Mechanic complaint to council

pooch

s_b wrote: »

...should i go on?

I'm sure you will!

lcharm

Although mosly relevant this one is laughable

is he declaring (remember hes charging cheap labour rates so cutting the blood supply of existing repair businesses who comply with all relevant laws

I'm sure what you mean by that is is he pocketting all the cash in hand jobs like all the prim and proper mechanics out there? Ha!

Or maybe the fact that he does the job at hand and doesn't lie to his customers like many mechanics do and only charges for the work done.

I'm not sure if you're a mechanic or not but if you think all mechanics do everything by the book then I think you're living in a dream world!

s_b

lcharm wrote: »

Although mosly relevant this one is laughable


I'm sure what you mean by that is is he pocketting all the cash in hand jobs like all the prim and proper mechanics out there? Ha!

Or maybe the fact that he does the job at hand and doesn't lie to his customers like many mechanics do and only charges for the work done.

I'm not sure if you're a mechanic or not but if you think all mechanics do everything by the book then I think you're living in a dream world!

so all mechanics are crooks
but your neighbour or is it you really?
thinks it fine to work from home premises to fix cars

you couldnt make it up

im not a mechanic by the way but i do run a garage and i have to pay the piper
if a mechanic started next door to me at home i would have him shut down quicker than he could say snap on

business premises for mechanicing
houses for living


never the twain to meet, unless you have no neighbours

Savvy_Sue

lcharm wrote: »

so he only wants to know how to deal with the council and what his options are as he's not clued up with rules and regs when it comes to these matters.

Then he needs to get clued up. You said he owns the property, ie the house and the garage? That helps a bit, because if he was renting he could be evicted ...

prowla wrote: »

What's the terms of his garage lease?
It may not allow business use.

Garage may not be leased though.

Has he had a letter, and if so which part of the council was it from? Could be planning, could be environmental health. Either way, this isn't going to just go away.

lcharm

s_b wrote: »

so all mechanics are crooks
but your neighbour or is it you really?
thinks it fine to work from home premises to fix cars

you couldnt make it up

No it's not me, I run a health business and come from a medical background and don't know much about cars all I wanted to do is help a friend and neighbour out and don't need the sniping comments.

I don't really care about your opinion because everyone else has provided polite & constructive advice. It's people like you that ruin the community feel of this website and as far as i'm concerned the dialogue between you and I is over because you're quite simply rude you won't get any further replies from me.

Yes my neighbour is obviously naive as he's never done this before and making mistakes and learning is what makes us human.

Thank you to everyone else for the info.

s_b

wait till he has a fire

we all have at least one fire
mine fortunately we were able to get the car out before it all burnt down,the black smoke had to be seen to be believed and it took under one minute and you couldnt breathe,put me on the floor

podperson

Your friend need to speak to the council asap really. While he may think his neighbours are being petty to complain (and maybe they are, we don't know their reasons!) there are still going to be valid concerns about running this type of business from home.

Even if you take the noise issue out of it then he still needs to look at informing the council that part of the home is now being used for business purposes - this may effect his council tax and they may even want to send someone round to check for health and safety reasons.

It could invalidate his insurance - as someone mentioned above places like garages have a high risk of fire and if something did happen and then it came out that he'd been using it for those purposes then his insurance might not pay out (and I'd imagine the others owning the property wouldn't be too impressed). If he has customers coming and going or he's working on expensive cars then he may also need to look at liability insurance.

Also if he's using large quantities of things like oil, how is he getting rid of them? The council could also come down on him and he could possibly get fines for not disposing of things in the correct way.

I'm sure your friend is a genuine guy who just wants to try and make a bit of money but the reason people are saying he's not 'legitimate' is that he doesn't seem to have thought any of these things through and he needs to do so quite urgently before something worse then a noise complaint could go wrong for him.

bris

The council will close him down, you can't just start a business from you garage.
Has a waste carriers license been mentioned yet? there are big fines involved for any garage who doesn't deal with oil, grease ect waste products properly.
Getting planning permission to turn your house garage into a commercial garage in a residential area will be near on impossible.

patman99

Does the guy have a van?. If so, he could mount his compressor in the back and simply drive to the neighbour's houses and work on their cars from the back of the van.
Sod-all the Council can do about that.

Yes, he should have applied for planning permission before running a workshop from his garage. Fact is, he will be in big trouble if he doesn't now do this.

As for not being able to afford a proper workshop. My mechanic rents a unit and still only charges £45 p/h labour (inc. VAT) and he has bought a lot of kit in the 3 years he has been working for himself.
Depending on his age, he may be entitled to some form of start-up or enterprise grant. This would pay the rent on a workshop at least.

All I can say about workshop fires is that in my town we have had only 3 such fires in 20 years. All caused by mechanics corner-cutting to get the job done instead of doing it properly.