Quickthorn

With the traveling to site I have to do, the only way I can keep going is to take the caravan over and kip on site. At £1.20/l, I'm saving £48 or £96 /week, depending on which vehicle I take.

PA6AW is for "hydraulic nozzle and rotary atomiser applicators" in or near water, rather than hand applicators near water in general. That implies that if you used another type of applicator..eg paint brush, drench gun, you may not need the AW option. Anyone with PA6A would be covered for PA6D - "hand held applicators requiring minimal calibration" - which would include brushes, etc. Also, how near are the stumps to the water? I seem to remember that "in or near" means within 1m of the watercourse.

I've done oak leaf before, which came out a treat. The recipe I used called for lemons and limes to be put in, amongst other things. Later on in the season, I used to do sloe wine, which was also a winner. You had to leave the sloes in a gallon of water for months, until this thick skin of mould had formed, then you peeled that off, strained it and carried on as usual with yeast and sugar. Not very appetising to start with, but it tasted great eventually, and got better the longer you left it.

You probably know this, but you can check the master cylinder for internal leaking quite easily. With the engine on, just stand on the brakes hard and keep the pressure on. Does the pedal slowly creep to the floor? If it does, that's probably the front to rear internal leak that b101 was talking about. Also, when was the brake fluid last replaced?

The flat rate scheme works for me, I'm on 9%, and that's worth £500 per year extra compared to normal VAT. It might not suit if you do a lot of work where you supply materials, eg landscaping, planting, because you lose out unless you mark up the supplies sufficiently. Also, if you do zero rated supplies (eg. NPTC assessor fees), you lose on that. I'd suggest you go for cash accounting on VAT, so you don't have to pay them until you've had your money from the customer. Also, if it's your first year on the flat rate scheme, you were allowed a 1% discount off your rate for that first year. Not sure if that's still the case. Hope that helps..

Same here. Woodland, I sometimes use full, but when I'm doing hedges, or in gardens, definitely semi, because of all the wire, nails and other crud I'm likely to hit.

Whereabouts is it? What's access like? Beech does have its uses..I believe it's the preferred wood for joiner's/cabinet maker's benches. Also, here's a fellow down the road who makes small edge tools, and he uses beech for the handles, because it doesn't pick up the dirt so much.

You can get the red book from Amazon Safety at Street Works It seems to be repeated word for word here From that picture, and from what I read, the layout is ok if it allows 2 way traffic..so you need 5.5 m minimum width, unless buses and HGVs use the route, in which case you need 6.75 m min. If you can't do that, then you have to pick a traffic control option, which will depend on speed limits and traffic flow rates, amongst other things. I used to sort out all my signage myself, based on the red book above, before it became apparent that you needed a ticket for it. I'd visit the site and count the traffic, measure up on a map, and work out what sign scheme we'd need. Sometimes we'd go for portable lights regardless, just for the ability to stop everything for a few moments during the more dodgy operations. We'd nearly always contact the local highways authority to find out what restrictions may apply, and we'd contact any emergency services. However, it was quite rare to have to do any of these jobs; once we'd costed in the sign or light hire,etc, the customer would usually end up going with someone who was cheaper.

I'm glad it's not just me with the Stihl problems. I bought an MS260 in 2002, and over the last few years it's been nothing but problems - every type of spring has gone, leaks, oiler problems, now the clutch is shagged..yet my 026, bought in 1997, is still chugging along.

With the flat rate scheme, there are a few cases where you lose out compared to normal VAT. It depends on how much you lose vs. extra hassle of regular VAT. For example, If you're saying you're in forestry, you pay a flat rate of 9 % on vat inclusive turnover. If you sell firewood, you can only charge 5% vat to the customer. So, if you sell £100 firewood, add VAT @ 5%, you get £105, but you then have to pay £105 x 9% vat = £9.45. From £100 of logs, you're left with £95.55 before you've even started to look at your expenses of cutting, processing, delivering etc. The same's true if you buy in stuff like planting stock etc - you could lose out if you don't put a big enough mark up on the supplies. And - something I've just realised - if anyone's an nptc assessor, you lose even more, as your assessing expenses are zero rated. If you're getting £20/hour, you pay VAT of £1.80 on that, leaving you with £18.20 /hour.

I started out not Vat registered, but then registered voluntarily. I was advised, as a rule of thumb, that if 60% or more of your customers are VAT registered, then so should you be. being registered is probably worth a few grand a year to me.

For my last tax year, I earned around £9 / hour for every hour I was on a site working. If you add in all the other hours put in repairing stuff, doing quotes and admin, &c, it's more like £6 / hour. It doesn't add up to much per annum, though, because I only work part time.

I suppose it's down to different experiences. I did well in one county, as a contractor doing work for LAs and others spending funding money, until a few years ago. Work I thought I would be doing, dried up to shore up another department's financial crisis. Even many of the people who administered handing all the money out came close to losing their jobs, I heard. Where I live now, certainly for hedgelaying, this county funds landowner training, but will not pay for a contractor.

I'd be interested in the mobile broadband question - anyone using it? How good, and how much? I know its a bit slower than land line broadband, but BT are robbing me blind..if the mobile broadband worked and was cheap enough, I'd ditch the landline completely.

