Roof Damage In Croydon: Insurance Claim Or Pay The Roofer?

The morning after a rough night is when we get the calls: tiles in the front garden, a damp patch spreading across a bedroom ceiling, and one question before any talk of ladders - should this go through the insurance? It is the right question, and the honest answer is that in Croydon it depends on numbers most people have never looked up. Around half of the storm call-outs we attend end up being settled privately, not because the insurer refused, but because once the owner saw the arithmetic they chose not to claim. This piece walks through that arithmetic: what a buildings policy will actually pay for, what a claim quietly costs you afterwards, and the situations where claiming is not just sensible but essential.

What your policy covers, and the exclusion that decides everything

Buildings insurance exists for sudden, unforeseen damage. A gale strips a slope, a branch comes through the tiles, a lorry clips your eaves - all insured events, all claimable, and if the damage is serious our storm damage repair team can make the roof safe while the paperwork gets going.

What no policy covers is a roof reaching the end of its life. The wording is “wear and tear” or “gradual deterioration”, and it is the single most common reason roof claims fail. The distinction sounds fine in principle and gets messy on real houses, because wind rarely damages a sound roof. What actually happens, on the Victorian slopes of Addiscombe and South Norwood especially, is that weather finds the slate that was already loose, the nail that had already rusted through, the mortar that had already cracked. The insurer’s inspector is trained to spot exactly that, and if the underlying cause is age, the weather that finished the job does not make it a valid claim.

So before anything else, be realistic about the state your roof was in on the day before the storm.

Start with two numbers: the excess and the quote

Every policy carries an excess - the first slice of any claim you pay yourself. On buildings policies it is commonly somewhere between £100 and £500, and if you shaved money off your premium with a voluntary excess, it may be considerably more. Plenty of people discover their true excess for the first time while standing in the loft with a torch.

Set that figure against a roofer’s quote for the actual damage. A handful of slipped tiles rebedded and a slope checked over is often a few hundred pounds - which means a £350 excess can swallow most or all of it. You would be filing a claim, waiting on an inspection and accepting years of higher premiums in exchange for almost nothing. This is why so many of the smaller storm jobs across Croydon never touch an insurer: not because the claim would fail, but because it would not be worth winning.

Get the quote first. It costs nothing, it takes a day, and it turns a stressful guess into a simple comparison.

What insurers actually mean by “storm”

Here is the part that catches people out. You remember a wild night; your insurer wants evidence of one. When a storm claim is disputed, the Financial Ombudsman’s approach to home insurance complaints starts with whether storm conditions existed at all - and their benchmark is genuinely violent weather, typically gale-force winds of force eight or more, or rain and hail heavy enough to be exceptional. They and the insurers check recorded wind speeds near your postcode for the date in question.

Croydon does get weather that clears the bar. When a named system tracked by the Met Office storm centre comes through - Eunice in February 2022 being the recent one everybody remembers - wind speeds are a matter of public record and the storm-conditions question answers itself. The high southern edge of the borough, up on the downs at Sanderstead, Riddlesdown and Old Coulsdon, catches those winds harder than the sheltered ground below. But a claim blamed on an unremarkable weekend of gusty showers is likely to founder on the weather data before anyone even discusses the roof.

If your damage did happen during a named storm, note the date and the storm’s name in your first call. It shortcuts a whole stage of the argument.

The costs that arrive after the claim

A claim is not free money even when it pays out in full. It becomes part of your claims history, and insurers ask about the last three to five years of it every time you renew or switch. Claims are logged on shared industry databases, so the record follows you between insurers rather than staying with the one who paid.

The effect is a higher premium for several years running, and the loss of any no-claims discount your policy carried. Nobody can tell you the exact cost in advance because every insurer prices it differently, but on a modest claim it is entirely possible to give back a large share of the payout through renewals before the record expires. One wrinkle worth knowing: even phoning your insurer to ask about a possible claim can be logged as an incident, so have your roofer’s quote and your decision made before you ring, not after.

None of this is a reason never to claim. It is a reason to treat a claim as something with a price tag, and to spend it where it buys something substantial.

When claiming is clearly the right call

There is a category of roof damage where hesitation costs you money, and it looks like this: a large area of covering gone, a ceiling down, water into more than one room, or a chimney stack left unstable. Jobs like these run well into four figures once scaffolding goes up, and they are precisely what the policy is for.

Claim too when the damage reaches beyond the roof itself. A branch through the tiles usually means soaked insulation, damaged plaster and redecoration, and a single claim can pick all of it up; the borough’s leafier corners around Shirley and Purley see exactly this after every big blow. And claim when the cause is someone else’s problem crossing your boundary - a neighbour’s tree, for instance, where your insurer can pay you promptly and then argue with theirs about recovery. If you are in one of Croydon’s thousands of converted flats, check the position first, because the buildings policy usually belongs to the freeholder rather than to you - our guide to who pays for roof repairs in a converted flat untangles that particular knot.

How a claim actually runs, and where your own roofer fits

A straightforward claim goes like this. You notify the insurer, they either send a loss adjuster or ask for photographs and quotes, a settlement is agreed, and the work is done - by their approved contractor or by a roofer you choose, depending on the policy and on you. Citizens Advice’s guidance on insurance claims is a solid plain-English companion if the process turns sticky.

Two things are worth insisting on. First, remember the loss adjuster works for the insurer; you are entitled to have your own roofer’s report sit alongside their assessment, and on disputed claims that second opinion regularly changes the outcome. Second, do not let a claim become an excuse for a worse repair. Insurers pay to reinstate what was damaged, and on an older roof the cheapest reinstatement is not always the right one - matching slates on a Victorian terrace, for instance, rather than whatever is on the van. A local roofer who knows Croydon’s housing stock will document the damage properly, separate storm damage from pre-existing wear honestly, and quote for putting back what was actually there.

One caution: a doorstep visitor offering to handle your claim for you is a pattern worth being wary of. Deal with your insurer directly and pick your own contractor.

Either way, the first 24 hours look the same

Whatever you eventually decide about claiming, the immediate steps do not change, and doing them protects both the house and the claim.

Photograph everything before anyone touches it - the roof from the ground, the debris where it fell, every damp patch inside, with the date visible in your phone’s records. Keep broken tiles and fallen branches; they are evidence of what failed and why. Move what you can out from under the leak and get water caught rather than soaking through floors. Then make the roof watertight fast, because every policy requires you to prevent the damage getting worse, and a sagging wet ceiling on day three is a worse claim and a worse house than a tarpaulined roof on day one. Keep the receipt for that emergency work; it normally goes on the claim.

Then sit down with the quote, the excess and the likely premium cost, and make the call with actual numbers in front of you. If you want the first of those numbers today, we will come and put one on it.

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