Roofers in Edinburgh

Roofing in Edinburgh

Edinburgh has a roofing problem that almost no other British city shares, and it comes straight from the Georgian New Town. Behind those stone parapets there is very often not a pitched roof at all but a platform roof: a shallow lead-covered deck with concealed box gutters, hidden cisterns and outlets buried in the stonework, entirely invisible from the street and designed to keep the skyline of the First and Second New Towns unbroken. Lead lasts a century or more but the details around it do not, and when a hidden gutter blocks or a lead joint splits, water travels a long way inside the building before anyone sees a stain. These roofs need specialists, they need access, and they are expensive. They are also the reason the World Heritage Site looks the way it does.

The tenement stock brings the second complication. Roofs over Edinburgh tenements are common property under the Tenement (Scotland) Act 2004, shared between every flat in the stair, and since the council wound up its statutory notice repairs scheme, organising a common roof repair is squarely the owners' job. Practically that means getting your neighbours and any factor aligned before you get quotes, and choosing a contractor comfortable with apportioned billing.

Materials are constrained too. Across the Old and New Towns and the surrounding conservation areas, natural slate is generally expected, and substituting a cheaper covering on a visible pitch will attract attention from the planning authority.

Elsewhere the city is more ordinary: Victorian and Edwardian villas in Morningside and Corstorphine, colony flats in Leith and Stockbridge with their distinctive stepped access, and modern estates out at Currie and Balerno. Fifty-three firms are listed across the city, 23 of them offering emergency cover, which is among the better response ratios in Scotland.