If they left it at a £1,000 fine, he did get off lightly. I've heard of HMCE/VOSA impounding equipment for months while they go through the books

We were talking a bit about this on another thread here I'd have thought your accountant would have known about this . What they're doing is changing first year allowances (FYA). Currently, it's 50% of the value of a capital item in the year you purchase it, then you can write it down 25% each following year. From April 08, they'll be replacing FYA with annual investment allowance (AIA), which is 100% of the value of the item, with an annual limit of £50,000. Writing down allowance in subsequent years is dropped to 20 %. It's still in the draft stage, but I think the scheme will work the same as before, but with the changed values. If you took the 100% allowance, the item still goes into your pool of capital items, but with a value of £0. If you bought your new truck in the tax year 08-09, you could claim its full value, but whether you'd want to do that depends on how much taxable income you have against which to set the AIA. I can't see this making much difference to people like us. It'll help with big purchases, but remember: if you took your 100% AIA, that item will still sit in your pool; when you come to sell it (providing its not been scrapped or nicked by then), you'll be hit by a bigger balancing charge.

In a lot of cases, you have to pay the landowner, and then try and make a living from what you cut. The conservation type work is very satisfying, but if the work is funded - especially by a local authority - you never know where you are from one year to the next. I expect a downturn in a lot of funded conservation work over the next few years, as local authorities cut as much expenditure as they can to sort out the equal pay stuff.

I do my VAT quarterly as well. I've also elected to account for VAT on a cash basis, rather than accrual, so I don't have to pay VAT until I've actually received the cheque.

It's a shame that this pesticide has been banned, because it is relatively safe, leaving no toxic residues, and is effective during the times when glyphosate is least likely to work. It seems like it's been banned because the companies that make it have not bothered to supply the paperwork demanded by EU legislation, rather than because of questions about its safety.

I'm on this too, and I'm at 9 %. I constantly keep an eye on it though, just to make sure I'm not losing out compared to standard VAT. What you have to watch out for is when or if you buy materials for a job, eg. plants for a planting scheme. If you don't mark them up sufficiently, you'll lose money on them, as you are effectively paying VAT twice on them.

I can see what you're saying, but I'm not sure how much of an advantage yearly changes are. You still have to account for disposal - anything you get for the old chipper adds to your profits.

I do all mine on my own. I think that my affairs are simple enough for me to handle on my own. If you do go for an accountant, I'd ask around and go for one that someone else recommends. I had one for one year, and he was hopeless..he didn't save me anything, just wasted my time calling me in for meetings when I needed to be out working,so that he could do something I could have done myself anyway. I do my self assessment on line. Once you submit it, you can get a copy of what you've just sent in pdf format. Added to this is a full breakdown of what tax you owe. If you do your self assessment well before the payment deadline of 31st Jan, you should have plenty of warning of what tax you owe and when. If you do it online, never leave it to the last week in January - that's what everyone else does, and it crashes their system every year. I've also chosen to take my accounting period as July-June, so I can do all of this stuff when I'm less busy. That means that the figures I need for this coming assessment, in April 08, are actually my figures for July 06-June 07, which I know already. On the subject of capital allowances, I notice they're scrapping that from April 08. You don't get your 50% allowance any more, but what you do get is an annual investment allowance. With this, you can get 100% of the value of a purchase, with a limit of £50,000. If you're investing in enough kit in a given year, it could wipe out your tax bill completely. The bad news (and there always is some hidden away whenever Gordon Brown is concerned) is that the annual writing down allowance on your existing equipment pool drops from 25% to 20% p.a. the other tip I heard is to never use your own money to buy kit. Even if you've got the cash in the bank to buy that new machine, it's still worth getting finance for it, so you can claim the interest against your profits. How that will work now, post-credit crunch, is another matter

If you ring up the Environment Agency, they'll tell you you need one even before you tell them what you do. What I was told was this.. you need the licence to carry waste (regardless of where it's going) if you do not produce it yourself. Their meaning of "produce" is different to what normal english speakers would understand. The person who issues the instructions, etc. is the producer of the waste, not the person doing the work. If a garden owner asks you to prune a tree, which you do, they are the producer of the waste, not you. I don't know where you stand if you're saying that what you're carrying is product, not waste. I get the feeling the EA would say that logs for fuel, for example, would only be such if the trees you felled were grown for the purpose of being harvested as logs. As for taking chips to your land, there was an ongoing thread on this, under "renting a yard". People who have been storing chip and logs on land have been accused of operating an unauthorised waste transfer station. The whole waste issue is pretty much a fiasco, in my view. A lot of it stems from European legislation, which had been on the cards for a long time, and those in a position to do so have totally failed to plan for any of it - as usual! There are a few sites which deal with all of this..netregs.gov.uk is one such site.

I'm 45 now, and haven't climbed for about 3 years. It was the combination of LOLER and the insurance hike that stopped me climbing, because it just wasn't worth it where I was living. Now insurance is better, and prices seem to be a bit higher, I'm not tempted back into aerial work because I am starting to feel middle aged now. If I went back, I'm sure I'd get tired of it pretty quickly. I enjoyed a lot of the climbing I did, but I also remember the pain in the ar$e jobs that seemed to go wronger and wronger as the day wore on. I think 40 is a bit of a turning point for a lot of people. I know a fair few who reach that age, then take on a younger climber and concentrate on running the business, or pack it completely for a desk job.

That farmer deserves to be grassed on, if he's charging that much just to burn it.. The waste carriers licence is from the Environment Agency..either ring them for an application pack or print the forms from here and send them in. It's about £150 for 3 years when I paid. It's something I really resent paying, but it's almost impossible to tip at a legitimate site without one now.