Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Au revoir to English number plate


The final attempt to the council office in Grasse for my car. We went there on Monday and got rejected due to the French MOT certificate was over 6 months old. We had it done Sep1st last year, so thought it should be juuust fine, but apparently they'd check the dates too. So we were late by a few weeks, had we got all the papers ready.
(Although officially it was still valid but for the paper work, they need it to be within 6 months old)


Soooo gutted that we went to have our car checked straight from Grasse, then we are REALLY ready.

Today, things went very smoothly. Handed all the papers along with the latest French MOT certificate (Contrôle Technique) and then they'd given us the new registration number straight away. Don't forget to keep a part of English registration certificate, as you'd need to send it to DVLA for termination the other end.

Apparently the registration in France is applied by the owner, not to the car unlike in England. Basically if the owner of the car changes, the registration number needs to be reassigned accordingly. The same thing applies if the owner of the car moves to other departments within France, as the number plate shows the registered department at the end of the plates.
That sounds so silly....and must be hell loads of work to do for the administration.


Anyways from today, the new system has been applied (started from small parts of the country) that new registration will be applied to the car and will no longer be required for changing the owner or the address of the owner.
Unfortunately, our number is still the old system, so if we ever move the department, we will need to change it then from there on, we can keep it as long as the car is working.

Once you have the number, you have officially 48 hours to make the new plate and have it fitted.

There was a little shop in front of the Council office that sells and fit the new plates - very clever business. We checked the price there and called the garage who does our car usually.
We went to the local garage after all, as it sounded a bit cheaper.

So there you go.... real 'au revoir' to English number plate.



After 10 months of waiting, the French number plate's just been fitted at last!

Am keeping my English plate, of course, as it's got loads of memories...

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