Anton

Yes, in my current job, I have 'cadre' status, so am expected to work whatever hours are necessary to complete the job. The 12 RTT days are to compensate for these extra hours. However, the new job contract I'm being proposed seems contradictory to me - they say that it's a 35 hour contract, but also states that I'd need to work whatever hours are required to do the job!    

Are there any French employment law experts out there?? I'm considering a job offer, but would be moving from a job where I currently have 12 RTT rest days. I've been told by the potential new employers that they are allowed to propose contracts to new employees that don't give employees any RTT days. I'm not at all familiar with this aspect of employment law and wonder if anyone knows if this is correct. Thanks!

Hi Any tales to tell about the SPANC inspection?  We've not had ours yet, but it will take place shortly, which prompted my posting on the forum. We're a bit concerned as we have an old septic tank (no idea when it was installed but definitely pre-1970's).  Saying that, we never had any problems with it in the 7 years we've lived here. Never emptied it or anything. Does anyone have any experience of having to replace their septic tank or do remedial work after the SPANC engineer's inspection?  We're just trying to brace ourselves for the possibility of having to do a load of work on it...... Please share if you have any experiences  - both the good and the bad.   Thanks Anton  

Thanks very much for your feedback!  I'll definitely give this a try. I looked on a few web sites but couldn't find sodium hypochlorite. Do you have a brand name of the product you bought? We were also going to try and regrout this winter, so I'm glad that I read your posting and we can avoid this awful job! thanks again  

We have a tiled pool that is 6 x 10m. The pool is 4 years old. We've always had this problem right from the start but finding it increasingly difficult to manage but we have more and more revolting black algae on the tile grouting. It's a salt pool and chlorine and ph levels all seem normal.  Anyone got any similar problems? Any ideas for trying to get rid of it?  We have a robot roaming the floor of the pool and use a brush to scrub the walls but I feel as if we're fighting a losing battle! Thanks for any feedback and/or advice.    

Thank you both for your advice!

Not a great way to start the New Year, but we've got ourselves into a major panic over French income tax.......Basically, we are an English couple who are French residents. I know that it probably seems like we are total idiots.......but we only just realised that we should be declaring our UK income in France. (we have income arising from a house rental in the UK and UK interest arising from UK savings accounts). We're looking for advice on the following: 1. Will the French tax authorities think it strange if we suddenly start declaring income and interest from the UK?  We've always completed our French tax return forms but not the English income. Should we come clean about our situation?  We have paid the tax due on our UK income in the UK and interest has been deducted at source on UK savings, so our French liability is probabaly quite small. 2. I am totally confused about which forms I should be completing and submitting and when.  How do other people in a similar situation figure it out??  For example, we completed the UK tax forms for 2003-4 tax year back in the summer and have claimed non-resident allowances and don't have any outstanding liability for our UK tax.  Should I now complete form FD5 to claim back tax paid at source on interest from savings?  When completing our French tax return form for 2004, is there a separate form for overseas income?  Are you also allowed to claim allowances such as wear and tear on rental income, or do you declare your income net of all UK allowances that we're entitled to? This is all a bit heavy for New Years Eve I think!  Time to go and have a glass of champers and calm down.  I'd be really grateful if any other forum members in a similar situation could share their experiences. Thanks and Happy New Year!