Roof inspection report template for UK roofers (free PDF)

Most roofers who search for a roof inspection report template have the same problem: they have just finished a survey, the customer wants something in writing, and the only options seem to be a US insurance checklist or a blank Word document. This guide explains the structure a UK roof inspection report should have, why each part is there, and how to fill it in, with a free template in Word and PDF and a finished sample to copy from.

The words "inspection" and "survey" are used interchangeably in the trade. A roof inspection report, roof survey report and roof condition report are the same document: a written account of a roof's condition, area by area, with graded recommendations. We use "survey" on our own reports; the structure below works under any of the three titles.

What the template contains

The template has nine parts, in the order a customer expects to read them. Each is a page or a group of pages in the finished report.

1. Cover
2. Cover letter with the survey details
3. Report structure and repair categories
4. One section per roof area (as many as the roof needs)
5. Summary
6. Recommended works with indicative costs
7. Disclaimer
8. Acceptance and sign-off
9. Back page with your contact details

You can download it now as a Word and PDF roof survey report template, with the category wording already in place and bracketed prompts where your own words go. The rest of this guide explains how to use it well.

The cover and the survey details

The cover is simple: logo, the report title, the property address, the client, the date and the surveyor's name. The page after it is a short letter that records the facts of the inspection. Fill in all of them, every time:

• Date of inspection. Not the date you wrote the report.
• Weather. Dry and bright, overcast, raining, after heavy rain. A roof inspected in rain shows leaks; one inspected dry shows staining. The reader needs to know which they are looking at.
• Access. Ladders to eaves level, scaffold, cherry picker, drone, from inside the roof space, from a neighbour's window. What you could reach decides what you could see.
• Scope. The roofs and elevations covered, and anything excluded: a flat roof over a locked extension, a rear pitch with no safe access.

Then two or three sentences of introduction in your own voice. The template gives a default you can keep or replace.

Cat 1, Cat 2 and Cat 3: the repair categories

The third page defines the grading before the customer meets it. Nearly every UK roof report uses three repair categories, and the wording below has become the standard because it answers the customer's only real question: do I need to do something, and how soon?

Category	Colour	Definition
Category 1	Green	No immediate action or repair is needed.
Category 2	Amber	Repairs or replacement requiring future attention, but estimates are still advised.
Category 3	Red	Urgent repairs or replacements are needed now. Failure to deal with them may cause problems in other parts of the property or cause a safety hazard.

A few rules make the categories work on the page. One grade per area, never per photograph. If an area has a Cat 3 chimney and a Cat 1 covering, split it into two areas. Cat 1 is not "nothing to say": write what you checked and what to keep an eye on, because a Cat 1 entry proves the area was inspected. When you are torn between 2 and 3, ask whether the customer would be angry in six months if you had called it a 2.

The same page carries the limitations notice: the report is an opinion based on a visual inspection on the day; concealed parts were not opened up; it is not a guarantee. The template has that wording written out. For a longer discussion of how to decide a grade, with real examples of each, see roof survey categories explained.

One section per roof area

This is the part of the template you copy as many times as the roof needs. A typical semi-detached house has five to eight areas; a tenement or a terrace of flats with several roofs can have twenty. Each section has the same fields, and keeping them in the same order on every page is what makes the report easy to read.

Area name

Use names the customer can picture from the street: main roof front pitch, main roof rear pitch, chimney stack (front), rear flat roof, dormer, valley gutter, rainwater goods. Avoid letters and codes.

Description

What the area is made of and the condition you found, in two to six sentences. Lead with the material, then the defects, counted where you can, then anything you could not see. This is the description from the front pitch of our sample report:

Roughly a dozen slates on the front pitch have slipped or cracked and several have been patched in the past with lead tingles. The ridge tiles are bedded in mortar that has weathered back and two have moved. The sarking boards visible from the loft are dry and sound.

Recommendation

What you advise, in the order the work would be done. Match the scale of the recommendation to the scale of the defect; a dozen slipped slates is a repair, not a re-roof, unless the nails have gone across the pitch, in which case say that and explain why. The recommendation for the pitch above:

Refix or replace the slipped and cracked slates and remove the tingles, rebed the two loose ridge tiles and repoint the remainder. The covering is serviceable but the fixings are tiring; budget for re-slating within ten to fifteen years.

