What Your Conservatory Quote Should Itemise
Eleven lines. A document that shows them can be set beside another one and compared; a document that shows a single total cannot be compared with anything, because you cannot see what has been left out. Our homepage says two prices are rarely like for like. This page is the itemisation that makes them like for like, priced line by line, against what a new conservatory roof costs as the whole-job number the lines have to add up to.
Building control fee · solid roof conversion · England
£200 to £800 the line most quotes omit entirely
Reasonably evidencedTwo publishers, 2.0x apart on the floor: £200 to £460 (March 2026) against £400 to £800 (2026). A fee is a price, and a quote that does not show it has either absorbed it or is not expecting to notify anyone. Checked 20 August 2026.
The eleven lines an honest document itemises
These are the lines that exist in the job whether or not they appear on the paper. Every one is a real cost somebody pays. If a line is missing, one of three things is true: it has been folded into the total silently, it has been left for you to pay later, or the installer is not planning to do it. Ask which of the three, and the answer tells you more about the firm than the price does.
| Line | Published range | Evidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scaffolding | £400 to £800 | Thin | Publisher A 27 Jul 2026, Publisher B Mar 2026, attribution to reconfirm |
| Skip hire | £120 to £400 | Thin | Publisher A 27 Jul 2026, Publisher B Mar 2026, attribution to reconfirm |
| Taking the old roof off | £200 to £400 poly, £300 to £600 glass | Thin | Publisher C May 2026 |
| Structural engineer's report | £300 to £500 | Thin | Google AI Overview synthesis, publisher not attributed |
| Structural reinforcement, conditional only | £800 to £4,000 | Reasonably | Publisher C May 2026, Publisher A 2026, conflicted |
| Building control fee | £200 to £800 | Reasonably | Publisher B Mar 2026, Publisher A 2026, conflicted |
| Labour, two-person roofing team | £300 to £500 per day | Thin | Publisher A 27 Jul 2026 |
| Labour as a share of the roof total | 30% to 40% | Thin | Publisher A 27 Jul 2026 |
| New guttering to the conservatory | about £775 | Thin | Publisher B Mar 2026 |
| Internal plastered ceiling finish | £850 to £1,200 | Thin | Google AI Overview synthesis, publisher not attributed |
| Electrics, spotlights and a socket | £500 to £800 | Thin | Google AI Overview synthesis, publisher not attributed |
Nine of the eleven rows come from a single publisher each, so they are graded Thin, and three of them are worse than that: the engineer's report, the plastered ceiling and the electrics are figures Google's own AI Overview synthesises and attributes to no publisher at all. We could not trace them, we publish them anyway because they are the numbers a homeowner arrives with, and we say what they are. The scaffolding and skip lines carry a second caveat: the per-line publisher attribution is ambiguous in our source research and is flagged for a re-fetch rather than guessed. Publishers are lettered rather than named, and the same letter is the same publisher throughout this page. Checked 20 August 2026, next check due 20 November 2026.
Reinforcement is a conditional line, never a headline. The £800 to £4,000 band exists because two publishers describe two different outcomes of the same survey: one prices reinforcing your existing frames at £800 to £2,500 (May 2026), another prices replacing them at £3,000 to £4,000 (2026), so the row is Reasonably evidenced but conflicted, checked 20 August 2026. LABC's own guidance is that a lightweight solid roof adds approximately 0.5 kN/m, which it calls less than 10 per cent over a typical translucent roof, and that the real question is whether your mullions contain steel. Only pilot holes or a magnet test settle it. We attach no probability to it, because nobody publishes one, and a quote that carries this line as a certainty before anyone has surveyed the frames is quoting a fear.
Nothing on this page needs your phone number. price your conservatory roof and you will see the same rows applied to your own size band, with the sources attached, before anyone contacts you.
How to tell supply only from supply and fit
A supply-only price is not a cheaper version of the same purchase. It is a different purchase: a kit delivered to your drive, with the fitting, the base where one is needed, the disposal and the paperwork left with you. Set beside an installed price it looks like a bargain, and the gap between the two is roughly the whole of the labour line above. Our register keeps the two apart on every row, and supply only against supply and fit is where that split is worked through in full.
Three tests separate them without an argument. First, ask who carries the waste away: a supply-only price almost never includes the skip. Second, ask whether the number moves if access is bad, because a fitting price prices your side return and a kit price cannot. Third, ask what happens on the day the delivery is short a component, because a supply-and-fit contractor owns that problem and a supplier posts you a form. A manufacturer's own published rate is a useful sanity check here rather than a quote: SupaLite lists a roof with new window frames at £1,800 per m² including VAT, derived from its own £1,500 plus VAT, from manufacturer literature carrying no date and graded Thin, checked 20 August 2026. Installed prices for the same job from third parties routinely land at half that, which is not evidence that anyone is lying. It is evidence that a list price and an installed price are two different things being read as one.
compare local conservatory roof installers if you want two documents in the same format to hold side by side. Two quotes that differ by thousands are usually two different jobs.
