Running a business in Britain, page 11
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- The stress test that decides whether you can borrow again. You have four flats and an offer on a fifth. The lender is not really assessing the fifth. It is assessing the four, at a rate nobody is charging you.
- Deposits, and the penalty for a week's delay. Thirty days is not a guideline. Miss it and a tenant can claim up to three times the deposit, and your possession notice stops working until you fix it.
- The certificates a letting cannot start without. One annual gas check, one five-yearly electrical report, and alarms on every storey. Miss the first and your possession notice is void before you serve it.
- The first month the rent does not arrive. The rent is eleven days late and the tenant has stopped replying. What you do in the next fortnight decides whether this costs you a month or most of a year.
- The neighbour's wall and yours. The builders are booked for the fourth. Your neighbour has just discovered the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and the notice you never served runs for two months.
- Working on a listed building. Listed building consent covers the inside as well as the outside, and doing the work without it is a criminal offence with no time limit on enforcement.
- The bill that arrives after planning permission. Planning permission is not the end of the paying. CIL is charged per square metre and section 106 is negotiated, and together they can remove your whole margin.
- What might be under the site. The site is cheap because nobody knows what is under it. A desk study costs a few hundred pounds. Finding out after you own it costs considerably more.
- Allergens, and the label that carries criminal liability. Fourteen allergens, a label the law specifies, and a kitchen where the same tongs touch everything. The liability here is criminal, not commercial.
- A food safety plan somebody will actually follow. The inspector does not open the fridge first. She asks for the diary, and what you have written in it decides most of what happens next.
- The delivery app that takes a third of the ticket. Thirty per cent of the order is the headline. The VAT on the full menu price, the packaging and the dishes that arrive cold are the rest of the arithmetic.
- The table that never turns up. Four covers held for two hours on a Saturday, and nobody came. Card holds and deposits fix it, if you can write a policy that does not read as a threat.
- Pricing a wine list. A 70% margin on a £6 bottle is £14. A 60% margin on a £15 bottle is £22.50. You bank the cash, not the percentage, and most lists are built the wrong way.
- Extraction, noise and the neighbours above. The lease is signed and the flue is not. Planning, the landlord, odour abatement and the flats above are four separate consents, and any one can stop you.
- Putting tables on the pavement. Six tables outside is about twenty extra covers in good weather. The licence takes roughly a month, costs up to £500, and comes with conditions you must plan for.
- Star ratings, and whether they still sell rooms. A star is a set of services you have to staff, not a compliment. Whether the grade above pays for itself depends entirely on who books your rooms.
- Negotiating a corporate rate. One account that books forty room nights a month fills your Tuesdays for a year. The price of it is last room availability, which costs you your best nights.
- Fire safety in a building people sleep in. Nobody issues a hotel a fire certificate. The Fire Safety Order names you instead, and since October 2023 the whole assessment has to be written down.