How to Start & Run a B&B BandBED2eBook-1 | Page 30

one-nighters up to now. There is no easy answer: such decisions are part of life for the
business owner. It’s what makes running a business so challenging – and so rewarding
when you get it right.
Regulation and compliance
A home or a business?
The definition of a B&B is not a clear-cut one as far as officialdom is concerned, and
indeed different departments apply different criteria.
You might assume that logically, a decision is taken by a Government department
against well-established criteria as to whether your premises will be classed as a
business or a home, and that this would determine what you can do to the premises
(planning) as well as how the premises are taxed (council tax or business rates).
That would indeed be logical and “joined up”. Of course, it doesn’t happen. The first
thing to note is that the planning definition of a B&B as opposed to a home, although
very broadly similar in principle to the local tax definition, is determined entirely
separately and against different criteria and by different people at different times. It is
possible, if perhaps unlikely, to have a premises classed as a home for tax purposes
(thus paying council tax), but classed as a business for planning purposes – or indeed
vice versa.
Of course, fire regulations, hygiene and others are all different again and administered
separately by different departments. The whole thing is a minefield, and expecting any
connection between all these different branches of Government is the first thing you
must give up.
Planning – C3 or C1?
One fundamental area is of course planning. Planning legislation defines the “use
classes” of property, and thus what you are allowed to do with the property.
A B&B which is a family home within which paying guests stay occasionally is
primarily, according to any reasonable person’s way of thinking, a home. Broadly, the
planning regulations reflect this, but (as with all Government regulation), it is by no
means as simple as that!
The first thing to note is that there are only two planning use classes into which a B&B
can fall: it can be either C3, a “Dwelling House” – ie a home – or it can be C1, a “Hotel”.
The C1 class “includes not only hotels, but also motels, bed and breakfast premises,
boarding and guest houses. These are premises which provide a room as temporary
accommodation on a commercial, fee-paying basis, where meals can be provided but
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