In short
Tiles slip when whatever was holding them has failed: a snapped nib on a clay pantile, a rusted nail, a rotten batten or a mortar bed at the verge or ridge that has washed out. Wind off The Wash finds the weak ones first, which is why it happens in the same few weeks each winter. Re-fixing the slipped tile is the repair; working out why it slipped is what stops the next one.
This is a job for our Storm damage repair service.
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The four reasons a tile lets go
- The nib has snapped. A clay pantile hangs on a small lug on its back. On old Norfolk pantiles the nib is often the first thing to go, and once it has the tile is held by its neighbours and nothing else.
- The nail has gone. Galvanised nails corrode. Within a few miles of the coast at Hunstanton they corrode faster. When the nail lets go, the tile relies on the nib alone.
- The batten has rotted. A batten that is soft will not hold a nail. Slipped tiles in a line across the roof usually mean one bad batten.
- The mortar has washed out. Ridge and verge tiles were traditionally bedded in mortar. It cracks, water gets behind it, frost lifts it, and the tile is loose.
Why it is always the same roofs
Wind uplift is strongest at the edges: verges, ridges, hips and eaves. A roof with a weak verge on the windward side will lose tiles from that verge, get patched, and lose them again next winter. Marley's guide to dry verge systems explains why: mortar can crack and fall out over time, while a dry-fix system is mechanically clipped to the battens and holds against uplift. BS 8612, the standard for dry-fix ridge, hip and verge systems, is now folded into BS 5534, the slating and tiling code. That is why we do not re-bed a verge that has failed twice; we convert it.
What a slipped tile costs to put right
MyJobQuote's 2026 tile replacement guide puts a small five-tile repair at roughly £170 to £260 depending on whether the tiles are clay, concrete or slate, and a ridge tile repair at around £300. Those figures assume ladder access. Our price on the day depends on access more than anything else: a bungalow in Downham Market is a ladder job, a three-storey town house on the Tuesday Market Place needs a tower.
| What we find | Repair | Stops it recurring? |
|---|---|---|
| Single tile, nib snapped | Replace tile, clip or wire it | Yes, for that tile |
| Several tiles in a row | Replace the batten beneath | Yes |
| Verge tiles loose | Dry verge system | Yes |
| Tiles slipping all over | Survey, likely re-lay or re-roof | Only a re-roof will |
What we do on the visit
We replace what has slipped, then check the tiles either side. If the nibs are snapping we tell you, because a roof losing tiles to snapped nibs will keep doing it and the honest advice is to budget for a re-lay rather than pay us three times a winter.
