R&D Group

Brothers Robert and Dave Ling found R&D Roofing on 20 September 1973, registered under the Registration of Business Names Act 1916. The early work is roofing and associated external repairs across Greater Manchester and the surrounding area.

Roofing did more than give R&D its name. It set the technical foundations of the business: fault diagnosis, weatherproofing, working at height, working safely above occupied property, and understanding how the parts of a building interact once water gets in.

By the early 1990s the work had moved beyond private roofing into local-authority housing repairs and maintenance, with works undertaken for Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council and Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, continuing into the 2000s.

That work demanded more than roofing ability. Operatives were working in and around occupied homes, responding to defects across housing stock, and working to the client's own procedures, priorities and repair programmes — responsive repairs, emergency and priority defects, resident interaction, cyclical maintenance, dispersed portfolios, client inspection, and delivering the same work consistently across many properties.

Long before responsive-repairs frameworks, digital works-order systems and formal KPIs became commonplace, R&D was already working in the municipal housing-repair environment.

Through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s R&D carried out works for Trafford Council — a relationship that matters in the company's history, because Trafford and the surrounding area have stayed closely connected with the business ever since.

It also meant that when Trafford's housing arrangements changed the following decade, R&D already knew the stock, the area and the operating environment.

In the early 2000s R&D worked in partnership with Salford City Council delivering responsive repairs. Responsive housing maintenance needs a different operating model from conventional construction: rather than mobilising once to one site for months, a contractor attends numerous occupied homes, diagnosing different defects against individual priorities and timescales.

Receive the repair, assess the defect, mobilise the right trade, complete the work, evidence it, move to the next property. That model still underpins much of what R&D Group does today.

As Robert and Dave Ling retired, Ronald and James took responsibility for continuing and developing the business. They inherited a company that was no longer a small roofing firm: by this stage R&D had experience with Oldham, Bury, Trafford and Salford alongside private and institutional clients.

The task was to preserve the roofing expertise while developing a more structured contractor capable of supporting increasingly demanding public-sector and housing clients.

Significant roof-renewal works at Sale High School showed the other side of the developing business: alongside high-volume responsive maintenance, R&D could take on larger programmed roofing projects for schools and other public buildings. That combination became central to the service offering.

The present legal company was incorporated on 14 May 2003. The distinction matters, particularly to procurement and compliance teams reviewing company history: incorporation is not the date the business started trading, but the point at which an established business moved into its present company structure.

By that date the R&D name had already existed for roughly three decades and the business had accumulated experience with several North West local authorities. So we state it three ways: trading since 1973, public-sector housing experience since the 1990s, incorporated as R & D Roofing Limited in 2003.

Following the transfer of housing stock from Trafford Council and the development of what became Trafford Housing Trust, the way local housing services were procured and managed changed. For R&D the environment was not new — the company had already been working within Trafford housing during the preceding years.

Working in somebody's home is fundamentally different from working on an empty site. It needs consideration of residents, appointments kept, belongings protected, clear communication, and repairs completed efficiently without compromising safety or quality. Those principles remain central to how we approach social-housing work.

Works awarded for Regenda Group, including a programme of garage roof replacements — the ability to deliver repeatable planned works across many properties rather than isolated repairs. Programmes of this kind developed disciplines now embedded in the business: surveying, programming, material procurement, resident coordination, quality inspection and consistent delivery across multiple locations.

R&D began working directly with Stockport NHS under a repairs arrangement covering roofing faults and water ingress. Healthcare estates bring a different operating environment: repairs alongside clinical activity, staff movement and members of the public, where access, noise, infection control and continuity of service matter as much as the repair itself.

Roofing repair works commenced across the MFT estate, including investigation and repair of roofing defects and water ingress across operational healthcare properties. By this point the business had considerable experience of reactive works to buildings that cannot simply close while contractors complete repairs.

Throughout 2020 R&D continued necessary works to operational buildings, including healthcare environments and people's homes, adapting working practices to the restrictions in place. Where buildings still needed to be safe, secure and watertight, those repairs could not simply stop.

Site access changed, resident contact changed, infection control became part of normal planning, and materials and labour became harder to coordinate. It reinforced something already part of the culture: responsive maintenance is a service to the people using the building, not just a construction task.

Ronnie Robertson, Ronald's son, became a Director — another generational change, and the start of a wider programme of modernisation and expansion. The objective was not to move away from the roofing heritage but to build on it: apply the same approach to the rest of the property, and let clients procure more of their repairs, maintenance and renewals through one accountable contractor.

A responsive roofing repairs workstream for L&Q covering the 2023–2025 period, developing experience in high-volume social-housing repairs: responsive roof repairs, leak investigation, pitched and flat roofing, leadwork, chimneys, roofline and rainwater goods, access and scaffolding coordination, occupied-property working, photographic evidence and completion records, Schedule of Rates commercial management, and resident-focused delivery.

The L&Q relationship developed into a responsive roofing and scaffolding programme with an anticipated value of approximately £1.5 million, alongside directly awarded lower-value building and maintenance works.

That was strategically significant. For decades clients had known R&D through roofing; increasingly the same clients were asking us to deal with defects elsewhere in the building. Rather than handing an associated internal repair, joinery defect or making-good work to someone else, the business built the capability to manage the complete repair.

Lot 36 — Roofing Repairs & Maintenance awarded with M&Y Maintenance, broadening the social-housing client base and reinforcing R&D's position as a specialist responsive roofing and maintenance contractor in the North West.

Insurance repairs demand a different approach from conventional maintenance: establishing what damage relates to the insured event, documenting the condition of the property, providing a detailed scope, validating costs and maintaining a defensible audit trail throughout.

The work runs from an isolated building repair to significant reinstatement following escape of water, flooding, fire, storm, impact or structural damage. It accelerated our multi-trade capability, because reinstatement rarely stops at one trade — a leaking roof may need plastering and decoration, a flood may involve plumbing, flooring, joinery and electrical work.

The trading identity R&D Group reflects what the business has become: a contractor working across the building rather than being defined by a single trade. The legal company remains R & D Roofing Limited; the Group identity brings the broader capability together under one organisation.

A position awarded on the NEUPC Roofing Responsive Repairs Framework. Framework appointments allow the established responsive-repairs model to be offered to a wider public-sector client base.

Insurance-reinstatement operations expanded further, including repair instructions associated with Lloyds Banking Group insurance customers through an insurance repair network — developing capability in initial inspection, damage assessment, scope validation, photographic reporting, itemised estimating, emergency make-safe, multi-trade reinstatement and completion documentation.

The disciplines that matter to public-sector clients — evidence, accountability, transparent costing, auditable records — matter just as much in insurance repair.