Shopping Centre Atrium Emergency Leak Repair, Leeds

The Challenge

Centre management at a major Leeds shopping destination contacted us in early November 2025 reporting six active leaks affecting four anchor retail units and two food court tenants. Buckets had been deployed in trading areas, two units had been forced to close sections of their floor space and Christmas trading was four weeks away.

Previous reactive repairs by other contractors had failed to identify the true source of the ingress. Water was tracking from above-ceiling void spaces over considerable distances before manifesting in trading areas, making the original entry points difficult to pinpoint. The brief: identify, diagnose and permanently remediate every ingress path before peak Q4 trading, without closing the centre or any tenant unit.

Our Approach

We mobilised a survey team within 24 hours of instruction. Using a combination of controlled water testing, thermal imaging and systematic visual inspection of the 3,200m² affected roof zone, we traced all six leaks back to their true sources: three failed gutter outlets on a parapet box gutter, two cracked junction details at a rooflight upstand, and one penetration around a redundant flue that had been incorrectly capped during a previous M&E project.

A detailed remediation specification was issued within three working days, covering full liquid relining of the 180-metre parapet gutter, fleece-reinforced repair to the rooflight upstand details and complete waterproof termination of the redundant flue penetration.

Works were carried out by a directly employed crew working 06:00–09:00 weekday shifts and full days on Sundays, the centre's quietest trading windows, with no public access to any work area at any time. Full Construction (Design and Management) Regulations documentation, RAMS and centre-specific permit-to-work procedures were observed.

The Result

All six ingress points were permanently eliminated within 14 working days of initial instruction. The centre traded its full Q4 schedule, including the Black Friday and Christmas peaks, with no repeat leaks reported during the heaviest rainfall events of the season.

We provided a 20-year guarantee on all installed works and a 12-month workmanship guarantee on the remaining gutter run. The centre's property management team has retained us on a planned condition survey contract covering the full 6,800m² roof on an annual basis.

Services Used on This Project