Category

The grade, with its colour. The front pitch is Category 2: real repairs, not urgent today, estimate advised.

Photographs

Up to five, captioned, printed with the area they belong to. The template lays them out in two columns so a page holds four comfortably. A good set is one wide shot that locates the area on the roof and three or four close-ups of the defects, with a circle or arrow where the fault is small. A caption says what and where: "Front pitch, lower courses: slipped slates and tingles below the second-floor window."

Indicative cost

A range in pounds, for example "£450 to £650". It is not a quote. It lets the customer budget and rank the work, and it keeps you out of the trap of pricing a job before you have measured it. If your firm never puts figures in a report, remove the field and say in the cover letter that a quotation follows separately.

Summary and recommended works

After the last area, one paragraph sums up the roof: overall condition, what matters most, what can wait. Then a table lists every area with a cost, its category and its indicative range, with a total. Order the rows Cat 3 first. This table is the page most customers forward to someone else, so it has to read on its own without the rest of the report.

Disclaimer, acceptance and back page

The disclaimer is written out in the template; read it once and adjust it to how your firm works, then leave it alone. The acceptance page has two signature boxes, customer and surveyor, with a line confirming the customer has read the report and, if you want it, that they instruct the works. The back page is your address, phone, email, website and the registrations you actually hold.

Filling it in: from site notes to the page

The template is only as good as the notes you bring down from the roof. For each area, before you move on, record four things: what it is made of, what is wrong with it, what you would do, and how urgent that is. Rough is fine:

front pitch scotch slate, approx 12 slipped/cracked, old tingles, ridge mortar weathered 2 loose, sarking dry from loft

That line, plus four photographs, is everything the front-pitch section above needed. Writing the prose is then a matter of turning the shorthand into sentences, which is the step most roofers put off until the evening and the reason reports arrive a week late. Two things help: write the prose area by area while the roof is still in front of you, and keep sentences short and factual. There is a longer walk-through in how to write a roof survey report, and a site-by-site roof survey checklist of what to look at and photograph in each area.

A finished example to copy from

A blank template shows the structure; a finished report shows the standard. Our sample roof survey report is ten pages on a fictional Edinburgh roof with real photographs, one area in each category, the summary, the costed works table and the acceptance page. You can download the sample PDF and hold your own report against it. Reading the two together is the fastest way to see what the template is for.

When a template stops being enough

A Word template works for a few reports a month. The friction shows when you do more: photographs resized by hand, the category table retyped, a page break that pushes a photo away from its area, the evening spent typing up notes, and the customer who prints the PDF, signs it and never posts it back. At that point most firms either hire someone to type reports or move to software that does the layout for them.

Docutrades is the second option built for this exact document: the same nine parts as the template, filled in on a phone on the roof, with the photographs captioned and kept with their area, Cat 1 to 3 and indicative costs on every section, and a branded PDF the customer signs on their phone. The roof survey software page shows what it does in the order you would use it.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a standard roof inspection report template in the UK?

There is no official or statutory template. The structure in this guide, with a cover letter, a repair category key, one section per roof area and a costed summary, is the common form across UK roofing contractors and roof surveyors, and it is what block managers and solicitors expect to see. The category wording follows the repair categories used in the Scottish Home Report, which is why it is widely recognised.

Should I use "inspection", "survey" or "condition" in the title?

Any of the three. Use whatever your customers say when they phone you. The words inside the report matter far more than the title on the cover.

How many photographs should each area have?

Between two and five. Fewer than two and the reader cannot locate the defect; more than five and the page becomes a photo album. If an area genuinely needs more, split it into two areas.

Can I put the indicative costs in the report and still quote separately?

Yes, and most firms do. The report gives ranges so the customer can budget; the quotation that follows gives fixed prices after measuring. Say in the disclaimer that the figures in the report are indicative only.

Does the template work for flat roofs and commercial roofs?

The structure is the same. The area names, the defects you record and the wording change: ponding, laps, upstands and outlets rather than slates and ridge tiles. There is a separate guide to flat roof survey reports with wording for felt, EPDM, GRP and asphalt.

What to do next

Download the template, read the sample once, and use both on the next roof you inspect. If you would rather skip the typing, start a free Docutrades trial, add your logo and write the first report on site.