Estimate against quotation, and what we will not tell you
In ordinary trade use the two words carry different weight. A quotation is offered as a fixed price for a described job, and the description is the part that matters, because a fixed price for a vague job is not fixed at all. An estimate is offered as a considered guess, and it is expected to move once somebody has been on site. That is how the words are used by the people writing them, and it is why the first thing to look for is not the number but which of the two words is at the top of the page, in writing, with a date and a validity period.
Where we stop. Our source register holds no legal citation on whether an estimate binds the person who wrote it, and we are not going to paraphrase a statute we have not retrieved and dated. What would close this gap: a named primary source, fetched, quoted and stamped, the same way we treat Approved Document L elsewhere on this site. Until it is here, treat everything in the paragraph above as trade convention rather than as legal advice, and take the legal question to someone qualified to answer it.
What we can be precise about is our own status, because it is the same question pointed at us. Every figure on this site is an estimate assembled from published UK sources, not an offer to do work at a price, and our pricing disclaimer says so in the same words on every page that carries a number. Nobody on this site can quote you. Only an installer who has stood in your garden can price your base, your access and your existing frames, which is precisely why the document they hand you afterwards is worth reading line by line.
Deposits, stage payments and what you are signing
A price is half of a document. The other half is the payment schedule, and it is usually the half nobody reads. Four things belong in writing before anything is paid: how much is due up front, what that money buys, when the remaining stages fall due, and what happens to the deposit if the firm stops trading before the work starts.
We publish no standard deposit percentage, because our register holds no sourced figure for one and a number invented here would be repeated back to an installer as though it were a standard. What can be checked instead costs nothing: whether the deposit is protected and by whom, whether the balance falls due on completion or on delivery of materials, whether the stages are tied to work done or to dates in a calendar, and whether the VAT position is stated. Our own figures are published inclusive of VAT because that is how the sources publish them.
One line to look for by name is the building control fee. A document with no fee line and no mention of who is notifying is telling you something, and it is worth finding out what.
Price your roof before anyone prices it for you
Six questions, about sixty seconds, and an estimate built from the rows above with every source shown.
Arriving at a survey with a number of your own changes the conversation. It does not have to be right; it has to be sourced, so that when the document arrives you are comparing two workings rather than accepting one. Use our conservatory cost calculator for the estimate, then conservatory roof quotes when you want real numbers against your own roof.
Check what your roof will cost
Why we can say this. We are paid when an installer quotes you, which is the whole business model and the reason every figure here carries a source and a date rather than a headline. It is also why the page tells you what to query rather than telling you a number is fair. If you want the mechanics, including who we pass your details to, it is written down and it does not move.
Check who wrote it before you check the number
Every line in the table above is a promise about future work, and a promise is worth what the promiser is worth. The checks that matter are free and take about twenty minutes: the trading name against the company number at Companies House, the certificate numbers against the scheme that issued them and against their own validity windows, and the scope of any scheme badge on the letterhead. Several of the most-quoted claims in this trade do not survive that, which is why checking who you are dealing with is a page rather than a paragraph.
The same discipline applies to what happens after the work. A guarantee period on a document is a sentence; what it covers, who underwrites it, and whether it survives the firm closing or your house changing hands are four separate questions, and conservatory guarantees and insurance-backed warranties takes them one at a time.
If the plan is to spread the cost, conservatory finance is where the monthly arithmetic is set out. Read it before the survey rather than during it: a monthly figure quoted across the table is a different negotiation from a total, and the total is the thing this page is about.
Questions people ask first
What should be itemised on the document I am given?
Should the number include VAT?
How much deposit is normal?
The document has no building control line. Is that a problem?
Two documents differ by thousands. Which one is wrong?
Sources for this page
All retrieved and checked 20 August 2026. Publishers are lettered as in the table above.
Where a figure comes from a single publisher we grade it Thin; where two publishers disagree we publish both ends and the ratio. The method behind every band, including how a typical is derived and when we refuse to publish one, is set out in how we work out these figures, and the full source list is on sources we use. Checked 20 August 2026, next check due 20 November 2026.
Find out what yours costs
Six questions, about sixty seconds, and an estimate built from published UK figures with every source shown. Then up to four local installers can quote you, if you want them to.