Roofers across Surrey

Surrey sits on Crawley's northern edge, and our roof work runs through it from Charlwood and Horley out to Reigate, Dorking, Guildford, Godalming and Haslemere. A roof looks much the same from the scaffold in any county, but the paperwork around it changes as you cross from one town to the next. One house can answer to Surrey County Council for the road outside, a borough or district council for planning, and a separate team again for building control.

Every Surrey job starts the way our jobs start everywhere: we survey your roof, share the pictures, and only then put a single figure on paper. What varies is the checking we do around that price. A roof in a conservation area needs a different conversation from one on a 1960s cul-de-sac. A job on a narrow village lane may need scaffolding that sits on the public road, and that brings a licence with its own fee and lead time.

The five sections below cover the councils, building control, scaffold licences, the protected landscapes and the distances across the county. The cards beneath them list every Surrey place we cover. If you already know your town, go straight to its page for the local detail, then come back here for the bigger picture.

Surrey County Council and the councils below it

Surrey has two tiers of local government, and roofing questions land on both. Surrey County Council looks after the roads, so it rules on any scaffold poles set down on the pavement or carriageway. The district and borough councils underneath deal with planning applications and conservation areas.

Across the places we cover, the councils you will meet are Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, Tandridge District Council, Mole Valley District Council, Guildford Borough Council, Waverley Borough Council, Epsom and Ewell Borough Council and Elmbridge Borough Council. Horley, Redhill, Reigate and Banstead sit with the first. Smallfield, Lingfield, Oxted and Godstone sit with Tandridge. Charlwood, Dorking and Leatherhead belong to Mole Valley.

Which council do I ask about a roof?

Start with the planning team of your own district or borough, not the county. If you are in Cranleigh, Godalming or Haslemere, that means Waverley. If you are in Shere, Peaslake or Guildford, it means Guildford Borough Council. Esher, Oxshott and Claygate fall under Elmbridge, and Epsom, Ewell and Stoneleigh under Epsom and Ewell.

Putting back what was there rarely calls for a planning application anywhere in the county, but a change to how the roof looks can. Whether a rooflight, dormer or different tile counts as a change depends on the house and its surroundings, so we point you to the council's planning team before any work is ordered. Our planning permission for roof work post explains the general rules, and we keep Class B and Class C questions there instead of repeating them on every page.

The council boundary also matters for the practical side. A Mole Valley address and a Waverley address can be a few miles apart and still use different planning teams, different forms and different contacts. We check which one applies when we survey, and we tell you in plain words what we found out.

Building control across Reigate, Epsom and Guildford

Building control is the team that checks work against the Building Regulations. In Surrey it is organised by district, and several districts share a service. Southern Building Control Partnership, set up in 2017, is the shared council team for Reigate and Banstead, Tandridge and Mole Valley. Elmbridge's own company, Elmbridge Building Control Services, covers that borough and has run Epsom and Ewell's building control too. Guildford runs its own service, and Waverley has its own pages too.

So a re-roof in Dorking, Caterham and Redhill goes to the same partnership, while one in Esher goes to a different team altogether. That is useful to know before you ring anyone, because the phone number and the form change with the address.

Does replacing my roof need building control?

Sometimes. On the Planning Portal's national test, a Surrey re-roof that stays below 25 per cent of the building envelope and below 50 per cent of the roof is outside building control as a rule. It comes back in where the replacement adds 15 per cent or more to the covering's weight, or would fare significantly differently in a fire. Where weight goes up, the Portal tells owners to get an engineer's or surveyor's view of the timbers before work starts.

Those are national tests, and a Surrey council may word its own guidance differently. That is why we ask your building control body rather than guess, and why a larger re-roof gets a call before the quote is final. You are not left to chase it yourself: the question goes to them during the survey stage, and their answer is recorded in writing.

Flat roofs, loft conversions and chimney removal bring their own thresholds, so each has a hub page with the detail. Start with roof replacement if you expect the whole covering to come off.

