Roofers in Innsworth
A Severn Vale community between Gloucester and Cheltenham, built up from a 1935 parish and 1940s housing, with an old RAF station at its heart and roofs that come from several different decades.
Innsworth at a glance
- Distance
- 13.3 road miles north of Stroud
- Council
- Tewkesbury Borough Council
- Green Belt
- Largest community in the Gloucester and Cheltenham Green Belt
- Setting
- Severn Vale, between Gloucester and Cheltenham
Innsworth's roofs, from prefabricated homes to the barracks site
Innsworth is a suburb-sized community lying across the Severn Vale from Gloucester towards Cheltenham, and it is the largest in the Gloucester and Cheltenham Green Belt. Its 2021 population was 3,315 on the Wikidata figure for the civil parish.
Nothing here looks like a village centre with a church and a green. The place was assembled in stages. A civil parish was formed on 1 April 1935 under the name Longlevens, taking parts of Wotton St Mary Without, Barnwood, Hucclecote and Churchdown, and it was renamed Innsworth on 14 September 1967. The housing came with the war and after it: many of the post-war housing association homes built in the mid-to-late 1940s were prefabricated or what are called no-fines structures, meaning walls of poured concrete.
The other landmark is military. RAF Innsworth was home to RAF Personnel and Training Command until 2008, and the site, now Imjin Barracks, has housed the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps since it moved from Germany in 2010.
Planning and listing questions for Innsworth go to Tewkesbury Borough Council, whose building control service is shared with Cheltenham, and a quick check with its planners will tell you whether your own address carries any limit. The roofs themselves need a closer look than a map can give.
Detached red brick Edwardian house with mock-Tudor gables and a tiled roof 
Stone terraced houses with slate roofs and chimneys stepping up a hill
Chapter 01
No-fines walls and the roofs they carry
Poured concrete walls from the 1940s ask different questions of a roofer than brick does.
Chapter 01In this chapter
Many of Innsworth's post-war housing association homes, built in the mid-to-late 1940s, were prefabricated or no-fines structures. A no-fines wall is poured concrete made without the fine sand that fills the gaps in ordinary concrete, which leaves it full of small voids. The walls tell you nothing certain about the covering on any particular house, and many have been re-roofed since, so each roof is read on site.
In this chapter
What the wall type does tell us is what the roof sits on. The wall plate, which is the timber that spreads the rafter loads along the wall head, is fixed to the concrete with straps or bolts, and those fixings are worth checking when a roof is stripped. A wall of this kind is also solid, not cavity, so there is no cavity tray above a window or a roof abutment to carry water out. Flashings, verges and eaves detail do the work, and where they fail the water goes straight into the wall.
Re-roofing a house of this age
Planning Portal guidance is that renewing a covering normally avoids a building control application while under 25 per cent of the envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof is touched. Past either limit, an application is needed and extra insulation may follow. Building control also has to approve a covering that weighs 15 per cent or more above the one it replaces, with a structural check. Concrete tiles are heavier than slate, so a swap in either direction is worth discussing early. For a full strip and recover, the roof replacement page walks through the planning and the pricing.
Insulation while the roof is open
Roof and loft insulation in a home carries a zero rate of VAT until 31 March 2027. With the covering off, it is the least disruptive moment to improve the insulation, and the quote shows the VAT it carries. A cold roof also needs ventilation at the eaves: BS 5250 guidance, via Marley, asks for 10 mm along the eaves on pitches above 15 degrees with non-breathable underlay.
Fixings into concrete
Fixing into a poured concrete wall takes the right plugs and anchors, and drilling is slower than into brick. A verge or an eaves board that was fixed with the wrong anchor will loosen after a few winters, so we choose fixings for the wall, not for convenience. If a fascia has pulled away, the fault may be the anchor, not the board.
Asbestos cement
Prefabricated homes and their garages and sheds sometimes carry asbestos cement sheeting. We cannot tell by eye alone, so we assess before pricing, and intact sheets removed with care count as non-licensed work under HSE guidance.
On a solid wall, the roof edge is the only defence the wall has.
Chapter 02
RAF Innsworth, Imjin Barracks and the long view of estate roofs
A site that changed from an air force command to an army headquarters shows how institutional buildings are reused.
The air force left in 2008, and since 2010 the site, now Imjin Barracks, has been the base of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, which moved from Germany. Before that, RAF Innsworth was the home of RAF Personnel and Training Command, and the station stood beside the housing for decades. The site matters because it has shaped the surroundings for generations.
In this chapter
What a site like this does show is how estates of buildings are looked after. A group of buildings of similar age, owned by one body, is normally maintained on a programme: an inspection each year, small repairs done early, and a replacement timed for when the covering is spent. A homeowner can borrow the idea. A yearly walk round the outside and a look into the loft, with the photographs kept, will catch slipped tiles and blocked gutters while they are small. The cost of a standard inspection is £150 to £250 (MyBuilder, 2026).
