Starting a livery yard

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Daphnelia

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A friend and I are looking at renting a yard and taking liveries. We have found a place with a barn that will need converting to stables, and acres of grazing. Do we need to get change of land use to run a business from the land? It has previously been used for grazing cattle. What are the steps to starting our own yard, in terms of any paperwork we'll need etc?
Thanks for any help
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You should go and talk with your local planning office re change of use, that will warn you in advance if you are likely to meet opposition.
A planning app costs around £250.
You need Public Liability Insurance , NFU are good.
Draw up contracts and get a solicitor to check them over.
Other than that be prepared to spend lots of money getting started, then have loads of hassle at times!
ps your planning office is likely to want to know about access and parking for cars when on site.
 
You are also liable for business rates, which is calculated on the area that your property occupies. We used to pay about £5k a year (but this was before the small business relief came in), insurance was £2k with a £1k excess. Its very hard to make money running a yard and an awful lot of hassle
 
I also was going to run my own big livery yard (not so long ago), stables were already on site & big hay barn & 2 sand schools lots of grazing blar blar blar.... when i looked into it a bit more, i.e Public Liability Insurance ect ect i walked away.... and just kept what i already have my own land a few stables and no HASSEL from liverys. Good luck
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A friend of mine rented a 12 stable livery yard. It had huge floodlit menege, individual paddocks, great service. At the end of just over 12 months she had lost an incredible amount of weight, made nothing & worked all the hours under the sun. On top of this she's spent a load of money geting it up to scratch aswell. I don't want to rain on your parade but really do your sums before you go into this venture. Many yards are started, but many fold in a relatively short period leaving the YO's with empty pockets.
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Thanks we certainly will think it all through very carefully before we go ahead. Not raining on our parade at all these are the sort of things I want to know before I jump in at the deep end! All really good advice thankyou!
 
It's not really surprising that yards go to the wall though is it DD. Every time I read a thread about Livery charges everyone seems to want it all for £20 p wk !!!
I am getting quite nervous about opening our new build which is costing a small fortune. Everyone wants excellent facilities, full insurance cover, loading responsibility onto yard owners at every opportunity, acres of grazing, off rd riding etc. Where can you find that at under a million pounds purchase price, never mind commercial rates & VAT.
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We closed our yard as apart from making no money it was also the insurance. The final straw was when we got sued by a livery whose horse who had sweetitch and it scratched itself. And we were liable for that.

I think 90% of livery yards do not pay rates and a lot probably don't have insurance
 
Totally agree! Do people not realise how much all of these facilities cost! Our budget is £200,000! £200,000!!! We've already decided that if the livery doesn't work out then we will rent the yard out to a competition rider or similiar. Always good to have a plan B!
 
I'd also add that if the property you are thinking of renting doesn't come with accommodation on site your market will be halved as most people don't want their horses left unattended.

Also security will be an issue with tack thefts and horse thefts even more of a risk at an unattended outbuilding. You may find you cannot even get insurance if you don't live on the property....
 
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