Setting up a livery yard at home?

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ChrisRC

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Hi, my fiancee and I are looking at moving house and we have found somewhere with 8 stables and 8 acres of land that we are interested in. My fiancee works at a yard already and has her teaching qualifications.
She would keep 1 or 2 of her own horses in our stables but we would have the ability to provide livery services for 6 horses.
The existing homeowner keeps all their own horses there so doesn't provide livery to anyone else.
My question is, can you provide a livery service on a normal residential property or would you need to apply for a change in usage to a commerical property?
Any help is greatly appreciated

Chris
 
From my understanding, this is a change of 'class of use' once you have fee paying liveries - ie it will no longer be a domestic property and as such will attract business rates, plus may bring issues with planning permission (if you need any)... Would neighbours be happy with increase in vehicle movements etc, etc

This may help: http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/changeofuse/ and http://www.charnwood.gov.uk/files/d...nd_stables/A Guide to Horses and Stables2.pdf

Sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but this is my understanding of the law at the present time (disclaimer)
 
My planning consent for an american barn and school stated no floodlights and personal use only. I.e. to have paid liveries would require change of use. You would have everyone in the council involved - planning, highways (traffic implications), environmental health (muck heap, water courses), and so on. I suggest you engage a planning specialist as the one I used paid for himself on day 1 of the app going in (sidestepping a coal survey) and got me consent in 8 weeks.
 
I would live there through a winter and test out the land before taking on too many horses. While technically it's one horse per acre in reality a lot of land won't cope with that. If 8 acres is the whole plot you'll need to work out how much grazing is actually available once you've taken out house, garden school drive etc. (we have 10 acres but only 8 of grazing)
Even if you could get 4/5 liveries I'd weigh up the cost (insurance, maintenance, business rates etc.) there isn't much profit in it.
Personally I'd seriously consider making hay off any spare land you have (or some other use) that actually makes you money. 2 horses using c.250 bales of hay a year at £4 a bale is £1000 and you could make that from 2/.5 acres, if you made of say 4 acres you could sell the rest (even from the field at £2 a bale) to cover all your costs and have free hay for your OH's horses - at least a million times less hassle.
Or think about something specialist like retirement livery
 
Thanks for the info everyone. The 8 acres is the actual acreage of the fields themselves, so not including building space.

I'll see if I can find someone in the council to advise :)
 
One thing that hasn't been mentioned - if you are buying you may need to tell your mortgage provider. They can get a bit funny about lending money to buy a house if it's also going to be used as a livery yard.
 
The planning permission for the stables (and school) will be available on line (you can search by post code) if there are any restrictions on the use of the building they will be listed in the permission - should be easy to check.
If the house and land are on one title deed it will be residential - you can't live in a commercial premises, you couldn't change it to commercial even if you wanted to and if you split it into two title deeds you risk devaluing it as you/ anyone you wanted to sell to couldn;t get a residential mortgage on the land if it was separate.
 
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