Wiring up an outbuilding - how to get domestic mains down the garden

I'm about to setup a small workshop at the bottom of the garden. I want to plumb in an electricity meter (so I can check and pay for my part of the bill) as well as it's own small consumer unit.

In addition to this I want to be able to isolate the mains supply and switch to a generator (manually) where necessary as we have poor mains reliability and despite repeated outages for 'essential maintenance' it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

I have an armoured cable (including earth) laid from a connection box in the laundry through to the workshop and was wondering, when extending a connection from the household consumer unit presumably this should be covered by a circuit breaker (MCB) rather than an RCD device? I'm assuming RCDs shouldn't be daisy chained and the consumer unit in the office already has these installed.

Also what devices are there to enable me to connect a generator at the same time as isolating the mains supply (thus protecting the guys doing yet more 'essential maintenance'). This needn't be an automatic switch as I don't have a generator with electric starter...

Regards, TH.

The feed needs its own rcd and mcb. If you dont have those, faults on the outdoor or workshop kit will take out the house supply, and outdoor electrics are a lot less reliable.

The rcd situation depends on more details. Having an rcd does not imply the office sockets feed will be on the rcd, nor does it imply thats your best takeoff point. It depends.

One light with built in battery backup sounds like a good idea (eg a maintained fire exit light). Although the gen will give backup lighting, it wont stop you plunging into darkness while working with spinning machinery with big teeth. FWIW gas backup lighting is more reliable than electric IME, and more convenient than generator power electric.