Roof Dilapidations at Lease End

Dilapidations are the breaches of a tenant's obligations on the state of the building, and they usually come to a head as a lease ends. The landlord, or their surveyor, prepares a schedule listing each item, what they say the lease requires and what they want done or paid. The roof appears often because it is expensive and out of sight, so a few lines in a schedule can turn into a large sum.

Treat this page as general background, not legal advice. The lease decides what you owe, and a solicitor or a chartered surveyor who works on dilapidations can read it for you. Look for the repair covenant, any duty to keep the building in good condition, any clause about renewing rather than repairing, and any exclusions. Some leases exclude inherent defects or limit the tenant to the state the building was in at the start, which is why a record of that starting condition is valuable.

Many occupiers hold only part of a building. In a unit within an estate, the roof may belong to the landlord, with the tenant paying a service charge instead. Our page on who pays for commercial roof repairs goes through that split.

The key argument on a roof is often repair against renewal. A landlord's schedule may call for a complete new covering where a repair would put the roof back in sound order. Whether that is fair turns on the words of the lease and on the facts: what condition the roof was in when you took it, how old it is, and what a qualified surveyor or roofing contractor says it needs.

A roofer cannot decide your legal position, but can supply the evidence behind it. A survey describes the covering, the laps and upstands, the drainage and the structure, and shows which defects are local and which are general. If a few seams and an outlet have failed, a repair may be enough. If the covering has simply worn out through age, the question becomes who carries the cost of age, which is for your advisers.

Be wary of a single line reading replace roof with a large sum beside it. Ask what is wrong, where it is and why repair will not do. A condition report from before the lease ended gives you a clear basis to respond. Our page on the commercial roof condition survey shows what such a report contains.

The best time to deal with the roof is well before the end date. Check your lease for notice periods, and for any duty to carry out works in the last year or to reinstate the building. Arrange a roof inspection early, so there is time to repair, to price the work and to compare it with any figures a landlord puts forward.

Carrying out repairs yourself, to a good standard and with a record, often costs less than paying a claim. Ask the roofer for a written price and a dated report with before and after pictures. Keep any warranty paperwork and earlier inspection reports; they show how the roof has been looked after. Our answer on the commercial flat roof warranty explains why those records matter.

Think about scaffold, access and timing too. Roofs cannot always be worked on in winter or while the building is in use, so leave room in the schedule. Ask whether any quote includes VAT, because the answer depends on your own VAT position and how the work is invoiced; our page on VAT on commercial roof work covers the basics.

If a schedule has already landed, do not ignore it and do not rush to pay. Deadlines in the lease and in any pre-action process may be short, so take advice quickly. Then gather the facts: the lease, any schedule of condition taken at the start, your inspection reports, past invoices for roof work and recent photographs.

A roofing contractor can survey the roof against each schedule item and report in plain words on what is wrong, whether repair would work and what it involves. That gives your surveyor or solicitor something concrete to put forward. It can also expose items that are wrong, duplicated or priced as a full renewal where a patch would do.

We can price the repairs the roof needs so you can set them beside the landlord's figure, as one written total after a survey, with pictures of your own roof to back it up. To begin, send us the schedule pages that deal with the roof, the lease clause that covers repair, and the address. Our page on commercial roofing lists the wider work we carry out.