Well, that was a bit weird [entries|reading|network|archive]
simont

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Thu 2003-02-06 13:41
Well, that was a bit weird

I just spent my lunch break driving over to the office of the removal company that will be helping me move next week, to collect the load of cardboard boxes they're lending me (all part of the service). When I got there, I discovered that it's a perfectly ordinary-looking house on a residential street, without even a sign at the front mentioning the name of the company.

I spent five minutes staring at the front of the place trying to work out whether I'd got the address wrong or not, and then trying to figure out a good excuse if I rang the doorbell and found I had. (‘Sorry, I thought this was a removal company’ somehow doesn't sound too believable when you're looking at a house that gives no indication at all of being anything but an ordinary residential house!) Fortunately it did turn out to be the right place after all, so that was all right. I think they should put a sign up, though.

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[identity profile] ewx.livejournal.comThu 2003-02-06 10:46
They may not want relevant authorities to know that they are running a business from a residential area. (Which isn't the same as saying that relevant authorities would actually care.)
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[personal profile] simontFri 2003-02-07 02:06
Is that actually illegal, or do you just have to register yourself and pay extra tax or something?

Another house three doors down from the removal company is running some other sort of business, which I could tell because it does have a sign up. So unless they're just tax-dodging, it doesn't seem to me that there's a fundamental problem.
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[identity profile] ewx.livejournal.comFri 2003-02-07 02:44
Sometimes "don't run a business" is written into the rules that apply to the house, presumably as a condition of planning permission to build it in the first place; the idea being to "maintain the residential character of the area", i.e. not have lorries up and down the road all the time. That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. There might be other reasons, or there might not.
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[identity profile] j4.livejournal.comFri 2003-02-07 05:43
IIRC you have to actually get planning permission to change the use of the house from residential to business. The council website has further information, but I can't be bothered to go and find the relevant pages -- sorry, am lazy! But I had to look all this up when we were trying to ascertain whether we'd get hit by those sorts of laws when trying to change two flats-for-rent into one house-for-owning. (We didn't.)
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