Storm Damage To Your Roof In Cumbria: What To Do And How To Claim

Cumbria gets more than its share of weather. We sit at the end of a long, open run in from the Atlantic, with the Solway Firth funnelling south-westerlies straight at Carlisle and very little between the coast and the city to slow them down.

Most years that is simply the price of living here. Occasionally it is Storm Arwen, which came through in November 2021 from an unusual north-easterly direction and took apart elevations across the north of England that had been sheltered since the day they were built. That is the thing about a storm from the wrong quarter: roofs are detailed for the wind they normally get, and a gale from a direction they have never faced finds every weakness at once.

If you have woken up to slates in the garden, here is what to do about it.

What actually counts as storm damage

Insurance is where most of the confusion sits, so it is worth being precise. Buildings insurance covers sudden damage caused by an insured event. It does not cover deterioration, wear and tear, or lack of maintenance, and no standard policy in the UK ever has.

Most policies define a storm using a wind speed threshold, commonly in the region of 55mph, and some extend it to torrential rain, hail or heavy snow. When you claim, the insurer will check Met Office records for your postcode on the date you have given. The Met Office publishes named storms and their impacts through its UK Storm Centre, and if your damage coincides with a named storm your claim is on considerably firmer ground.

Where claims get declined is on causation. If the wind removed three slates from a roof whose nails had already corroded through, the insurer’s position will be that the wind revealed the problem rather than caused it. That distinction is worth understanding before you make the call, because it explains what your insurer is looking for in the evidence.

The first hour

Before anything else: stay off the roof, and keep everyone away from the ground below it. A dislodged ridge tile is a heavy object balanced at the highest point of your house, and the next gust can put it through a conservatory roof, a car windscreen or a person. Cordon the area off if you can.

Inside, deal with water. Buckets under drips, and move furniture and anything valuable clear. If a ceiling is bulging with trapped water, the counterintuitive but correct move is to pierce it deliberately with a screwdriver over a bucket and let it drain in a controlled way. It feels like making things worse. It is not - a small hole is a cheap repair and a collapsed ceiling is not. If water is anywhere near a light fitting or a socket, turn off the power to that room at the consumer unit.

Then take photographs. As many as you can, from as many angles as are safe from ground level, including the slates or tiles that have come down and where they landed. Photograph the inside damage too, and do it while it is wet. This evidence disappears the moment things dry out, and it is exactly what a loss adjuster will want to see.

Once the immediate danger is dealt with, arrange temporary make-safe work and keep the receipt. Insurers expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, and the cost of doing so is normally recoverable as part of the claim.

The evidence your insurer will want

Claims succeed or fail on documentation far more than on the damage itself. What supports a claim:

Dated photographs, ideally from before the make-safe work as well as after. Wide shots showing the property and close-ups showing the failure.

A written report from a roofer who has actually been on the roof, describing what failed and, critically, the mechanism - “wind uplift at the verge has lifted the end slates and broken the mortar bedding” rather than “roof damaged”. The mechanism is what connects the damage to the storm.

An itemised quote, so the insurer can see what each element of the repair costs rather than being asked to approve a single lump sum.

The date and time the damage occurred, as accurately as you can manage, because this is what gets checked against weather records.

You are generally entitled to use a roofer of your own choosing rather than one appointed by the insurer, though the insurer may want to approve the cost first. If a claim is declined and you think it has been handled unfairly, the Financial Ombudsman Service can review it free of charge once you have exhausted the insurer’s own complaints process.

Storm damage or wear and tear?

This is the question the whole claim turns on, and it is usually possible to tell.

Storm damage is sudden and localised. It clusters at edges - the ridge, the hips, the verges, the first course above the gutter - because that is where wind gets underneath and lifts. Break surfaces are clean and fresh. Nails are pulled or sheared rather than rusted away. The damage was not there last week.

Wear and tear is gradual and distributed. Failures appear across the whole roof rather than at one edge. Nails are corroded through. Mortar has perished generally rather than been broken. There is often a history of similar problems in previous years.

An honest roofer will tell you which one you have, even when it is the answer you did not want, because the loss adjuster will reach the same conclusion independently and it is better to know first. It is also worth saying that these are not mutually exclusive: a storm can genuinely cause damage to a roof that also happens to be nearing the end of its life, and a good report will separate the two.

If it turns out to be wear rather than weather, that is not the end of the world - it just means it is a maintenance job rather than a claim. Our guide on whether to repair or replace covers how to work out which you are looking at.

The roofers who follow every storm

Within days of any significant storm in Cumbria, vans appear in the affected streets and people start knocking on doors offering free roof inspections. Some are legitimate local firms being enterprising. A significant number are not, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth spelling out.

It usually goes like this. A free inspection is offered, often with an urgent framing - they happen to be working on a roof nearby, they noticed something from the road. They go up a ladder. They come down with a photograph of alarming damage, which may or may not be your roof. There is pressure to agree there and then, frequently with a discount that expires today, and a request for a cash deposit up front. The work is then either not done, done badly, or expands dramatically in scope once they have your money.

The protections are simple. Never agree to roofing work on the doorstep. Never pay a deposit in cash to someone who came to you. Ask for a written quote and take the time to get a second one. Check the firm has a real, verifiable address and public liability insurance, and look for membership of a scheme such as TrustMark or the NFRC.

For what it is worth: you also have cancellation rights on contracts agreed at your home, typically fourteen days, and a trader who does not tell you about them in writing is already in breach of the rules.

Getting the repair done properly

Once the immediate crisis has passed, the repair itself should be unremarkable. What matters is that it goes beyond the obvious.

The three slates missing from the front elevation are what you noticed. Uplift strong enough to remove those has almost certainly loosened their neighbours, and slates that have lifted and dropped back look entirely normal from the ground while letting water in at the next driving rain. A proper post-storm repair includes a check of the whole roof, particularly the ridge, hips and verges on every elevation, not just the one facing the street.

Materials should match. On Carlisle’s Victorian terraces that means matching slate, sourced reclaimed if the original is no longer produced, because a patch of modern concrete tile in a slate roof is visible from the pavement permanently and will cost you on resale.

And the repair should be documented, with photographs of the finished work, both for your records and because it closes out the insurance claim cleanly.

Storms are going to keep coming - that is Cumbria. What you can control is how quickly the water is stopped, how well the damage is recorded, and who you let up the ladder.

If you have had damage and want it looked at by someone who is actually based in Carlisle, our storm damage repairs page sets out how we handle the repair and the insurance paperwork together.