Can you cancel a roofing contract? The 14-day cooling-off period

1Which roofing contracts the 14 days cover

The cooling-off right comes from the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. It has nothing to do with the size of the job and everything to do with where the deal was struck. The regulations call a contract off-premises when you and the trader sign up face to face somewhere that is not the trader's own place of business.

For a roofer that place is usually your house. A surveyor visits, inspects the roof, talks you through a quote and you agree at the kitchen table: that is an off-premises contract, even though you invited the visit. A deal agreed by phone or email is a distance contract, covered by the same Regulations and the same 14 days.

The right applies whether the caller was uninvited or not, which is why this page sits beside our answer on what to do when a roofer knocks on your door. A contract signed at the trader's office or yard sits outside the cancellation right. Before you assume you are covered, check where you were when you said yes.

Unsure whether your job is covered? Treat the 14 days as yours until someone shows otherwise in writing.

2How the clock runs, and the 12-month extension

For a service such as re-roofing, the cancellation period closes at the end of the fourteenth day counted from the day after the contract was made. Inside that window you can cancel whenever you like, with no explanation.

The trader has to give you cancellation information before the contract is made. If that step was skipped, the period does not simply expire. It can run for up to 12 months beyond the date it would have finished. A roofer who leaves out the cancellation notice keeps the contract open to challenge for a long time.

On cancellation, the trader must hand back every payment you have made, a deposit included, which is why a written receipt matters so much. How much is sensible to pay in advance is covered in our answer on paying a roofer upfront.

Cancel in writing and keep a copy, so the date you sent notice is beyond argument. Email is quick and leaves a record, but a letter sent by tracked post also works. Whichever you pick, state the job, the address and the date of the contract in the first lines.

3Starting work inside the 14 days

You may want work to begin sooner than a fortnight, perhaps because a ridge is loose before the winter. The regulations allow it, but only if you make an express request. For a contract made away from the trader's premises, the request must sit on a durable medium, meaning paper or email, rather than a nod or a phone call.

There is a trade-off. If you ask for the work to start and then cancel inside the period, your bill is limited to the share of the work delivered up to that point. If the job is finished in full, you lose the right to cancel only when you asked for the work while acknowledging that you would lose it.

We keep to the cautious reading: when a customer wants a start inside the 14 days, we ask for that request in writing first. Before you sign any early-start request, with anyone, ask what the proportionate charge would mean in pounds for your roof. A start date that suits the weather is a fair thing to want. A trader who insists on arriving this afternoon, before you have read the paperwork, is another matter altogether.

4The urgent-repairs exception

Regulation 28(1)(e) takes a visit out of the cancellation rules where you specifically asked the trader to come for urgent repairs or maintenance. If a gutter has come down in a gale and you phone a roofer to make things safe, do not expect a 14-day right to cancel that visit.

Two points keep the exception in proportion. First, you must be the one who made the call, and the purpose must be genuinely urgent repair. A caller who turned up unasked is not covered in that way. Second, if the trader sells you extra services on that visit that you did not ask for, those additions stay within the cancellation rules.

So a make-safe visit and a full replacement quoted on the same afternoon are different contracts in practice. A past roofing contract can also matter when you buy or sell, and roof checks before you exchange covers which paperwork to ask for.

If you cannot tell whether your job counts as urgent, ask the trader to say in writing how they classify it. You can also read about our own approach on the Watertight Worthing Roofing home page.