A roof inspection is worth paying for at three moments: before buying a house whose roof you cannot see, after a storm when an insurer wants evidence, and before spending on a repair you suspect is the wrong repair. What you are buying is a written record, and the useful ones separate what was seen from what was inferred and from what could not be reached.
The four levels, and their very different prices
A ground level visual check with binoculars tells you about missing tiles and obvious slippage. A ladder inspection at the eaves adds the gutters, the fascia and the lowest course. A drone flight photographs every external surface including the ridges, the valleys and the chimney, which is where most defects actually are. A close inspection from a scaffold or a tower lets somebody lift a tile and test a fixing. Agree which one you are buying, because all four are sold as a roof inspection.
The loft is half the inspection
An inspector who never opened the hatch has looked at one side of the roof. From inside you can see the underlay and whether it has perished, daylight where there should be none, staining that shows historic leaks, damp or rot at the rafter feet, and whether the insulation has been laid over the eaves ventilation. On an older roof, the state of the nails holding slates is visible from below long before a slate slips outside.
What a report should give you
Findings first, then what they mean, then what to do, in that order and clearly separated. Dated photographs of each defect, because an insurer or a buyer's surveyor cares when the roof was in that condition. An explicit list of what was not inspected and why. And where remedial work is recommended, an indication of urgency rather than a single undifferentiated list, so you can tell the leak from the maintenance.
Why an inspection is safer than a look
The reason to pay somebody to inspect a roof rather than climbing up yourself is in HSE's own count: falls from a height caused 31 of the 126 work-related worker deaths recorded in Great Britain in 2025/26, provisionally, and those are people who do it for a living with the right equipment. A homeowner on a ladder against a wet gutter is the same hazard with none of the training, which is also why a drone survey has become the sensible first look at a roof.
Questions people ask about roof inspection
How often should a roof be inspected?
A domestic roof in reasonable condition does not need an annual survey, but a look after any storm that brought down tiles nearby is sensible. Commercial roofs are commonly inspected annually because the insurer or the lease requires it.
Is a homebuyer report enough to judge a roof?
It inspects what is visible and safely accessible, which for a roof is usually the view from the ground and from the loft hatch. Where it flags the roof for further investigation, that further investigation is a roof survey.
Will a roofer inspect for free?
Many will, and the free inspection is a sales visit rather than an independent report. That is not dishonest, but it is a different product from a paid survey by somebody who will not be quoting for the work.