I know the thought of regulating the roofing industry may scare a lot of people in the roofing game but I feel like we are at a crossroads with the ever expanding skills gap getting wider and the amount of rouge traders in the industry.

My company predominantly operates in the private homeowner sector and most of my points in this article are probably aimed towards this part of the market.

My thought process is that anyone who truly cares about roofing probably has the same end goal as I do. Doing the job right, looking after customers and bringing through new apprentices to keep this beautiful trade alive for years to come.

If the roofing industry was to be regulated then it would mean anyone out there not doing the job properly will need to up-skill so they can gain the relevant and proper qualifications. To do this we will need to first fill the training void that we are currently faced with, on site assessment isn’t enough and we need some bespoke training for any areas that the roofers out there without either the proper qualifications or experience are lacking.

I believe there should be a deadline set in place for everyone to upskill to be properly qualified or at least working towards the qualification. Once there is a deadline set then the action points can be laid out for what is needed in order to achieve this, this will need to be backed by government and funding allocated to allow for the training to be undertaken.

The world is changing and I think it will soon enough be the norm for roofing companies to have in-house training academies and it’s definitely something we are working towards however at the moment we need a collective approach to want to make this better and to begin to rid the rouge traders away from this industry.

If homeowners are educated that they need to use a regulated roofing contractor and they are made fully aware of the risks of allowing someone unregulated to do the works then hopefully this would be a step in the right direction.

This up-skilling and training would obviously come at a cost and for the smaller self employed roofers in the industry they may not be able to afford to do this however if we are serious about making the industry better then it may well mean that those roofers need to go back to a company to go through their qualification.

I’m a qualified roofer and if I’m honest when I started up my company nearly 10 years ago at age 22 with just 6 and a half years of roofing under my belt, I probably wasn’t ready, so it deeply saddens me and worries me that someone with no roofing qualifications can buy a van, ladders and some tools and be going around chapping doors and fixing roofs so easily.

I believe this industry is far better than that and I believe that if enough people want to care about it and make it better then one day we can have a regulated roofing industry with bespoke training that caters for all of the different roofing disciplines and we can rid the industry of rouge traders, protecting our homeowners and their roofs and giving the roofing game the reputation it deserves.