Garden office

[tomtomagain]

* Properly lined and insulated building (SIPS panels or similar)
* Probably 2.5m square minimum size if you have the space but 3m square even better.
* Hard-wired data cabling - you'll want to put a wireless access point in too for mobile devices. Don't rely on house wifi, my garden office has a foil insulation wrapping around it that blocks a lot of wifi signal.
* At least one double plug socket on each wall.
* Insurance grade locks
* Don't rule out air conditioning - I didn't bother and just used the oil heater that came with it which was *ok* in the winter (although the expansion noises as it heated up were annoying) but whilst these buildings tend to be insulated well enough to keep heat in they don't do well at keeping heat out if you have a lot of glass (one side of mine is mostly glass). You can keep the doors open for ventilation but if you have a noisy neighbourhood or children this isn't going to be ideal. I had an LG air-con unit installed a few months ago which does heating and cooling. It cost about £2k but it feels like a good investment to me.

Honestly I'd still recommend Green Retreats (Garden Buildings | The UKs Leading Provider | Green Retreats) but don't expect much change from £15k for a 3x3m building. If you go for the treated timber cladding instead of cedar, go with the melamine lined walls instead of fully lined and plastered you might be able to get this down closer to £10k. This isn't including air-con though or the electrician costs for connecting the building to your home.

I'd recommend them too. My home office is from GR, they were excellent and the quality is great.

Also, you can't have too many plug sockets. I have 6 doubles with USB charging in mine, although they aren't all used, it gives you a lot of options when you decide to move the desk/furniture around.

I didn't go for hard-wired internet, I have a mesh-wifi installed at home, and have a node in the office and one a few meters away in the house. I get 80/30 in the office ( 140/30, in the house ) ... 80mbs is enough for a Teams Meeting :-)

[BlueSharp]

An update!

Garden office went in just after Christmas and it's working great. I ended up putting the whole lot via the business as it will be 100% business use.

For some of the tax oddities, the building is not deductible for Corp tax purposes but, insulation, electrics, painting and decorating including plastering and flooring is. So accountant recommended getting that split out on the invoice.

For the VAT there is the movable question: this is not movable, and also a ten year question about usage. It really is a gray area so the recommendation was to use the fair and reasonable justification and only claim VAT on the none building parts. If a tax query comes in I can show I used a fair and reasonable calculation to handle the query which should keep HMRC happish.