The short answer
MyJobQuote (Sep 2026) puts removing an asbestos roof at around £2,750 as a typical UK figure. Your own price depends on the roof's size, how the sheets are removed, access and the cost of taking the waste away. Lifting intact asbestos cement with care is non-licensed work, whereas breaking it up makes the job notifiable.
The typical figure, and what it is
MyJobQuote's page on removing asbestos from a roof, updated in September 2026, gives a typical cost of around £2,750. The number is taken from a national cost guide and is not a Fortis price, and it covers a single kind of job. Your building, your roof and your site will move the figure up or down.
The same guide puts an asbestos survey at around £325. Surveys are covered in our answer on asbestos surveys before roof work, and a survey often comes before any removal quote, because the quote depends on what the survey finds.
Treat a national figure with caution for a commercial roof. A garage roof of a few sheets is a very different job from a warehouse roof of hundreds. The size of the roof is the first thing that scales the price, then the type of sheet, how it is fixed and how the building is used underneath.
The way to use a figure like £2,750 is as a reality check. If a quote for a small roof is a fraction of it, ask what is missing. If a quote for a large roof is close to it, ask what is being left out. The written price follows a survey.
What shifts the figure
Several features of a job decide where it sits.
Size and type come first. More sheets take more time, and the profile and fixings decide how they come off. Asbestos cement roof sheeting is common on older industrial and agricultural buildings and on garages.
Access is the next factor. A low roof can be reached from a tower, while a tall warehouse needs a scaffold or a mobile platform. Because asbestos cement roofs are always fragile, safe access also means edge protection and crawling boards, which adds to the set-up. Our guide to fragile roof safety covers the controls.
The method is the third. On HSE's guidance, carefully handled asbestos cement counts as non-licensed work, and that includes cement weathered but not otherwise badly damaged. Once the sheets will be smashed or broken up, the job becomes notifiable non-licensed work, with extra duties such as notifying the regulator and keeping health records for 40 years.
Condition matters too. Weathered or damaged sheets cost more to handle than intact ones, and asbestos insulating board, found for example in external soffits, is treated differently: work on it that will run beyond a short spell is licensable.
Waste and the replacement roof
Waste is a real part of the cost and is easy to forget. Asbestos waste must be double-wrapped and labelled, then taken off site on a consignment note, with a registered carrier delivering it to a site that accepts it. The household waste exemption leaves asbestos out, and it never goes in an ordinary skip.
That means disposal has a charge of its own, and transport as well. A roofer who gives a price without mentioning waste has either included it or left it out, and you need to know which.
Then there is the roof that replaces it. Removal leaves a building open, so the new covering is usually part of the same project. A new sheet roof, insulated panels or a single-ply membrane each brings its own materials price, and the total for a commercial project is therefore a combination of removal, waste and re-roofing.
An alternative for some buildings is to leave the old sheets in place and fit a new cladding over them, which avoids removal. Our guide to an overclad asbestos roof explains when that applies and its limits.
Whichever route suits the building, ask each firm to say what the price includes, particularly waste, scaffold and the new covering.
Getting a price you can rely on
A reliable price comes from a survey, not from a phone call. The survey identifies the material, measures the roof, records the fixings and the condition and checks access. HSE tells owners of buildings from before 2000 to assume asbestos is there until a survey shows otherwise.
With the evidence in hand, we explain what the removal involves, whether it is non-licensed or notifiable, how the waste will leave the site and what the new covering would be. The written price covers the whole scope and comes with photographs of what the survey found.
Ask how the work is being classed, and who will carry and dispose of the waste. A firm that works within the rules will be glad to say. Keep the consignment notes with your building records, because the duty holder, usually the owner or manager, is responsible for the building's asbestos register.
Do not break, drill or power-wash asbestos cement sheets to see what they are. Any disturbance releases fibres.
For the wider picture on commercial roofs, see the commercial roofing hub.
