Home-based working is on the increase. And it’s not difficult to see why.  In their own recent survey, the Teleworkers Association found that home-based workers in Britain are between 25 and 35% more productive than staff in typical communal office buildings.

A 2003 survey of middle managers across 300 companies confirmed that a remarkable 84% would prefer to work from home, either for all or some of the time. Predictably, the horror of the daily commute to head office, thanks to congested traffic or unreliable train services is uppermost in their minds, but there are other issues too. Not only are modern parents keen to spend more time with their kids, but all of us are looking for a better work/life balance.  There’s more to life than making money, especially if you’re doing it for other people - and much more to working than being a cog in someone else’s machine.

Fortunately, the attitude of employers to home based working is changing for the better: the same survey indicated that over half of these companies (56%) encouraged home working or made it an accepted part of their culture.  Productivity apart, bosses in Britain’s biggest businesses have sound economic reasons for wanting staff to work from home. The typical cost of an office workspace in the UK is £8,500 per annum and in Central London, this has risen to £19,000 per annum.  Of course, if an individual’s only rationale for working from home is so that they can spend more time with a growing family, it’s entirely possible that the likely distractions of a noisy household might be of concern to their employer. Not surprisingly, a separate office building in the garden, delivering the peace and quiet necessary for professional concentration, makes perfect sense to employers and staff alike.

Many years ago, it was the lack of communications technology that led people to leave their homes to work together in vast office buildings. And until recently, both for employees and the self-employed, the limitations of technology have been the main barrier to home working. It’s worth considering that word processing only came into large-scale use in the early eighties and fax machines were a comparative rarity much before 1983.  The ‘PC’ as we know it, really only came into its own after 1985.  If e-mail revolutionised home working in the nineties, today’s wireless broadband technology ensures working form home really can be as rapid and effective as it is in any serviced office.  We live in amazing, changing times. Precisely the right times for home-working, just so long as we are prepared to make the effort required to give ourselves the best chance of excelling as effective home base workers.

Using the kitchen table

All the best-laid plans can come to nothing. You have to get the work-space right. If you set yourself up in the kitchen or the bedroom, it’s likely to end in tears. Tears from you if your laptop gets covered with jam or tears from your partner if you insist of working late into the night when he or she needs their beauty sleep. There’s also the issue of colleagues and suppliers. Just how professional can you appear to others if you’re surrounded by plastic toys and dirty washing? And that’s when the children are out of the house.

Charles Dalton, Smart Garden Offices Chief Executive and the pioneer of the garden office building concept, enjoyed working from home in a small annex off his sitting room. Until his son Thomas was born, that is. Then suddenly, his tidy marital home became a cross between an assault course and a crèche. Charles needed somewhere to work, without driving to a serviced office or taking out a long lease on an office suite.

A separate building suitable for all-year working, fitted out to a professional standard and available off-the-shelf was nowhere to be found.  The idea for the Compact Personal Office –  now Britain’s best-selling garden office building, was born.

Why not a shed?

The internal dimensions of a Compact Office are 13 cubic metres, substantially more than  the 11 cubic metre average allotted to individual staff in most companies. Of course, you can buy a shed of similar size for just a few hundred pounds. You won’t need planning permission, but the trouble is, a shed is completely unsuitable for home working.  Without full insulation you’ll sweat buckets in the summer and then freeze in the winter.  You won’t have convenient electrics and lighting and you certainly won’t have a professional environment in which to see clients or colleagues.  There’s also the matter of security. Would you entrust your computer system and your personal files to a shed? More to the point, would your insurance company?

A custom-built office in the garden

People have been working from offices in their gardens for years. In his later years, George Bernard Shaw had an ingenious construction built on a turntable that he moved depending on the direction of the sun.  Quite arduous for an old man, since his main purpose was to avoid direct sunlight because the office became distinctly uncomfortable in the heat of summer. The author Philip Pullman wrote from a converted railway carriage. A little more bearable than a shed maybe, but rather claustrophobic and damp. Of course, this may have given him the ideal environment in which to write the best-selling fantasy trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’, even if it was hardly suitable for conventional business working.

If you have money to spare, then there is always the option of designing your own office building for the garden.  But this can be expensive with specialist firms charging £20,000 or more, while invariably, the associated issues of planning permission and a lengthy construction period come into play. 

Buying a house with an additional bedroom

They may start off in a flat, but many young couples – especially when they’re planning a family – plan to move into something larger with a garden. If you live in Greater London and the Home Counties, you can expect to pay an average of £240,000 for a typical three bedroomed terraced house. A move to a four bedroom house in the same area can mean a jump of around £60,000 or more. So, if you work from a bedroom, it’s important to realise that it could be costing you the equivalent of £275 of your monthly mortgage. Even if you have a relatively large home and a spare bedroom capable of accommodating an office, the presence of a young and boisterous family is hardly conducive to professional working.

Garden office buildings can cost as little as £6,500 including VAT, professionally installed in a single day. All you need to do is provide a secure electrical supply to the building and a sound and level area in your garden. Financed by an interest-only re-mortgage - at 5.5% apr – your monthly payment can be under £30.  Alternatively, many companies have shorter term finance packages with monthly outgoings

The cost of moving

If you live in a house worth more than £250,000, you can expect to pay £7,500 stamp duty and legal/moving costs of £2,500.

If you decide to move home at any time, you can relocate and refurbish your garden office to your new garden from as little as £800. (In most cases, allow 2 days for breakdown, refurbish and re-build)

Building an Extension

So long as it is conceived sensitively and executed professionally, an extension will add to the value to most properties. In most cases (although not always) the additional value will be greater than the cost of the project. However, any extension is likely to require agreement from neighbours, planning permission from the local authority and the services of a local architect. This can take several months and sometimes much longer.  Then there’s the additional headache of trying to work when your house is beleaguered by builders and building mess. The average cost of an extension in the UK is around £22,000, rising to £40,000 in Greater London and the Home Counties.

Buying a garden office couldn’t be more simple. Planning permission is only required in conservation areas. A 20% deposit is usual when you place an order and we secured a guaranteed specific installation day within six weeks.  Invariably installation takes place in a single day.

Converting a loft space

One obvious way of adding extra living and working space – that’s usually considerably cheaper than building an extension - is to convert a loft space. This is not a quick solution. Typically it involves an architect as well as planning permission, and if you live in a terraced house, party wall agreements with neighbours. Although there are specialist loft conversion firms that provide these services alongside the building work, this process can take six months or more. According to most experts, a loft conversion will cost at least a third of the cost of moving to a similar house in your area with an extra room.  In London and the Home Counties, this rule of thumb works out as £20-25k. Cellar spaces can be cheaper, although the absence of natural light can make them unsuitable for home-working.

While there is an obvious appeal in having a working garden office up and running in a single day, rather than waiting for planners and builders, you can't ignore the immense benefit of having an office separate from the home.  This is especially the case for those who previously shared workspace in the house with a partner or parents with young families.  But it’s not just about noise and distraction.  A separate building means that you can leave your work as and when you wish, returning when it suits you.  With an office in the house, it’s all too easy to find yourself at the workstation checking e-mails, when you could be spending quality time with the family.

Relocating your whole team

The best garden office suppliers will offer individual purchase as well as fleet management packages. The benefits to employers who have decided to redeploy staff to work from home is immense. A reliable, dedicated workspace means increased productivity and you know that during working hours your team will be able to handle that important conference call without little Billy screaming at his sister in the background. When compared with office space costs per person in the London area the price of a garden office for your staff is negligible, and the productivity gains enormous. Fleet purchase also offers the ability to negotiate on prices!