Scaffold licences on Surrey roads

Section 169 of the Highways Act 1980 bars anyone from putting up scaffolding that obstructs a highway without the highway authority's licence. Poles that stay on a drive or in a back garden never touch the highway. On a terrace or a village lane where the poles stand on the pavement, the authority you deal with in Surrey is the county council.

What does a Surrey scaffold licence cost?

Surrey County Council's own page says a scaffolding licence costs £208 per 28 day period, and the renewal fee is the same. Applications should go in no less than 10 working days ahead, and Surrey says it processes them within 10 days. The fee is non-refundable, so a licence for a job that then slips is money spent. Surrey wants public liability cover of at least £10 million shown, plus a layout drawing that must not be AI-generated.

The county leaves open who files the form. On a Crown job that question is agreed with the scaffold firm, and if you hire anyone else, ask them who applies and who pays. Check too whether any roofing quote includes scaffolding and VAT, because the fee and the hire are separate from the roofing itself.

What if the roof is unsafe now?

For an emergency licence inside the 10 days, where a structure is unsafe, Surrey asks you to phone rather than apply online. A leak or a loose slate does not wait ten working days. A leaking roof gets made safe first, from your own land where access allows, and the licence for the longer repair follows. Our emergency and general roof repairs page explains how a make-safe differs from the full repair.

Surrey Hills, conservation areas and extra checks

Some Surrey roofs sit under extra rules because of where they are. The Surrey Hills National Landscape dates from 1958, among the earliest areas of outstanding natural beauty anywhere in the country. Among the places we cover, Shere, Peaslake, Albury, Gomshall, Abinger, Westcott, Holmbury St Mary, Hambledon and Chiddingfold are listed as inside it. The High Weald National Landscape also covers parts of Kent, Sussex and Surrey.

Land in a National Landscape, a National Park or a conservation area is called article 2(3) land. The practical effect is that some permitted development rights are narrower there, and dormers in particular need a conversation with the council first. Roof windows can be different again. Our planning post sets out the detail, and we send you to the planning team instead of promising an outcome.

Which Surrey towns have conservation areas?

Several of the places we cover have a mapped conservation area, including Reigate Town Centre, Dorking, Leatherhead, Godalming, Guildford Town Centre, Epsom Town Centre, Cranleigh and Lingfield. Ewhurst and Alfold were designated in 1970, Dunsfold in 1974 and Chiddingfold in 2007, according to Waverley Borough Council. A conservation area does not stop a repair, though a visible change of covering or an added rooflight can need permission where an Article 4 direction applies, and on a listed building any work bearing on its special character needs listed building consent.

What a local Article 4 direction removes is set out in its own notice and differs from one council to the next. If your street might have one, ask the district planning team to confirm it in writing before you choose a covering. Our pitched roofing page covers the choice of tile, slate and fixings once the permissions are settled.

From Charlwood at 4.2 miles to Witley at 29.9

We measure distance in road miles from Crawley, and Surrey spans almost the whole of our range. The nearest place is Charlwood at 4.2 road miles. Horley and Hookwood follow at 5.7, then Smallfield at 7.1 and Newdigate at 8.5. Reigate is 10.5 road miles out, Dorking is 13.4, and Guildford is 27.8. At the far end sit Hambledon at 29.2, Haslemere at 29.7 and Witley at 29.9, close to the edge of the 30 road miles we work within.

Those numbers shape how a job is planned. A repair in Horley can be surveyed at short notice, while a re-roof at Haslemere is organised around a full day of travel and delivery. Wherever the house, the survey comes first, the pictures come to you, and a single written figure follows. The weather and the access then set the order of the work.

Does Gatwick affect roof work in Surrey?

It can. Gatwick Airport's rule is that a crane working inside a 6 km radius needs a Gatwick permit. Equipment under 10 m high is the exception, and so is equipment screened all round by taller trees or buildings. Ordinary scaffolding is not on that list. A crane lift for heavy tiles, or a tall lifting machine on a large re-roof, is the case to check, and the airport can confirm whether a particular address falls inside the 6 km line.

If your Surrey roof needs lifting equipment, tell us at the quote stage. We raise the permit with the airport ahead of booking, and the written figure is for the job as surveyed. Larger commercial buildings near the airport are covered by commercial roofing.