Do roof tiles need clips?

A tile clip is a small metal strip, often stainless, that hooks over the tail of a tile and screws or nails to the batten beneath. Its job is to resist uplift. Wind passing over a roof reduces the air pressure on the slope, and the tiles can be pulled upward and flipped. Weight alone, plus a nail through the head, does not always hold when the gusts are strong.

Clips matter most at the edges of a roof, where the wind is at its strongest. Think of the verges, the ridge, the hips and the bottom rows above the gutter. Some interlocking tiles also take clips along their side joints. Numbers and positions vary with the product, the slope angle and how windswept the house is, so the pattern comes from the tile maker's data sheet and the standard, not from a rule of thumb.

Nails have a role too. A nail through the hole in each tile secures it to its batten and stops it sliding down. The clip deals with the lift, the nail with the slide.

BS 5534 is the British Standard for slating and tiling. According to Marley, the tile maker, the 2014 revision of BS 5534 stopped treating mortar as enough on its own where ridge and hip tiles are concerned, because the tensile strength of a mortar joint is too low to trust against uplift. Up to 2014, a bed of mortar by itself was still commonly accepted on the ridge.

In practice, since BS 5534:2014 each ridge or hip tile is bedded and also held down by a metal fixing. Mortar has not been outlawed; it simply stopped being the sole support. An old ridge laid on mortar only may still be sound, but it falls short of what a new roof receives today, and loose ridge fixings are high on the list when we survey a roof.

Dry-fix systems are an alternative to bedding. They clip the ridge, hip or verge tiles to the roof with mechanical fittings. BS 8612:2018 is their test specification, and a product must have been through that testing before it can claim compliance. Our guidance on roof tile vents covers a related fitting that sits in the same courses.

If you have a tile replaced on an older roof, the repairer should fit it with a nail and, where the tile type and position call for it, a clip. A like-for-like replacement without a clip may hold for years in a sheltered spot, but it is the tile most likely to lift next time the wind gets round it.

Re-bedding a ridge is a common repair. MyBuilder's slate roof guide (updated August 2026) quotes £300 to £600 to re-bed or replace the ridge, and £200 to £400 to repoint a ridge or hip. A separate MyBuilder dry ridge guide suggests £40 to £60 for each linear metre, and £500 to £1,000 for a typical whole job. All of these are national guides, not prices for your roof.

When mortar has cracked and the ridge has loosened, the choice is between repointing and converting. Repointing alone leaves the ridge leaning on mortar. Adding mechanical fixings, or fitting a dry-fix system, gives a hold that survives even if the joints crumble. We say which is sensible at the survey and put it in the quote.

A new roof should be fixed to the current standard, with ridge, hip and verge tiles mechanically secured, nails and clips on the field tiles as the maker specifies, and new battens and underlay beneath. Sound old tiles can sometimes be reused, but they are reinstalled with fresh fixings, because the old nails are the part most likely to have corroded.

Re-roofing has a regulatory side too. The Planning Portal's tests are under 25 per cent of the total building envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof affected for work without a building control application. Above either limit, Building Regulations approval applies. We say where your roof sits against them when we visit, and a notifiable job has its Building Regulations paperwork handled by us.

Fixings sit on timber that must hold them. Soft battens cannot grip a clip or a nail, and our page on torn roof felt in the loft covers the layer below, which also affects how a roof copes with wind-driven rain.

Tiles that rattle in a gale, ones that have lifted at the verge or ridge, and the occasional tile found in the garden after a storm all suggest the fixings are tired. Visible gaps in mortar, and mortar crumbs in the gutter, point the same way. Our page on tiled roofs in winter covers what to check after bad weather, and our page on dormer permitted development is useful if you are planning a larger alteration.

Please do not go up to check. A roofer with the right access can inspect the verges and the ridge within minutes, and that is cheaper than a repair after the next storm. The survey leaves you with pictures of your roof taken at close range and a written quote; the 10-year guarantee on workmanship is also written down. All of our tiled roof pages are listed under pitched roofing.