Full-time and long-term motor home and campervanners lack one thing in common. A postal address. A residence. Managing without a permanent base while you explore the UK, Europe and beyond, can be both exciting and challenging.
How Can Fulltime Motorhome Owners Have a Postal Address? You will need an address of some sort, but there are plenty of ways to travel without the need for a permanent postcode. Some people will demand an address from you, but you can receive posts and packages pretty much wherever you are.
Travelling without a door key for the first time is a strange experience. You drive down the road for the first time, knowing you don’t have a front door to return too. No permanent address, no bolt hole. Let’s discover why that isn’t as frightening as it may seem.
Why Do We Need A Permanent Address?
In many ways, we don’t. Nobody forces us to have an address and live in a house. It is, however, the expectation of 99.9% of the population and certainly of the government.
However, we choose to travel by motorhome and campervan, many of us on a full-time or long-term basis. Who needs a front door?
Is It a Legal Requirement to Have a Permanent Address?
No, plain and simple. Nobody can force anyone to live in a house or have an address.
That said, it can be interesting to try and live without an address.
Your Family are your Friends
The most common way to manage an address while you are travelling, is with a family member. If the family isn’t an option, then a trusted friend.
Their address becomes your ‘chosen address’, a term used in this article to represent the place you have selected as your contact point.
Agree on this with them ahead of advising people of your new address!
When all is settled, agree on what they should do with any post received. Do they open it, or just leave in a pile? Will they scan the post and email it to you?
Are they going to parcel up and send on to you somewhere from time to time? If so, then supply them with some large envelopes or Jiffy bags, plus a pile of postage stamps. Do stamps rather than money, as this will save them a trip to the post office.
Agree whether you will be added to the electoral role at their address. Some family members of friends may not be happy with that.
No Friends or Family?
If you lack family or trusted friends, there is another option for setting up a chose address.
The folks at Vanpost provide a fixed address which will be recognised by most institutions as a suitable formal address.
You can’t collect from a Vanpost address but can arrange for letters and packages to be forwarded to another address. Check the Vanpost website for details.
What About a Post Office Box?
These are quite expensive and limited to a single pick-up point.
The other disadvantage is that organisations such as banks, credit card suppliers, insurance companies and online vendors won’t accept a post office box as an acceptable address.
Insurance with No Address
Insurance from your motorhome or campervan is a legal requirement and an insurance company will need a home address.
You need to change the address to your chosen address and not leave it at your previous location. The reason for this is that the insurance company will need to be able to contact you via a physical address in the case of an accident.
Paperwork for a claim may need to be reviewed or signed. If an insurance company discovered you are insured at an address where you no longer have any association, they could invalidate any insurance claim, which could be very expensive your £50,000 van is stolen.
The exception here could be if you still own your home and have a tenant there. However, you would need to be certain you can retrieve any paperwork, so a chose address may be the best option.
Also, if you have breakdown insurance with a ‘return to home’ clause, it would be very inconvenient if you and your vehicle were returned to the insured address in Cumbria where a tenant now lives, when your only sort of base you have is the chosen address with family or friends, is in Kent.
Banks and Credit Cards without an Address
This simply won’t work. You do need an address for banks and credit card companies.
These organisations will require a permanent address and won’t provide a service without one.
You can opt for paperless statements, which cuts down the need for a letterbox, but even then, they will post you some items such as marketing materials and changes to terms and conditions.
Cutting Down the Paperwork
This is part of the trick.
Significant numbers of businesses want their customers to go paperless and you can take advantage of that.
Most want to use paperless to save them money on paper, printing, envelopes, and postage, while at the same time, not reducing their charges.
You can go through all your bills and sign-up for online access and paperless bills where this is an option. It is surprising how much this can cut down your physical post-box, while at the same time, cluttering up your email.
The ones which are more difficult to do will be annual subscriptions to organisations such as the National Trust and any motorhome clubs. These organisations may have online access but will want to send out their annual printed handbooks. Also, these are the easiest to forget to change to your chosen address.
Before you start to travel, collect up the junk mail and write on it ‘Gone Way, Remove Address’ and put back in the post-box. This will stop a fair percentage of junk mail, but it seems that some companies are simply too thick to read your return mail and will still send after you leave the address.
Who Absolutely Needs You to Have Your Address?
DVLA (V5C and Driving Licence)
HMRC (The taxman)
Banks
Credit card companies
Passport Office
Other financial institutions
Using Amazon Without a Postal Address
Being on the road in the UK means that online shopping needs a little forward planning.
Using Amazon to order and receive products is straightforward. You will need to have your chosen address registered so that your debit and credit card postcode matches to enable payment to go through.
As you move through the checkout procedure, there is an option to select delivery at specific locations. These can be Amazon lockers, located anywhere from newsagents, petrol stations and shopping centre. Many post offices and shops act as pick-up points, but without the lockers.
