Monday morning · planning call
Thirty minutes on what will be built this week, which decisions are needed from you, and anything blocking progress. A short written summary follows.
Working with BBR from the United KingdomA development partner
A development partner
two hours from London time.
BBR Studio Labs is an independent studio in Istanbul, Türkiye. We work remotely and in English, and we have no UK office, company or staff. For a British founder the practical difference from a domestic agency is smaller than the map suggests: the working days almost coincide. The points that need care are data transfers, VAT treatment and R&D relief, and this page covers each.
Working hours
Six to seven shared hours, every working day.
Istanbul stays on UTC+3 all year. The UK moves between GMT and BST, so the gap is two hours in summer and three in winter. Here is where a 09:00–18:00 Istanbul day falls on a London clock, measured against a 09:00–17:30 UK working day.
| Season in the UK | Istanbul is ahead by | Istanbul 09:00–18:00 in UK time | Shared working hours | Part of your day not covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Summer Time (late March to late October) | 2 hours | 07:00–16:00 | 09:00–16:00, seven hours | 16:00–17:30 |
| Greenwich Mean Time (late October to late March) | 3 hours | 06:00–15:00 | 09:00–15:00, six hours | 15:00–17:30 |
In practice this behaves like working with a team in another European city. Morning stand-ups, a midday design review or an early-afternoon call with one of your customers all fit without anyone working odd hours. The only adjustment is to the end of your day: something raised at 16:30 in London will be read the next morning in Istanbul, which is 06:00 or 07:00 your time, so it has usually been dealt with before you start work.
Having this much overlap does not remove the need for a written record. Decisions made on a call are confirmed in writing, each milestone has acceptance criteria, and the latest build is always on a staging link. The overlap simply means that questions get answered in minutes instead of overnight.
A typical week
How a build week can run on UK time.
The exact rhythm is agreed per project. This is a common arrangement for a fixed-scope build, shown in London time.
The full process, from scope to handover ↗During the week · written questions
Questions go into a shared channel or tracker as they arise. Most of your working day is also ours, so a reply within the hour is realistic in both directions.
Midweek · staging update
Finished work is deployed to the staging environment, where you can test it on your own devices and leave comments against specific screens.
End of week · progress note
What was completed, what moves to next week, and where the project stands against the milestone plan and budget. Milestone demos are held as calls, and payments follow accepted milestones.
Cost and trade-offs
Why British founders look beyond domestic agencies.
Agency day rates in London and the other large UK cities reflect UK salaries and overheads. The engineering effort needed for a given product does not change with location, but the cost of each week of it does, and a studio in Istanbul has a lower cost base for engineers of similar seniority. The guide to MVP development cost sets out the effort-times-rate arithmetic with typical regional rate bands. It is written in US dollars, but the ratios carry over.
The usual alternatives are a UK freelancer, a UK agency, or hiring. Each is a reasonable choice in the right circumstances, and we compare them in agency vs freelancer and in-house vs outsourcing.
The downsides, stated plainly
- No one on-site. We will not be at your office, a workshop with your client, or a pitch. Everything happens on calls and in writing.
- R&D tax relief. Relief for subcontracted R&D carried out overseas has been restricted. For some early-stage companies this cancels part of the saving. Work out the comparison with your adviser using real numbers.
- Grant and public-sector conditions. Some grant funding and public-sector frameworks place conditions on where work is done or who the supplier is. Check the terms before engaging any overseas team.
- An overseas counterparty. A dispute with a supplier outside the UK is harder to pursue. Milestone payments, a repository in your own organisation from the first commit, and cloud accounts in your name limit your exposure in practice.
- International personal data transfers need to be designed around, as described below.
If you are assessing several suppliers, our list of questions to ask a software development agency applies to us as much as to anyone.
Contracts, invoicing and VAT
What the paperwork looks like.
General information only. Your solicitor and accountant should confirm how it applies to your organisation.
| Item | How it normally works | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|
| Contract | English-language services agreement with a written scope, milestones, acceptance criteria and a change procedure | Governing law and jurisdiction clause, with your solicitor |
| Intellectual property | Code and deliverables are assigned to your company under the contract. Open-source components keep their own licences and are listed | That the assignment wording satisfies your investors’ expectations |
| Confidentiality | Mutual NDA on request before detailed discussions | Whether your own template is preferred |
| Invoices | Issued in GBP, or another currency if you prefer, against accepted milestones | Reverse-charge VAT treatment for services from an overseas supplier, with your accountant |
| Payment | International bank transfer | Your bank’s fees and transfer times for international payments |
The mechanics of structuring an outsourced build, including milestone design and the usual failure points, are covered in how outsourcing app development works.
Data protection
UK GDPR: design the transfer question out of the project.
