18,000. Access, chimneys and the covering you choose all move a price, so no figure for your house exists until the survey is done. After it you receive a single written total covering the whole job, and a repair comes first wherever the roof is sound enough for one. None of these figures is a price for your house; they show why quotes for similar roofs can differ.
Insulation, VAT and the energy rules
When a roof is renewed, insulation can form part of the job, and tax is where government does touch that work. VAT Notice 708/6 deals with installations of energy-saving materials and names insulation of roofs or lofts among them. Its window runs from 1 May 2023 to 31 March 2027, and from 1 April 2027 the reduced rate of 5% returns for those installations.
That is a tax rule, not a grant, and it concerns the insulation, not the new covering. Read the notice itself rather than any summary, ours included, because dates and rates are the parts that change. Then put the VAT question to the installer for your own job and get the reply into the quote, which still gives a single total. Only the notice can tell you whether a particular installation falls inside it.
The energy standard a renewed roof must meet has its own answer, on insulation when re-roofing. Part L of the Building Regulations applies whether or not any money is offered towards the work, so the standard never waits for a grant.
When storm damage is behind the roof
Where a storm did the damage, home insurance is the place to start, and it is a different matter from a grant. The Financial Ombudsman Service explains that rain, hail or snowfall on its own can count as a storm, and says it will usually weigh expert reports and photographs when it judges a dispute. Whether your policy pays is for the insurer to decide, and we do not handle claims.
Sensible steps while you wait:
- Let your insurer know before arranging anything.
- Stop further water getting in with a temporary repair.
- Take dated photos before anything is cleared away.
- Keep every receipt.
- Ask your insurer in writing what evidence it wants.
A roofer's written findings, with photographs of the damage, can sit alongside the insurer's own inspection, so ask for them before the repair covers the evidence over.
Our page on whether home insurance covers roof damage goes through the questions to ask, and the new roof cost guide covers what a full job involves. The roof replacement page follows a job from first visit to the final tidy.
More questions
Is a repair cheaper than a full new roof?
Where the roof is sound enough to repair, a repair costs less, and we say which it is after the survey. Which? Trusted Traders price a repair of up to six broken or missing standard tiles at £75 to £400, excluding VAT. A sound repair spares you the whole covering, and your survey tells you which case applies.
Should a quote show whether VAT and scaffold are included?
Yes. Which? prices exclude VAT while MyJobQuote states no VAT basis, so figures from different guides compare only once you know what each contains. Ask for the written quote to state whether VAT and scaffolding are inside its single total. We arrange the scaffold licence with our scaffolder.
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