Updates, Enterprise and Christmas!

Catch up

It’s been a very busy few weeks on all fronts and it’s a dark rainy Cambridge morning now where I finally get clicking on this keyboard!

At Spareground towers , we’ve been looking into ways of improving the website and after sending out consultations to various individuals and groups such as the UK business forums, we now have our Version 3 designed which will be fully launched in the New Year. There are a few things we have been aware of but it’s been a good process in gleaning peoples’ viewpoints. What has been encouraging is everyone has commented on the fact that they really like the concept of the website so that’s very encouraging to hear.

We have also now partnered up with the Green Christmas Appeal which is a great idea and venture. Good luck to them and we hope it’s successful. Do take a look at their website, and if you do decide to buy a tree or anything else from their shop then you can take advantage of the current discount offer of 33% by entering ‘spareground’ in the discount code box. Please look and please support if you can!

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to be at the Home Business Enterprise Nation conference in London. It was really enjoyable meeting up with others who has set up businesses and with a number of top notch speakers (Mike Finnegan and Doug Richard of Dragon’s den to name a few), it was pretty inspiring stuff! So, I now have my head filled with a load of things to promote Spareground and get it more known throughout the UK! Watch this space!

As always, I am continually surprised by the ingenuity of users in the creation of their listings. In addition to parking spaces to let, garages and driveways to rent, gardens and greenhouses to let or landshare options, storage space and properties per se, we now have on the Spareground website a rural meadow for wedding or other functions and even a room with a piano for lessons or even a dinner party (there is a kitchen available for use too!). People really are looking at their spare space, amazing stuff and keep them coming!

Right, Christmas shopping lists to get sorted now so until next time….

www.spareground.co.uk

BBC Radio at last!

It’s been a busy few weeks both on the Spareground front and with my other business commitments so no blog posts for a while! …and after all my earlier promises!Well, this week saw my first ever radio interviews about Spareground on BBC Radio5 and also on BBC Radio Ulster (Northern Ireland). I must admit I was shocked with how nervous I felt beforehand but once we were ‘live’, things went well and I am pretty happy with the final outcomes.
Both features came about from recent polls showing that a lot of older people are now considering renting out rooms to lodgers to make cash to bolster their current financial shortfalls. With low interest rates, savings accounts are not bringing in the interest levels they once were and this coupled with increased living costs means that options such as renting out rooms are now being considered.

In the UK, the Government's Rent a Room scheme allows people to receive up to £4,250 a year tax free through renting out a room in their main home; quite a significant sum of money to add onto their regular income. There are restrictions to this for example, you cannot modify your property to create a separate space or create a private access for the lodger so it is wise to check the government websites to check for further details.What Spareground have tried to get across is that for a lot of people renting out a room in their house may not be a favourable choice. However, it’s always an idea to look at what spare space you do have and see if you can rent that out, hence our promotion to rent out driveways, parking facilities, storage facilities and garden space. You would not be able to create a huge amount of money from something like an attic space or garden space for example but it all helps!

Spareground was also featured on this week’s Enterprise Nation website http://www.enterprisenation.com/ and we have seen an increased in the hits on the site related to this. I have also signed up to attend the Enterprise Nation conference in November this year so I will make sure that I will report on this with all the news and stories of what happened. Busy times ahead!
Great news that the UK gets the Rugby League World Cup and the Rugby Union World Cup! Hopefully we can be of some use to help cater for peoples parking and accommodation requirements!

http://www.spareground.co.uk/