The short answer
For a standard three-bedroom semi in Crawley — the sort of 1950s–70s New Town house you'll find all over Tilgate, Northgate, Langley Green and Furnace Green — a full re-roof in concrete tile lands between £7,000 and £10,500 including scaffold, VAT and waste.
That figure covers stripping the old roof, replacing any failed timber, new breathable membrane, new treated battens, new tiles, dry-fix ridge and verge, and re-bedded or renewed flashings. It is not a "from" price with a list of extras waiting behind it.
Prices by house type
Roof area, not floor area, drives the cost. A bungalow can have as much roof as a two-storey house with half the rooms. These are the ranges we quote most often across Crawley, Horley and the surrounding villages:
| Property | Concrete tile | Clay tile | Natural slate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-terrace (2 bed) | £5,200 – £7,500 | £7,000 – £10,000 | £8,500 – £12,500 |
| Semi-detached (3 bed) | £7,000 – £10,500 | £9,500 – £14,000 | £12,000 – £18,000 |
| Detached (4 bed) | £10,500 – £16,000 | £14,000 – £21,000 | £18,000 – £28,000 |
| Bungalow | £8,000 – £13,000 | £11,000 – £17,000 | £14,000 – £22,000 |
Ranges include scaffold, waste removal and VAT. A complex roof — multiple hips, valleys, dormers or a chimney in an awkward place — sits at the top of its band or slightly above.
What actually moves the price
Two houses on the same Crawley street can be £3,000 apart. These are the six things that explain almost every difference:
- Roof area and pitch. Steeper roofs have more surface area than they look from the pavement, and above about 45° the work slows down considerably.
- Complexity. A simple gable roof is the cheapest thing on this list. Every hip, valley, dormer and chimney adds labour, lead and detail work.
- Access and scaffold. A detached house with clear ground on all sides is straightforward. A terrace with rear access only through the house, or a property tight against a boundary, costs more to scaffold safely.
- Material. Concrete interlocking tile is the value option and perfectly good. Clay costs more and ages beautifully. Natural slate is the most expensive and the longest-lived.
- What's underneath. Nobody knows the true condition of your battens and rafters until the tiles come off. Rotten battens are expected and priced in; significant rafter or purlin repair is not, and should be quoted as a variation with photos.
- Roofline. If the fascias, soffits and gutters are the same age as the roof, doing them while the scaffold is up costs a fraction of doing them later.
Why so many Crawley roofs are due at once
Crawley is unusual. Most of the town was built at speed as a post-war New Town, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, from the late 1940s into the 1970s. Enormous numbers of those houses still carry their original concrete tiles.
Concrete tile has a working life of roughly 50 to 60 years. The felt underneath it rarely makes 50. So a whole generation of Crawley roofs — Northgate, West Green, Three Bridges, Tilgate, Gossops Green, Broadfield — is arriving at end of life within the same couple of decades. That is why your neighbours are suddenly getting scaffold up, and why it is worth understanding what a proper job costs before someone knocks on your door offering one for £2,800 cash.
The older stock is a different story. Ifield's village core, the Victorian streets near the station and the handsome houses out towards Worth carry clay and slate that deserve a more careful hand, and often reward repair over replacement for another decade or more.
What a fair quote looks like
A quote you can trust is boring to read and specific about everything. Ours run to two or three pages, and we would expect any decent local roofer's to do the same. Look for:
- The actual materials named. "Marley Modern in Smooth Grey" — not "new tiles".
- Membrane and battens specified. Breathable membrane and BS 5534 graded treated battens should be stated, not assumed.
- Ridge and verge method. Dry-fix or mortar? Dry-fix costs a little more and never needs re-bedding.
- Scaffold, skips and VAT included in the headline figure, not bolted on afterwards.
- A named guarantee with a length and what it covers.
- A payment schedule with no large deposit. A deposit for materials on a big job is normal; half the money up front is not.
And one warning sign that is worth more than all of the above: a price given from the pavement, without anyone getting up to look. Nobody can price a re-roof accurately from the ground.
Can you repair instead?
Often, yes — and we will tell you so. Our honest rule: if less than a quarter of the roof is causing trouble and the timbers are sound, repair it. A well-executed repair on a structurally healthy roof can buy ten more years for a few hundred pounds.
Replace when tiles are failing across the whole roof, when the felt has perished so water runs onto the ceilings rather than into the gutter, or when you find yourself calling a roofer every winter. At that point patching is genuinely more expensive than replacing, just spread out so you don't notice.
If you're not sure which side of the line you're on, our roof health check takes two minutes, and a proper inspection gets you photographs of what is actually going on up there.
Last reviewed August 2026 by the Bonwycks Roofing team. Prices are genuine local ranges for Crawley and the surrounding towns and are reviewed twice a year — your own quote will always be specific to your roof.