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Scraping is mechanical removal — moss lifted off the tiles with hand tools and brushes. It gets the immediate bulk off, it does nothing to the spores left behind, and its main risk is the person doing it, both from the fall and from the foot traffic across tiles that were never designed to be walked on.

Soft washing means applying a treatment at low pressure and letting biology and weather do the rest: the growth dies, loses its grip and washes off over subsequent months rather than on the day. The result is slower and less photogenic, and it is the approach that puts least stress on the covering. The trade-off a homeowner has to be told about honestly is that the roof will not look transformed the afternoon the contractor leaves.

Jet washing a roof is the one to question hardest. It is fast and dramatic, and on a concrete interlocking tile it strips the surface finish along with the moss, leaving a rougher, more absorbent tile that colonises again more quickly. On slate it drives water under the laps; on any covering it puts water where the roof was designed to keep it out. If a quotation is cheaper and faster than the others and the method is a pressure lance, the price difference is being paid for somewhere.

HSE's roof work guidance sets the default position: all roofs should be treated as fragile until a competent person has confirmed they are not. The main causes of death and injury it identifies are falling from roof edges and openings, and falling through fragile roofs and fragile rooflights. HSE also notes that nearly one in five construction deaths involve roof work, and that those affected range from specialist roofers to people simply maintaining and cleaning roofs — which is exactly this service.

Where work on or near a fragile surface cannot be avoided, HSE describes the precautions as a combination of stagings, guard rails, fall restraint, fall arrest and safety nets slung beneath and close to the roof, with the work organised and planned so it can be carried out safely and a method statement used to communicate the precautions to everyone involved. On a domestic roof clean that normally means edge protection or scaffold and crawl boards, not confidence and soft-soled shoes.

The practical advice for a homeowner is short. Do not go up there. Ask each contractor how they will reach the roof and what they will stand on, treat any conservatory or rooflight in the work area as a fragile surface in its own right, and be suspicious of a quotation that saves money precisely because it has not priced access. If nobody can tell you what they will be standing on, they have not planned the job.

Chemicals sold to kill growth are regulated products, and the regime depends on the claim on the label rather than on where the product is sprayed. HSE's guidance on the Control of Pesticides Regulations states that the control of moss is regulated under the GB and EU Plant Protection Products Regulations, that claims against moss cannot be accepted under COPR, and that any product making claims against moss will also need to be authorised under GB or EU PPPR. Separately, HSE is clear that biocidal products falling within COPR product types require COPR approval before they can be advertised, sold, supplied, stored or used in the United Kingdom.

What that means on a quotation is a specific, answerable question: which product are you applying, and what is it authorised for? A professional applying a treatment to a roof should be able to name the product, produce its label and its safety data sheet, and apply it at the rate and in the conditions the authorisation specifies. Off-label use — a product sold for one purpose pressed into another because it is cheap — is the thing to rule out.

Two further points follow from the treatment rather than the law. First, whatever is applied will run off the roof, through the gutters and onto whatever is below, so ponds, planting and neighbouring property need protecting and the discharge point needs thinking about before spraying starts. Second, be sceptical of roof coatings and paints sold alongside cleaning: NFRC advises treating claims about thermal efficiency and extended tile life with caution unless the product carries credible United Kingdom third-party accreditation.

Moss and lichen colonise where a roof stays damp and shaded — north-facing slopes, pitches under trees, and roofs sheltered from the drying wind. Growth is at its most vigorous through the mild wet months rather than in deep winter or high summer, and the slopes that green first are usually the ones that never get direct sun. Nothing about cleaning changes those conditions, which is why the interval between treatments on a shaded elevation is always shorter than on a sunny one.

For timing, treatment works best when it can sit on the roof and be absorbed rather than being washed off within hours, so a settled dry spell matters more than the month. Mechanical clearance is better done ahead of the wettest part of the year, so that valleys and outlets are open when they are needed. And the one genuinely urgent case is a valley, parapet or box gutter packed with moss before winter, because that blockage sends water into the building rather than down the outside of it.

Access dominates. Scaffolding or a tower, the number of elevations, the pitch, whether there is a conservatory or a flat roof in the way and whether a vehicle can get near the house typically matter more than the roof area itself. After that come the covering type and how much care it needs, how heavy the growth is, whether the price includes valleys, outlets and gutters, whether a treatment is being applied and which one, and how the debris and run-off are being managed. A quotation that separates access, removal, treatment and gutter clearance is far easier to compare than one lump sum.

LokalMatch is only the introduction. Describe the roof once — covering, storeys, how bad the growth is, anything awkward about getting to it — give your postcode, and contractors working your area reply with their own methods and their own prices. Homeowners pay nothing to use it; the firms pay for the enquiries they receive. LokalMatch does not go on anyone's roof, does not set or influence prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend the businesses that respond, so ask each of them how they intend to reach the roof and what they will apply to it.