Registering UK Caravan in France

[junebaby]

Hi everyone

We've just read a previous post about registering a UK caravan here in France.  Lots of useful information from Sunday Driver (thanks for that).  We like our caravan (2003 Swift Challenger 520), and want to go through the process, however we've just spoken to our caravan manufacturer who have advised that they will send us a form to complete and then send a request to all the manufacturers of individual parts of the caravan for their certificates of conformity.  This process we are told, will take 12 weeks!  When we asked them if they kept this information about their caravans on file, they said no, we obtain the information for each applicant and just pass it on - no copies kept.  The next time someone requests the same information they simply go through the whole process again (just think how much management training you could give to a company like this [;-)] ).

The French might drag it out to three weeks but it takes British inefficiency to make it last 3 months........

Has anyone else experienced this?  And is there some way to short circuit this?  Our problem is that our UK car is going back to the UK at the end of July and we can't tow the caravan with our new French registered car, which will make it difficult to take it for those necessary inspections.

Thanks, as always.

Vicki

 

[Sunday Driver]

The process described by Swift is like that because when a CoC is issued, eg for the chassis, it must be done by the chassis manufacturer and is specific to that particular caravan chassis, identifiable by its unique serial number.  Swift can't issue a generic certifictate.

In the absence of a UK tow car, you'll have to apply to your prefecture for a temporary WW carte grise (32€) - it lasts for two weeks to allow you to do the rounds of the inspections.

 

[junebaby]

Hi,

We have now been advised by Swift that as well as a 12 week wait there will also be a £117.70 charge for the paperwork. I have spoken to Bailey Caravans to check their procedure and they have said that a copy certificate can be sent out the same day and is free of charge. When asked if this copy certificate would be sufficient to register a caravan in France they said yes and assured me that this is a common practice for their customers.

With regards to CoC's, from my experience in industry, I thought that a manufacture can supply a certificate of conformity to a batch of any number of chassis providing that they all conform to a specified standard. Therefore, Swift or Alko should be able to certify that all chassis from serial number 1 to 10,001 conform. I would suspect that Alko would give Swift a blanket certificate such as this to all chassis supplied to them, if not, Swift would have no conformity traceability for the caravans they supply. This would mean that Swift do not know whether my caravan chassis conforms until they ask Alko! I think that it is one of these "batch certificate of conformity's" that Bailey is sending to it's customers that is enabling French registration. If this is working for Bailey customers then a re-think from Swift could save them and their customers money and time.

Any Bailey customers had any experience of this?

Best regards,

Vicki

 

 

[Sunday Driver]

I suspect the difference between Swift and Bailey is that the latter may have obtained series type approval for their vans so they can issue conformity certificates for each individual van manufactured within that approved series. If Swift haven't done this, then it's the single vehicle approval process which means providing specific technical data for each van.