Deeping's GP Surgery: Ending 300 Roof Leaks With In-Roof Solar and Battery Backup

The problem: a clinical building with a roof that leaked 300 times

Deeping's Practice is a working GP surgery — fridges holding important medicines, surgeries, theatres and a server stack the whole site relies on. The roof had failed comprehensively, with the practice reporting roughly 300 leaks over its lifetime. A patch-and-repair cycle was no longer viable: the covering had to come off and go back on.

That changed the economics. Once a roof is being replaced anyway, the question is no longer "do we add solar?" — it is which roof covering to choose. As KMM put it on site: "If you're going to replace the roof, it's actually cheaper to have the solar panels as the actual roof tiles." The solar modules earn their keep twice — as the weatherproof layer and as a generation asset.

What KMM specified: in-roof on the failed pitches, on-roof on the rest

The build splits the roof into two systems, sized to the existing geometry rather than forced into a single approach:

• In-roof solar on the two pitches being fully renewed — the panels sit flush with the surrounding tiles and act as the roof covering itself. No double layer, no redundant material cost.
• On-roof solar across the remaining sections where the existing covering is sound — faster to install, lower disruption, and the cheaper £/kWp route where a re-roof isn't already happening.

This is the consultancy call most installers skip: rather than defaulting to one mounting system, KMM matched the install method to the condition of each pitch.

The clinical priority: keeping power on when the grid drops

Deeping's sits in a built-up area, but as the practice manager flagged to KMM, it still suffers frequent power cuts. For a GP surgery that is not an inconvenience — it is a clinical risk. Vaccine and medication fridges have to hold temperature. Theatres and surgeries cannot stop mid-procedure. The server stack and Wi-Fi underpin every clinical system in the building.

Before commissioning, KMM sat down with the practice manager to map actual usage and identify the critical circuits. Those key fuses are wired onto the battery gateway so that, in the event of a grid outage, the battery flips into island mode and continues to power the surgery — fridges, theatres and, crucially, the Wi-Fi and servers that everything else depends on.

Why this matters for other healthcare estates

Most GP surgeries, dental practices and community clinics face the same combination of pressures: ageing roofs, refrigerated medicines, IT systems that cannot tolerate downtime, and rising energy bills against a fixed NHS or partnership budget. The Deeping's build shows how those issues can be addressed in a single capital project rather than three:

• The roof replacement is happening anyway — adding in-roof solar avoids paying twice for a weatherproof surface.
• The battery and gateway turn an energy asset into clinical resilience, not just a bill-reduction tool.
• Critical-circuit mapping with the practice manager — not a generic spec — is what makes the backup actually useful when the lights go out.

If your surgery, clinic or healthcare estate is staring at a roof renewal or grid-reliability problem, the question worth asking is not "should we get solar?" — it is whether solar, battery and roof should be one project instead of three.

Book a Fully Funded Survey and we'll walk your site, review your roof condition, map your critical circuits and tell you whether an in-roof, on-roof or hybrid system is the right call.