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/

Opening remarks

Friday 13th February 2009

Probably unlucky for some but it's the first day of my blogging career!

My initial aim is to operate this blog in conjunction with the website

http://www.spareground.com/

This website is one of the new kids on the block and one which will no doubt be of benefit to the majority of people at some stage in their lives.

It operates on a very simple philosophy; using the space we already have here in the UK.
Who knows, later down the line the same approach could be implemented in any country.

All of us at some point have wondered; where can we park near that venue? is there somewhere to store my motorbike over the winter? anyplace to store a caravan? is there available accommodation near that tournament? can I find vegetable growing space in the middle of the city?

The Spareground website wants to address this and become the website people use to find the space they are looking for. The site is in five categories; property, parking, storage, land and 'other'. (We have the 'other' option available as we dont want this site to be constrained. There will no doubt be other space uses which we may not even have thought of as yet).

On top of all this, it's nice to have a blog! I have always envied those who profess to having one and now here I am joining up in the hope of writing some of my remarks on Spareground and it's progress (no doubt interjected with my hilarious anecdotes and opinions on life in all it's splendour!),