Jeff Cooper

Thanks for all your ideas and comments - I suppose I should have known better than to think it might be easy - but the thought of getting 2 or 3 months away from this awful country was just too tempting - I might have to have a go anyway if things do come to a head, either that or forgo the £240 a month I'm "entitled" to !

Excuse me - what do you mean by that ? - who would I be using ?

There's a chance I might lose my job here in the UK, and we're thinking that if we have to claim JSA, we may as well be there in France and get some more renovation done! - I beleive that as long as I am getting JSA here in the Uk, and that I sign on at the French JobCentre I could continue to get the contributions based JSA for 3 months. Is there anyone who has done this, or can confidently tell me more about wether it's possible, and if so, wether it's relatively easy to sign on, and look for work in France. I know I won't get it, but that appears to be part of the deal! Any info, recommendations etc gratefully received.

I need to firstly thank everyone for their replies, some of them calmed me down, others had me reaching for the phone to book a quick trip! However, after calming down, I discovered this weekend that I had just learnt a very valuable lesson. Namely, never open up French post after driving 630 miles back to England from France. Because you will read it wrong! What I actually received was my Tax Fonciere, not Habitation - so far from expecting another bill at twice the 830 euro, I should be getting one at 400 euro. This is altogether a different scenario!!! I still feel that the Government are now under the impression that my house is finished, which I will try to sort out, but at least if I can't, we can now afford to keep the house. The website giving the cadastrale plans, and allowing measurements to be made online, is fantastic, so very many thanks for that reference. The final lesson - is yet again to learn as much French as possible. Preferably Building terms and Tax wording!! Thanks again for everyones help.

I'm a very worried newbie here, so forgive me for getting straight down to it with no introductions! We have a small detached farmhouse in Charente nr Limousin border, and used to pay around £150 in Tax d'habitation, this was for 2 rooms that were currently useable - I opened our renovation works on our CDU last year, and had some sort of form asking me about room sizes and numbers etc, which I duly filled in (without truly understanding it!) - our new TDH bill came in (annoyingly to England, exactly in the middle of our week in France!) at an increase of 291% - ie its gone up to 830 Euro from 200. Even if the works were complete, this seems incredibly high for a two bed two bath (+ 1 cloakroom) property, not standing in its own garden, and I think I'm right in  saying that the Fonciere will be even more?! - this total amount would be more than for a chateau in England, and could well break us financially. It would be nice to get some actual values for other peoples TDH and TF just to compare, and also any advice for an extremely bad French speaker on what the heck I can do now - the date for paying is 15th Oct (but my DD goes out on the 28th I think), and we will be in France again on the 22nd of Oct for a week, but the French woman at our local Tresorie who I telephoned yesterday morning just said it was too late to explain, and we would have to go in next time we were there (or at least that's what I think she said) Help!!