UK organisations handling personal data are governed by the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Cookies and electronic marketing fall under PECR in addition. As the company deciding why and how data is used, you are the controller. A development supplier that can access live personal data is acting as your processor, which calls for a written processing agreement.
The point specific to an overseas studio is international transfers. Remote access to UK personal data from another country counts as a transfer. Where the destination is not covered by UK adequacy regulations, which to our knowledge is the case for Türkiye, the transfer needs a safeguard such as the ICO’s International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, along with a transfer risk assessment.
Most projects are better served by an arrangement in which no transfer happens at all:
- Production hosting in a UK or European cloud region, in an account owned by your company
- Development and testing on synthetic or anonymised data
- Access to production data limited to your own staff, with BBR deploying through an automated pipeline
- Support for subject access requests, erasure and export built into the admin tools from the start
- Cookie consent that actually blocks non-essential scripts until the user agrees
If the product is likely to be used by children, the ICO’s Children’s code brings design requirements of its own, and these should be part of the scope from day one. We build what your data protection adviser specifies. BBR holds no ISO 27001 or comparable certification and does not claim any.
Building for British usersFour UK details
Four UK details
that belong in the scope.
None of these is difficult. Each is awkward to retrofit if it is discovered after launch.
Prices in pounds, VAT included
British consumers expect to see the price they will actually pay, with VAT included. Business buyers generally expect prices shown excluding VAT and a proper VAT invoice. Your billing setup should handle both if you sell to both.
Open Banking
The UK has a mature Open Banking ecosystem, which makes account-to-account payments and account data features realistic for a startup. Regulated activities need FCA authorisation, so early products usually connect through an already authorised provider. We build the integration, and your compliance adviser confirms the regulatory position.
Direct Debit for recurring payments
Alongside cards, Direct Debit is a familiar way for UK customers and businesses to pay recurring bills. For some B2B and membership products, offering it through a payment provider is worth including in the first release.
UK formats throughout
Day-month-year dates, postcode validation and address lookup, British spelling in the interface, and phone number handling that accepts both 07 and +44 formats. Small things that signal whether a product was made for this market.
Where to start
The services UK clients most often need.
Because the working days line up so closely, the UK is one of the few places where an ongoing, embedded style of collaboration with BBR works as naturally as a fixed project. Which one fits depends on your stage:
- Pre-launch. MVP development at a fixed price, with discovery first so the quote is based on a written scope.
- B2B software. SaaS product development including multi-tenancy, subscription billing and an admin area, or a custom web application for a specific workflow.
- A live product without an in-house team. Ongoing product engineering on a monthly basis, including taking over an existing codebase.
- An established business replacing spreadsheets. Internal tools and dashboards, or broader software for small businesses.
We will probably not suit you if you need a supplier on a UK public-sector framework, people on-site, security-cleared staff, or a team of ten or more engineers from the first week.
QuestionsFrequently asked
Frequently asked
questions.
Is BBR a UK company, or does it have a UK office?
No. BBR is based in Istanbul, Türkiye, and works remotely. There is no UK entity, address or staff. You would be buying services from an overseas supplier, and your contract, VAT treatment and data protection paperwork should reflect that.
Can we speak during normal UK working hours?
Yes. Istanbul is two hours ahead of London during British Summer Time and three hours ahead in winter. An Istanbul working day of 09:00 to 18:00 covers 07:00 to 16:00 in London in summer and 06:00 to 15:00 in winter, so any time from the start of your day until mid-afternoon works without either side stretching.
Can BBR developers access our users’ personal data from Türkiye?
That would be a restricted international transfer under UK GDPR, and as far as we are aware Türkiye is not covered by UK adequacy regulations, so a transfer mechanism such as the ICO’s International Data Transfer Agreement and a transfer risk assessment would be needed. The simpler route for most projects is to avoid the transfer: we develop and test on synthetic data, production runs in a UK or European region in your own cloud account, and access to live data stays with your team. Your data protection adviser should confirm the right approach for your product.
Do we pay UK VAT on your invoices?
Services bought from an overseas supplier can fall under the reverse-charge rules, where the UK buyer accounts for the VAT instead of the supplier charging it. Whether and how that applies depends on your VAT status and the nature of the service, so please confirm it with your accountant. We cannot give tax advice.
Will work done by BBR qualify for UK R&D tax relief?
Assume not until your adviser tells you otherwise. The rules on R&D relief for subcontracted work carried out overseas have been tightened, and work performed outside the UK is generally restricted. If R&D relief is a significant part of your funding plan, speak to your R&D tax adviser before choosing any overseas supplier, including us.
Your next movePlanning a build from the UK?
Planning a build from the UK?
Send us the brief.
A few paragraphs on the product, the users and your timeline are enough. We reply in writing with questions, a suggested first-release scope and times for a call during your working day.
Contact BBR ↗