Confused from Norfolk

[timc17]

We are about to move to the Charente Maritime in a few weeks and will be bringing our UK registered car with us having arranged insurance in France. The english broker we used stated categorically that we did not need to re-register the car after being resident for six months which goes against what i think has been said before on this and other forums.

Is he right?

 

timc17

[Val_2]

Well I always understood that a foreign registered car had to be re-registered within three months of being brought into France UNLESS it was being kept on a fully comp UK insurance,UK Mot and UK plates,not a mixture of french insurance and UK plates and french CT.  However if you do keep it completely UK covered then you are subject to return for an MOT every year(four years old and over) whereas on french plates,you have one every two years for vehicles of four years old and over. You must decide what to do in case of an accident as they are very keen here to haul you off to the tribunal if you aren't legally covered especially if it was your fault. Another problem is that a UK vehicle is notoriously difficult to get rid of in France as no local would touch it or garage want to re-sell it.

[timc17]

Thanks Val. We only intend to keep the vehicle until early next year and will sell it in the UK when the MOT and Tax are due. I will still need to go back to the broker to confirm that the cover is with a UK insurer and not French as this has not been made clear. The broker i used is Insurance in France near Montpellier -anyone used them?

 

 

tim

[clareS]

I thought that if the car was registered in the UK you had to have UK-based insurance, except as a temporary measure (up to 3 months?). We had to take out an overseas insurance based in the UK, which cost about £700 (I'm sure this has already been discussed at length before!). We had French insurance for a while, then discovered it was illegal on our UK registered car, so changed to the overseas UK type. We are now registered here but have since crashed the car ...

The costs of converting were considerable, so probably wise to sell the car in the UK and buy here - we had a skoda and couldn't sell it even in the UK!