Sorry, I dont understand your response.
The question mark was querying your statement - the rest was just a filler as there is a weird quirk here that a response cannot be less than five letters, and as ??? Appears rude, I tried to indicate five ?s by ‘x5’…
Basically, I say that you can drive your childrens’ uk cars providing they sre legal and you are a visitor.
The challenge is usually getting the insurer to allow a foreign resident on the policy.
So how do the Brit holiday home owners get the vehicle insured ? There seems to be a whole world of interpretation, if you’re involved in an accident then the actual law will become very clear !
Ah yes, this is a whole new discussion! My experience is that the UK insurers are a whole lot worse than here. It is like crawling through razor wire getting myself insured as an occasional driver on my wife’s cars in the UK yet it is just a simple phone call to my insurer here to get her named on my 430bhp Lotus.
As above - French insurers are a lot less anal than their uk counterparts.
How can a UK resident insure a vehicle that is located / registered in France ? Apparently (as above comments) it’s not legal to drive it so it can’t be legal to insure it.
Just visit a local broker with proof of house ownership.
Again:
A UK resident may drive a French plate whilst in France.
A UK resident may not drive a French car whilst in UK…
Got it, my brain is not working very well today.
The issue is with driving a foreign registered car in the country where you are resident. A British resident cannot drive a foreign registered vehicle in the U.K. unless it fits into one of the allowed categories. In Britain the car is not allowed to leave the port of entry on its own wheels. Other countries have slightly different rules, France allows a resident one month before the vehicle has to be registered.
In my first post I explained the best solution to the problem and that is to get a friend who is French resident to deliver the car to the U.K. and park it on the British friend’s property. Once it is there the importation and change of ownership can be completed online. Only when all of that has been done is the new owner allowed to drive it in the U.K. The law is to stop people running around in foreign registered vehicles which make tracing the owners more difficult and in the days of ANPR allowing the police to check if the vehicle is legal. We all know of others who have used GB registered cars in France for years and in the U.K. there has been a similar big problem with Polish cars.
I know you should take notice of the advice that I have given you and that dismissing it and being rude about my posts just because they are not saying what you want to hear is foolish.
I put this point to the man concerned and he was a bit touchy on the subject but said that it was legal when he did it but has since become not so. He is a kind of shoot from the hip kind of bloke so I didn’t pursue the point.
But there is no doubt that he did do it, unless he is running round without insurance or even a carte grise in his name.
Dual residents is an interesting scenario.
But per Adam1 above the rules are easy to understand if a bit blurry when applied to the modern world.
Conversation here is getting a bit tetchy. Too many experts with conflicting, sincerely held, views and I don’t claim to be expert at all, but would be wary of relying too much on any expert. Especially retired or even serving police officers, who often have little real knowledge of the law, which changes. That is why it is sometimes necessary to carry a copy of the legal situation with you to argue the toss if stopped.
UK govt website carries the following advice (pasted below). Strikes me that if your French insurer agrees with your friends driving it in England and are therefore insured for the journey then you are covered. Chances of being questioned over this are absolutely negligible so the main issue is if there is an accident are they covered.
Temporary imports
You can usually use a vehicle with foreign number plates without registering or taxing it in the UK if all of the following apply:
- you’re visiting and do not plan to live here
- the vehicle is registered and taxed in its home country
- you only use the vehicle for up to 6 months in total - this can be a single visit, or several shorter visits over 12 months
You will need to register your vehicle if you want to move it between Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland.
If you become a resident or stay for longer than 6 months you must register and tax your vehicle in the UK – follow the steps for importing a vehicle.
This is also relevant, suggesting your friends would have 14 days to make a declaration.
Bringing a vehicle back to the UK
You must register a vehicle when you reimport it to the UK if it has been:
- registered in the UK before
- exported to another country
You should:
- Tell HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) within 14 days that the vehicle has arrived in the UK.
- Pay any VAT and customs duty that you owe.
- Register and tax the vehicle with DVLA - they’ll give you a registration number so you can get number plates made up.
You do not have to get vehicle approval.
You must also insure your vehicle before you drive it on UK roads.
I’m getting Déjà-vu
Lucky you! I am giving up the will to live
Come on guys - this has all the potential for another Crit’Air thread. Don’t give up so easily.
No competition with the maestro as yet.
Actually the Cheerful News thread is the forum champion, having gone on so long (like the Dune movies) that it’s now well into a “part two”!
Well some folks do seem to get themselves in strange situations … this was one i never saw the end for >> Retraction of sale after acte de vente
There was another one where a wall had been knocked down/damaged, rebuilt and then it was too high and too near the road … that was another cliff hanger