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Capital allowances on gyms and leisure facilities

Leisure buildings have to move a lot of air and heat a lot of water, continuously. Both of those are plant, both are expensive, and both tend to be replaced during the life of the building.

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A gym's running costs tell you where its capital went. The ventilation has to handle a full room of people exercising, the hot water has to supply banks of showers at peak, and the changing rooms have to survive constant use. Add specialist flooring, sound and lighting, and a pool or spa if there is one, and the qualifying content is high relative to the building's value.

What qualifies in gyms and leisure

Air handling and ventilation
Heavier duty than almost any comparable floor area.
Hot water generation and distribution
Peak shower demand drives significant plant.
Changing rooms, showers and lockers
Sanitaryware, cubicles, fitted lockers and benching.
Sauna, steam and spa plant
Generators, controls and the services feeding them.
Pool plant where present
Filtration, dosing, circulation, heating and covers.
Sprung and specialist flooring
Treatment varies by construction and is a matter for the survey.
Lighting and sound systems
Studio lighting, general lighting and fixed audio.
Access control and entry systems
Turnstiles, fobs, membership entry and CCTV.
Reception and cafe fit-out
Where the site includes food and drink service.

Not an exhaustive list, and not every item applies to every building. What counts in your case is established by survey, not from a page.

Plant replacement is a normal part of the life cycle

Leisure plant works hard and gets replaced. Air handling units, boilers, pool filtration and shower installations all have a service life shorter than the building, so an operator who has held a site for a decade has usually replaced significant plant at least once. Those replacements are their own capital expenditure and are frequently treated as maintenance.

Which of these is you

You own and operate the site

The acquisition and every plant replacement or refurbishment since are in scope.

You lease a unit and fitted out the gym

Operator fit-out in a leased shell is usually a large and clearly identifiable spend.

You converted an industrial or retail unit

Conversions to leisure use carry high qualifying content, because the ventilation, drainage and hot water all had to be installed.

You have replaced air handling or pool plant

Worth separating from the maintenance ledger. Much of it is capital and qualifying.

Questions we get about gyms and leisure

Does gym equipment count?

Free-standing equipment is plant in the ordinary sense and has its own treatment. The building-related question here is the fixed installation around it: the ventilation, the power, the flooring and the changing facilities.

We took over an existing gym.

The fixtures transferred with it, and whether you can claim on them depends on the pooling and fixed value requirements and what the transaction documented.

Is a swimming pool structure or plant?

The pool shell and the pool plant are treated differently. The filtration, dosing, heating and circulation are plant, and the structure is generally not, which is exactly the split a survey establishes.

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