Home contents insurance

[passivehoovering]

We need to think about home contents insurance and as we are planning to have an outbuilding built for DP to work in I want this covered too.

The first company I called, Halifax, have refused us home contents cover for two reasons. Firstly there will be people connected to the business coming through the house and into the outbuilding and secondly that we will have built a purpose built workplace . I wasn't expecting this!

I suppose we will have to look at specialist insurers. Does anyone hAve any names of company's. My concerns are that my home is covered as it usually would be, but that the outhouse is covered too. I am worried about the expense as dp is unlikley to earn much for first few years so a huge hike in insurance bills would be tricky financially.

Did you ever get anywhere with this? I was just searching in talk for answers to basically this exact problem. We haven't been refused insurance (yet) but are building a garden outbuilding for the exact same reason, and DP will have the odd customer coming through the house. I had been wondering what to do about insurance.

1. use a broker that deals with both business and home insurance - get a quote for business insurance from moneysupermarket.com and try them: I use Hiscox.

1. get an accountant - there are tax consequences here, both favourable (offset of running costs against income tax) and unfavourable (potential Capital Gains Tax charge). You may also be liable for business rates.

Thanks, Mr Anchovy. Good tip on searching for business insurance specialists. What are the CGT implications?

Private Residence Relief gives relief from Capital Gains Tax on any gain made on the sale of a "dwelling house" which is (or in some circumstances has been) your only, or principal, residence. The meaning of "dwelling house" in this context explicitly excludes any building which is not used for a residential purpose, so garages, granny annexes etc. are generally included but garden offices are generally excluded (unless also used to a material extent for a residential purpose).

Interpretation of all of these terms is a very grey area which is constantly shifting in case law: I always use a specialist to get an up to date view on a marginal case; the layman stands no chance. Of course by the time the property is sold and a capital gain realised the position may have changed.

Brill, thanks for that. Sofa bed in the garden office then