During the checkout, search for a pick-up location where you will be in a few days’ time on your travels and have your order sent there. Look for an email from Amazon with either a number code, barcode or QR code. These you can use from your mobile phone or tablet to retrieve your order.
Then, all you need to do, is visit the pick-up point, use the information from the email and collect your order.
Check the location for opening hours. Many petrol stations with a locker are accessible 24 hours a day, whether the station is open or not. Shops will vary and remember that Post Offices close at noon on a Saturday and are closed all day Sunday.
Some Amazon products come directly from business and not an Amazon warehouse, so could take a few days longer to arrive at the locker or pick-up location.
Using eBay Without a Postal Address
Many but not all traders on eBay will send your order to somewhere other than your chosen address. This may not be possible with private sellers.
When you are looking at an item on eBay, you will see an option on many products for them to be sent to a branch of Argos. With some forward planning and knowing where you are going to be in a few days’ time, you can select an appropriate Argos location where you can collect your order.
Argos is owned by Sainsbury and many of the pick-up points are at out of town locations, where parking is free and easy.
What needs to be remembered with eBay is that, unlike Amazon, products are sent from individual companies and not from a central warehouse. This can mean that delivery to the Argos maybe a little longer than indicated.
Poste Restante
This is something you may not have come across but can be very useful for those on the road full-time.
Poste Restante means someone can send you a package for you to collect from almost any post office in the UK. In fact, this works in most parts of the world, so while you are in your motorhome in Europe, you can pick-up mail.
This does take a little setting up, so may not work if you move around a lot.
The way it works is that you visit the Post Office branch you want to receive post at and register there. Then, someone can send you a package which you can collect at that exact branch.
The sender needs to address the package in the following way:
Your name
POST RESTANTE
Post Office name
Full address of the Post Office
Postcode of the Post Office
The correct postage stamps must be attached, along with a return address. The receiving Post Office will keep the package for up to 14 days and then return it to the sender.
To collect your package, you will need to provide proof of your address and show your passport.
And the beauty of this system is that it is free to use.
Post Office Redirection Service
When you leave your permanent address and have a new chosen location settled, advise the Post Office so they can re-direct any mail.
This is useful for those you forget to tell and especially for those companies who are so inept that they don’t change your address. Over the years I have had a significant problem with a very large insurance company beginning with the letter ‘A’, who I have to write to several times, every time I change my address. Despite moving from my last location nine months ago, they have still to make the change on one policy I hold with them.
Posting to Campsites
You could try this but it isn’t entirely reliable.
For instance, the friends and family at your chosen address have some important items they need to forward to you.
Your plans to be as a specific campsite in a week’s time and are all booked in.
You can ask the folks at your chosen address to pack up the post and send to the campsite. Add to the outside of the envelope something like ‘For Nigel Peacock, arriving on (date) please hold’.
It is polite to ask the campsite first before making this arrangement, as some may refuse.
The risk is that someone at the campsite will lose to even throw away your package. And not everyone everywhere is honest either.
Have Your Post Scanned
If you trust your family or friends to open your post, then here is another alternative.
Your post could be scanned or photographed on a mobile phone and sent to you by email. This can be useful for some important post.
You will need to consider here, whether you want the folks at your chosen address to see any confidential financial information sent to you.
Who To Advise When You Change Your Address
Banks
Credit cards
DVLA (V5C vehicle logbook)
DVLA (Driving Licence)
Pension providers
HMRC (Pensions)
HMRC (Income tax)
Mobile phone supplier
Insurance
Annual subscriptions
PayPal
Amazon
eBay
Voting & the Electoral Role While Travelling Fulltime
In order to vote in local and general elections, you need to be on the voter roll in your local constituency.
Without a permanent address, you won’t have the ability to vote.
One solution is to be added to the electoral roll at your chosen address. If this is with family or friends, you will need to ask their permission before registering at their address.
If you are determined to exercise your right to vote while you are nowhere near the registered address, you are moving into postal vote territory.
When an election is announced, you will need to contact the local authority to request a postal vote. The paperwork will be sent to the local address and, somehow, you need to have that forwarded to you.
Another reason for being on the electoral roll is that it will help to maintain your credit rating, as having an address will help your score.
Can I Just Leave My Address Unchanged?
You could pretend you still live at your old address and, if you own it and are renting, this makes some sense. Here you would need to arrange with your tenant, what they should do with any postal mail. Bear in mind, some tenants won’t be honest, pleased, or willing to do anything other than throwing it in the bin!
However, if you are no longer associated with the old address, consider how fair it would be for the new owner or tenant to be receiving your post and having to forward or return it.
I have lived in a couple of places where the previous tenant purposely didn’t tell anyone they had moved. I used to receive constant postal mail which I marked as “Gone Away’, which stopped some of it. However, it didn’t stop bailiffs arriving on the doorstep on two separate occasions. I’m not saying you are running from your creditors, but not changing an address when you no longer have any association with the property isn’t fair on anyone.
Safe Travels!