Why age groups matter
Houses put up in the same few years share timbers, tiles, nails and flashing details, and so they tend to fail in the same ways at about the same time. Knowing that a neighbour's roof has just been done tells you little about yours, but knowing that the roof next door failed at the ridge tells you where to look. We use that when we survey, and we say which of our findings might apply to nearby roofs of the same type.
Housing association and landlord roofs
Some of the post-war homes were housing association builds, and the same thinking suits any landlord with several similar properties. When one roof fails, the others of its age are worth checking. We can survey a group, quote for each building and let the owner decide the order of work. Our flat roofing page covers the garages and extensions that sit beside many such houses.
Valleys and abutments on terraces
Where two roofs meet at a valley or a party wall, water from both slopes funnels into one line. On a terrace the neighbours share those junctions, so a leak may start next door. Telling the neighbour, with a photograph, is often the quickest way to a joint repair and a shared scaffold.
Timing a programme
Dry spells suit the work best, and every opened section is made watertight before the crew goes home. For a block or terrace, one scaffold can serve several roofs, which brings the per-roof cost down. The quote allows for the scaffold once and covers each roof.
Photographs for the file
For any landlord, the record matters. We take pictures of each roof before and after, list the materials used and send both, so every building's file shows what was done and when.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1 April 1935 | Civil parish formed as Longlevens |
| Mid-to-late 1940s | Post-war housing association homes built |
| 14 September 1967 | Parish renamed Innsworth |
| 2008 | RAF Personnel and Training Command leaves RAF Innsworth |
| 2010 | Allied Rapid Reaction Corps arrives at Imjin Barracks |
Chapter 03
A growing ward in the Green Belt: extensions, lofts and flat roofs
More homes and more people mean more extensions, and every extension brings a new roof.
Chapter 03In this chapter
Innsworth is the largest community in the Gloucester and Cheltenham Green Belt. The Innsworth ward had 3,110 electors in 2016, with a projected increase to 3,885 by 2022. A community that grows by that much has a lot of building going on, and a lot of the building is extensions, garages and loft conversions to existing houses.
Each one adds a roof, with a covering of its own and a junction with the old. A single-storey extension is often flat or low-pitch, and flat roofs are the ones that go wrong most visibly. MyBuilder (2026) gives a typical life of 15 to 30 years for flat roofs generally, and EPDM, GRP and felt each sit at different points in that range. A flat roof is designed to a 1:40 fall so that it finishes at 1:80 after tolerances (BS 6229, via IKO, 2021). If water stands on it for days after rain, the fall is the first thing to look at.
Loft rooms and roof windows
Approved Document B asks for a protected stair when a two-storey house gains a loft room, and treats a roof window as an escape only within 4.5 metres of the ground. Roof windows should achieve 1.4 W/m²K and rooflights 2.2 W/m²K under Part L (2021). Our skylights page covers the planning side. Planning permission for an extension is a question for Tewkesbury Borough Council, and the Green Belt label does not change how a roof is repaired.
Garages and outbuildings
Garage roofs are the commonest flat roofs on an older estate. A single flat garage roof costs £700 to £1,000 to replace and a double £900 to £1,400, against £2,500 to £4,500 for a pitched one (MyBuilder, 2026). Our survey tells you whether a roof is sound enough to patch or past it, and both options are priced side by side.
Joining old and new
The weakest point on most extensions is the line where the new roof butts against the old wall. The junction wants a flashing dressed into the brickwork, or into a joint cut for it, and a gutter that does not discharge onto the older roof below. We photograph that junction at the survey. A leak from the join often looks like a failure of the new roof, when the fault is the flashing.
- 3,110electors in the Innsworth ward, 2016
- 3,885projected electors in the ward by 2022
- 3,315residents of the Innsworth civil parish, 2021
Map showing Innsworth and the Stroud service radius, with nearby towns we also cover.
Near Innsworth
Roof work we do here
Roof queries for homes beside Imjin Barracks
My 1940s Innsworth home has poured concrete walls. Will a re-roof be different?
In what we check, yes. A no-fines wall is solid, with no cavity to catch water, so the roof edge does the weatherproofing. When the covering comes off we inspect the wall plate fixings, flashings and eaves.
Could an old garage or shed roof at a 1940s house be asbestos cement?
It might be. Looking is not enough to tell, so we assess before pricing. Under HSE guidance, lifting intact asbestos cement sheeting with care is non-licensed work. Our quote for a garage roof records how the sheets are lifted, where they are taken and what is laid in their place.
Do you survey several similar roofs for a landlord or housing association?
Yes. We survey each roof, quote for each building and let the owner choose the order. A shared scaffold across a terrace reduces the cost per roof, and the photographs go into each building's file.
Is there a conservation area in Innsworth that limits roof changes?
Tewkesbury Borough Council keeps the definitive record of conservation areas and other designations, so ask its planners before changing how a roof looks, adding a window or building an extension.