The short answer
Yes, tell them a week or two ahead, and in person if you can. Neighbours live with the scaffold, the noise, the skip and the parked vans, and a few jobs need their permission or a formal notice: a scaffold on or over their land, or work that cuts into a shared party wall. A plain re-cover of your own slope on a detached house rarely involves a formal notice.
What the scaffold means for the people next door
A roof replacement starts with scaffolding, and scaffolding takes up room. The tower and its boards run along the eaves, the poles stand a little way out from the wall, and a hoist or loading bay sits at one end. On a detached house that all happens inside your boundary. On a terrace, a semi or a house with a narrow side passage, the scaffolders may need to stand a pole or a ladder on a neighbour's drive, or let boards oversail their garden.
You cannot assume that is fine. Standing on or crossing someone else's land needs their permission, and it is far easier to ask politely a fortnight before than to knock on the door once the lorry is outside. If the scaffold stands on the pavement it also needs a licence from the highway authority; MyBuilder's scaffolding guide, updated 21 August 2026, lists scaffold licences at £50 to £200. Our page on scaffolding for a re-roof covers how the structure is planned.
Access, parking and the skip
Trades need to get close to the house. Vans arrive with battens, underlay and tiles, a lorry may deliver the covering on a pallet, and a skip or waste bags need somewhere to sit while the old covering comes off. On a street of Victorian terraces with parking on both sides, a single van in the wrong place can block a neighbour's drive.
Tell the people either side which days are likely to be busiest, which is usually the start, when the scaffold goes up and the old covering comes down, and again when the new tiles are delivered. Ask whether anyone has a blue badge space, a regular school-run slot or a car that needs to leave early. A skip on the road also needs a permit from the council, so check who is arranging it. If your neighbour works nights or has a baby, a quiet word about the earliest start time costs nothing and is remembered.
When the Party Wall etc. Act comes into it
The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies where you share a wall or boundary structure with the next property. GOV.UK's party walls guide gives examples of building work that must be notified, among them cutting into the shared wall and removing chimneys from it. Notice goes out between 2 months and a year before the planned start. The neighbour then has 14 days to reply in writing if they consent, and a lack of reply cannot be taken as a yes.
A simple strip and re-cover of your own slope often does not touch the wall at all. It can, though, where flashings are cut into the brickwork of a shared wall, where a party wall is raised, or where a shared chimney stack comes down. We flag that at the survey and tell you whether a notice looks necessary. Read the GOV.UK party walls guide for the process.
What to say, and when
Keep it short and specific. Say roughly when the work starts, how long the scaffold will stay, which hours the crew works, and where the vans and skip will go. Give them a number to ring if something comes over the boundary or a van is in the way, and mean it.
A written note through the door works for people who are out, but a conversation is better for the neighbours who share a wall or a gutter, since they have the most to gain from a proper job. If you are replacing the whole roof, mention that the work is noisy for the first couple of days when the old tiles come off. Be honest too about the odd dropped slate or dust; a neighbour who was warned shrugs it off, and one who was not rarely does.
Shared roofs and neighbours' gutters
On a terrace or semi the two roofs meet at the party wall, and a strip of lead flashing or a mortar fillet seals that join. Replacing your side means the covering stops at that line, and the flashing is renewed against the wall. If your neighbour's side is the same age and poor, it is natural to wonder about doing both. We can price your roof alone, and the neighbour is free to ask for a survey of theirs.
Gutters and fascias are another shared point. If the gutter runs across both houses, or the fascia is a single board, the work may reach the neighbour's side by a metre or two. Agree it beforehand, so nobody finds a half-finished fascia on a boundary and a quarrel about who pays.
After the work
Once the scaffold has been struck and the boards and debris are away, stroll round the boundary with any neighbour who was affected. Look over their gutters, paths and flower beds together, and thank them for putting up with it. If something has been marked or broken, raise it at once rather than weeks later, when nobody can say how it happened.
Our workmanship on your roof comes with a written guarantee lasting 10 years, though a guarantee is not an insurance policy. If you are still weighing the job up, our pages on whether a new roof adds to house value and the bungalow re-roof, where access is usually simpler, make good next reads. The main roof replacement page covers the whole process. To plan access for your own street, phone 01793 626096 and we will walk it through at the survey.