Foreign Perspectives

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As befits its status as the largest inland lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is host to numerous water activities in the tourist season.

What’s on offer varies around the circumferance of the lake with some areas being devoted to nature reserves, others to more active water sports and nearly everywhere various boating activities. Naturally, these are combined in various spots and in the area near the town of Antrim there is a particularly mixed bag with quite a reasonable nature reserve running along the coastline, a golf course on one side, a small café, marina and boating activities on offer ranging from a boat trip on a pirate ship to jet skis.

This particular area is quite rich in other tourist sites too with numerous small castles within perhaps 20 minutes of Antrim along with a number of historic homesteads (eg that of the Bronte sisters and a few with links to various American presidents). Well under an hour from here will let you sample exhibitions on the history of the plantation and on the emigration from Ireland over the centuries.

It’s quite an interesting spot to base a holiday and Belfast International Airport (BFS) is just around the corner.

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If you’re moving to live in France, you might think that it would be impossible to prove that you still live in the UK but in fact it’s both possible and useful to be able to do it.

If you live in the UK, there’s generally no problem proving where you live so long as you’ve been there for a year or two. You’ll have electric bills, tax demands, bank statements and the like to do that. If you’ve moving abroad or have moved it’s a different matter though.

Even if you have kept your house in the UK, chances are that you have tenants in it and therefore it can be impractical to use that address and if you’ve sold up then, of course, you definitely can’t use it.

Although you may be living in France, there are times when you’ll find it useful to “prove” that you are actually in the UK. For example, Sky won’t let you keep a UK TV service unless they have a UK address for you and you won’t be able to renew a UK driving license without a UK address either.

The simplest thing to do is to move one or two credit card or bank account addresses to the UK address of a friend or family member before you leave the country. Doing this has the effect of moving your credit history to the new address as it looks like a normal house move to the credit card people. Whilst you’re doing this, it’s worthwhile to set up a UK local rate number for yourself and quote that to the credit card companies; these are free and excellent for friends & family too.

The only downside of this is that if you’re using one of the credit cards with a UK address on it then after a while you’ll generally find the card blocked or services limited as it can look like your card has been stolen. To avoid this, it’s best to limit use of such cards or restrict using them to times when you are in the UK or perhaps for Internet purchases. The advantages far outweigh any minor inconvenience on this front.

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It sometimes seems that every aspect of French life needs to be documented and, for the most part, by documentation that doesn’t exist outside France.

When you move to France, you will continually be asked for your ID card which isn’t issued (yet) by the UK and quite often for your Carte de Séjour (residence permit) which, if you’re European, you’ve not been required to have for several years now. In the absence of those, your passport will obviously suffice and sometimes even a driving license.

The Livre de Famille or family book is given to those who marry in France and contains, in effect, the birth certificates of the couple and any children that they have along with the marriage certificate. Almost every contact you have with French officialdom asks you for this mainly because the French don’t issue birth certificates and the documentation that they issue instead is only valid for three months. In practice your own passport and the birth certificates of the children are the equivalent. Since the French documents expire, many people will assume that your documents do too and keep them as is the practice with the French documents; if you point out that they are certificates they’ll usually photocopy them instead.

Proof of address is obviously difficult to provide when you first move to France and in some circumstances later on too. To get around this, the French authorities will normally let you produce an “attestation” that states you live at your current address. The “attestation” is effectively a letter (in French) saying that you live there. Even the French recognise that it’s not always possible to prove that!

One oddity is that the French will often ask for the amount of income that you had in France before you came here. Now, for the majority of people the answer to this will obviously be “nothing” but that doesn’t stop the French using that information and paying you assorted social security benefits on the basis that since you didn’t earn anything in France, then clearly you didn’t earn anything elsewhere. Yes, I know that’s crazy, but they definitely pay out money on that basis. What I’m wondering is what they’ll do when we leave France as they can hardly charge us tax, social security and health insurance if we’re not here, although you never know with the French.

 This is part of our series on buying a house in France.

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