Roof Checks for Landlords Before the Student Year

The Leeds student calendar gives landlords a gift that most property owners do not get: a few weeks a year when the house is guaranteed to be empty. Between the end of one tenancy in late June or early July and the start of the next in September, you can put a scaffold up, strip a slope, sort the guttering and have the site cleared with nobody living underneath it.

Miss that window and the same work has to be done around six tenants, their belongings and their timetables, or it gets postponed to next summer while the damp gets worse.

Why the changeover weeks matter so much

Scaffold on a back-to-back or a through terrace in Headingley or Hyde Park usually has to stand across a shared yard or a narrow ginnel. With tenants in, that means access arrangements, notice, and a job that takes longer because the crew is working around people.

With the house empty, the scaffold goes up on day one and comes down when the job is finished. You also get the two things no roofer can promise in November: dry decks and long days. GRP flat roofing in particular needs dry conditions above about 5 degrees, which in Leeds is realistically April to October.

What to check, in the order that matters

Guttering first. It is the cheapest thing on this list and the source of most of the expensive problems.

1. Gutters and downpipes. Blocked, sagging or leaking at the joints. Look for a green stain or a tide mark running down the brickwork or the render underneath a joint. That wall is getting wet every time it rains.
2. Gutter falls. Water sitting in the gutter after the rain stops means the brackets have dropped. On a long run across a terrace this happens slowly and nobody notices.
3. Valleys. Where two slopes meet, usually between the main roof and the back outrigger. Leaf litter and moss build a dam. Valleys are the single most common leak point on a Leeds through terrace.
4. The ridge line. Look along it from the street or the yard. Gaps in the mortar bedding, a tile sitting proud, or vegetation growing out of the joint.
5. Verge. The mortar at the gable end. Cracked or missing pointing lets wind under the edge slate.
6. Slipped or missing slates. Count the gaps. Slates going one or two at a time across a slope is nail sickness, which is a re-roof conversation rather than a repair.
7. Chimney stacks. Soft or missing pointing, cracked flaunching, a pot that has moved. Back gutters behind a stack block easily.
8. Flashings. Where the roof meets a wall, a dormer cheek or a bay roof. Cement fillets crack. Mastic fails. Both should be lead.
9. Flat roofs. Rear extensions, dormers and bay tops. Ponding water two days after rain, blisters, or splits at a seam.
10. Inside the loft. Go up with a torch on a bright day. Daylight through the covering, water staining on the rafters, and wet insulation all tell you something the outside did not.

Photograph everything you find and date the photos. That record is useful at inspection, at renewal, and if a tenant raises a complaint later.

What does this work cost in Leeds?

Typical Leeds ranges reviewed September 2026. Access is the biggest variable on every row.

Job	Typical range
Clear and realign guttering on a terrace	£120 to £280
New uPVC guttering, per metre	£25 to £50
Slipped slate repair	£180 to £480
Valley repair between two slopes	£450 to £1,200
Loose or missing ridge tile	£160 to £420
Full ridge re-bed on a mid terrace	£750 to £1,700
Chimney repoint with new flaunching	£650 to £1,500
Flat roof repair	£220 to £650

On a typical student let, a summer of sensible maintenance across guttering, a valley and a few slates comes in well under the cost of one winter’s damp remediation and redecoration.

What are your actual duties?

Three things sit behind this for a Leeds landlord.

Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the structure and exterior of the property, including the roof, drains and gutters, in the landlord’s repairing obligation on most tenancies. That obligation cannot be contracted out of in a standard let.

The Housing Health and Safety Rating System is how councils assess hazards in rented homes. Damp and mould growth is one of the assessable hazards, and a serious one can lead to enforcement action. GOV.UK publishes a landlord and agent guide to how the system works. The practical point is that damp caused by a failed gutter or a leaking valley is a property defect, and it is the landlord who has to fix the cause.

Licensing is the third. A house rented to five or more people from more than one household who share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet needs a mandatory HMO licence from Leeds City Council, and the council also runs selective licensing in a number of named wards. Licence conditions and inspections cover property condition, so a roof or gutter defect can surface there. The council publishes the requirements, the fees and the application routes on its landlord pages. It is worth checking whether your address falls inside a selective licensing ward before you assume it does not.

The Headingley problem

Back-to-backs and through terraces share more than a wall. They share a valley, a chimney stack, a gutter run and often a scaffold position. Work on one roof frequently needs access over or alongside the next one, and party wall stacks need both sides made good.

If you own two doors on the same street, do them together. The scaffold and the mobilisation cost is the expensive part and it splits cleanly. If your neighbour is another landlord with the same problem, it is worth a conversation before either of you books anything.

Booking the summer window

Survey slots fill from May onward and the good weeks in July and August go early. Tell us the tenancy end and start dates at the survey and we will programme the work inside them, with photographs of every fault and a fixed price in writing. Our guttering, fascias and soffits page covers the cheapest and most useful part of this list, and the Headingley page has more on the housing stock around there.