Chris & Virginia Ellis, Choi Kwang-Do Black Belt Academy
Dear Mike and the fabulous EFC team.
We’re open! And we own it!
Buying a commercial building in the UK is one of the toughest obstacles we have faced.
First of all it was nice and easy, we found a building we could afford and arranged a commercial mortgage to buy it. Like I said nice and easy, just like purchasing a home.
The obstacle was the planning application. Our local council has stringent rules for what the building is used for and has certain policies regarding it.
Our Building was categorised as SUI GENERIS. This means that the property has been vacant for some time and has not been assigned a commercial USE.
We quickly submitted our planning application and which was refused on the grounds that we are not community orientated, and that we did not fall into the planning office guidelines. Martial arts, not community oriented! We couldn’t understand the reasoning behind it.
We had several meetings with the planning office and finally hired a planning consultant and submitted another planning application for change of USE.
This time the planning office submitted details of the planning application online on their website. We noticed that people could leave comments on the application, supporting or rejecting it.
We rallied our student body to leave positive comments on the website. A few weeks later we received a phone call from the head of planning, stating that they had received over 150 comments from the community supporting this venture, and that the application was going well this time round. He also stated that he’s work load has just increased as he has to respond to every comment giving them the decision on the application.
This made me smile. Later that week the planning application was approved.
Virginia and I would like to thank you Mike for all the effort and support you have given us. EFC has been the cornerstone of our success and we are very grateful.
If anybody wants more information we can be contacted through the EFC.
Kind Regards
Chris & Virginia Ellis
