Re-roofing advice please.

Boohoo

Hello.

My in-laws are having their semi-detached house roof, facia and soffit and guttering done sometime this month.

The house is a hipped roof style and about 70-80 years old.

They have agreed a price for the work to be done.

The scaffolding should be going up around the house in about a week or so time.

I have a few questions about the what to do about the building works as my partner has been staying with her parents for a week and has been trying to explain things to me.

1. The house attached to theirs is rented and the family living there are great but their landlord is not so good. Do my in-laws have to a PWA with the owner or just tell them they are a new roof done?

2. They will have to inform their insurers about the building work be done but is does this involve apart from calling them?

3. They have a fair bit of stuff in the loft and what we were going to do was spread it out in the loft and cover it with tarpaulin sheets to protect the stuff from possible rain and debris from removing the tiles and underfelt. Over 75% of the loft has been boarded out. Is there any other suggestions on what we should to protect the stuff in the loft?

Any help/advice or tips would be good.

tacpot12

1. Whether your in-laws need to give the landlord a PWA Notice depends on how the two roofs are connected. If there are tiles or slates that cross over the boundary, a PWA Notice will be needed. If there is a parapit wall that sits across the boundary and no work is being done on the wall, then no PWA Notice will be needed.  If they get on well with the tenants, they should be able to get the landlord's name and address from the tenancy agreement. They need to get a move on,and i sugest they include anapology to the landlord for the late notice if a PWA Notice is required. 

2. They should check their policy to see if they even have to notify the insurers of any building work. The insurers probably won't cover them if there is any damage to their home or property in the loft while there is no roof on, whether or not they are notified, so I'm not sure notifying them will do much for them. The in-laws seem to be taking a risk in not paying for scaffold cover during the roofing work.

3. Protecting the items in the loft will be very difficult. You need to protect them from falling tiles/slates (I'd get it in writing from the roofing contractor whether they will pay for damages from tiles/slates and workmen falling into the loft. It's not unheard of for workmen to fall into the loft, and not much will survive having Joe Roofer fall on it. 

The contractor has a health and safety obligation to the workmen and should be installing a crash deck, nets or other means to stop them falling into the loft. Many don't bother, so they need to get it in writing who pays for damaged caused by falling workmen.

You could get some of those gym mats and put at least two of these over everything in the loft, along with tarpaulins. You also need to consider where all the water is going to go, and the fact that we have had some very heavy downpours this summer. It is possible that a downpour could run off the tarpauling, straight down the loft hatch and stairs and out the front door, but I'm not sure if that would be good or bad!

If a PWA notice is required, they should advise the tenants to move anything that they have in their landlord's loft well away from the party wall.