The Barleymows – Diversification

George, Henry, Mary and David are leaning on a fence overlooking a small paddock on the west side of the farm…

George: I told you it would be bloomin’ freezing …

Mary: Don’t panic George, I brought a thermos; here’s a cuppa!

George: At least someone cares! (To David): So are you going to tell us why you’ve brought us here?

David: It won’t take long grandad. I wanted you all here as I’ve had an idea about this land and it’s easier to show you …

George: Well go on then, before my tea freezes over.

David: So we all agree this paddock is a bit of a pain. It’s not big enough to crop properly and a really awkward shape to drill,  being mostly headland. It’s not a great location for the pigs anymore, so I was thinking we might diversify our income streams. I mean, it’s not exactly been a good harvest this year and

Henry (interrupts): If you’re thinking of developing it, you won’t get planning for any residential or commercial units here, it’s close to the village, but it’s too open. Anything built will be too visible and planners won’t look favourably upon it.

Mary: Don’t assume you know what he’s going to say, Henry!

David: I wasn’t thinking of building anything on the paddock Dad, but I have a couple of ideas. The first is a dog training field for the paddock … and the second is looking at whether we could make better use of the old shed over there and convert it into a padel court.

George: What the ‘ell is a padel court?

Mary (clapping hands): Ooh, I LOVE the idea of a dog training field, David! A few people in the village have said recently they’re worried about letting their dogs off lead in case they run off after deer or sheep or something. Their dogs need somewhere to have a good run.

David: Exactly Mum! And they’re great for training pups too. There is a real demand locally and we’re close enough to the village, so people could walk up the road to the paddock. There’s also parking room on the hard standing next to the shed.

George (confused): So, what’s a padel court when it’s at home?

Mary (pacing excitedly): We’d probably need to re-fence it as the livestock fencing wouldn’t be suitable for a dog field.

David:  Yes, but we could do the work ourselves to limit the cost -we’d only need to get materials. We’ll need to speak to Ensors to understand how the costs would be treated for tax purposes.

Henry: I hate to sound like a stuck record, but we will need to think about planning permission too. I think it would be classified as a change of use, so it may require consent.

David: I’ve had a look into that and yes, it probably would, but planners have generally been treating dog fields favourably.

Mary (pacing): I could spread the word around the village, but … how would people know when to come? How would they pay?

David: Simple Mum. People book and pay online, in like half hourly slots. We already have a website set up for the furnished holiday let (FHL) property, so we could tack it on to that. Come to think of it, the people staying in the FHL might want to use the dog field too!

Mary: GREAT idea! Our son is officially a genius!

George: But … where does the paddling come into it?  

David (grins): You’ve got to get with it, grandad! Padel courts are all the rage now.

George: What, you mean people paddle? What in?

David (laughs): No, P-A-D-E-L is like a mix of tennis and squash, played on a smaller court than tennis with a net in the middle, but the ball can bounce off the walls as well, like in squash. I’ve played it myself and it has become quite popular, but there aren’t any courts nearby. I’ve looked at the specs for size and a court would comfortably fit into that old shed. We could use a similar online booking system as for the dog field. And before you mention it Dad, yes we would need planning permission, but I checked, and we might be able to do it under permitted development.

Henry: I wasn’t going to say that, but I would worry about the cost and the VAT. There’d probably need to be a reasonable amount of work to convert it and we’d want to recover the VAT. In fact, we’d need to check this all with Ensors.

David: Admittedly, I hadn’t thought about the VAT on that, I assumed we’d be able to recover it as we are VAT-registered.

Henry: We might well be okay son, as we’d probably need to charge VAT on the court hire. Either way, best to check, we wouldn’t want any nasty surprises. We’ll also need to consider what capital allowances might be available on the conversion works.

David: I had thought about capital allowances, but I am a bit lost with what would be repairs to the existing building and what would be improvements. And what allowances there would be on the improvements. I’ve got a couple of quotes done, so have some breakdowns of the costs for us to look at.

Mary: Ah ha! So that’s what those chaps who turned up a couple of weeks ago were doing!

David: Yeah, I wanted to keep it a surprise until I’d got all the information …

Henry: That’s alright son, you’ve done good. Great ideas! We’d better get a meeting set up with Ensors about the VAT and capital allowances and talk it all through with them.

George:  Hopefully they’ll explain it all a bit better to me. Why would anyone want to play tennis in our bloomin’ shed?

Mary (laughing): Come on George! Let’s get back to the farmhouse and I’ll cook us all some lunch.