After sound advice to shop for my new motorhome (which I wanted to be left hand drive) amongst German dealers late August, when good deals are to be had, I found the motorhome I wanted with a dealer in Mannheim, and took on the task of importing it to the UK myself.

Whilst I’m hoping this will serve as a guide for anyone else wanting to do the same, the impeding Brexit and how the UK might exit from the EU will certainly impact some of the processes I undertook, but maybe not that much, since it seems the UK government will continue to recognise the EU standards and vice versa, for some time to come.

I also followed this post where the author detailed their steps, though that was for a new motorhome where it was marginally different for some steps.

Your steps should be:

• Order a vehicle import pack from the DVLA
• Buy the vehicle you want from a dealer, tell them you need to export it
• They will arrange for export plates to be fitted close to your pick-up date. You have to tell them to which country you’re exporting
• Whilst they will arrange insurance for a short time (2 weeks to a month), it will only be 3rd party. I managed to convince my insurer (arranged via Staveley Head) to give me full insurance on the VIN number from collection day
• Collect the vehicle, do a PROPER inspection
• Make sure you have the ORIGINAL registration and certificate of conformity documents
• An invoice with your UK address clearly showing how much you paid, and that you’ve paid VAT. It MUST show the dealer’s VAT number
• Drive to the UK, and head straight to an MOT test centre where they need to confirm the headlights have been adjusted, the speedo is in both MPH and KPH and the foglights at the back are either dual or there’s one, on the off side. Most never motorhomes and cars now have dual rear fog lights.
• Submit your NOVA (HMRC), online. You need a UK GOV login for this (same one you use for your tax and other GOV stuff)
• Submit your application to DVSA for the technical comformity confirmation. Mine came back within a week.
• Submit your V55/5 application to DVLA to get the V5C. This took about two anxious weeks of waiting. You can’t really phone them about this either …

Tips / things to look out for:

VAT Payment: The UK government views a vehicle as used provided it is more than 6 months old (since first registration) AND it has done more than 6 000km. This is important for the VAT payment. Ideally, you’ve paid the VAT with the German dealer, and then the UK goverment will view VAT as paid. The exact conditions are:

• VAT has already been paid in any EU country including the UK
• the vehicle has been in use for more than 6 months
• the vehicle has done more that 6,000km (about 3,728 miles)

In my case this was a bit tricky since the vehicle was first registered in May 2019, and I was doing the import in late October, one month away from 6 months. So the initial NOVA submission suggested I had to pay VAT again, and claim the German VAT back from the German government. I did not rate my chances of success on this very high, and I phoned HMRC, gave them my NOVA reference and had them confirm to me that yes indeed, VAT is due. My heart sank a bit but when I said the vehicle had 12 500 miles on it, and was rented out in the summer, she told me to wait a minute or so, and I could hear her typing away on her keyboard. A minute or two later she said “all done, no VAT is due now”! I did not expect that! She basically said common sense prevails and it’s clear the vehicle is not new. Wow. A lot of pain, paperwork and so forth avoided there, in a simple call.

Again with Brexit I would think the VAT payment will change, but all it will mean is you WON’T pay the VAT in Germany, but will upon import into the UK.

MOT test station paperwork for DVSA: It’s very important you get this bit right. My local MOT test station was very co-operative, and they performed the headlight adjustment and checks, and then on the invoice wrote the following (copied from that original post I referenced):

Reference: Inspection of motorhome, chassis number (enter your chassis number here)

We have today inspected the motorhome as described above and confirm that:

1) The vehicle has rear fog lights fitted as standard to both the left and right hand side of the rear of the vehicle

2) The headlights fitted to the vehicle are left dipping headlights. As such, there comply with the requirements of the UK. (We are advised that this was done by the German motorhome dealer)

3) The speedometer within the vehicle is dual marked. Primarily in miles per hour and also in kilometres per hour”.

Note – the invoice MUST itself comply with certain criteria, the exact detail is contained within this link), then I was able to apply for “type approval” for the motorhome. This involves completing the VCA paperwork and paying a £100 fee. If you are in a hurry, you will probably wish to avoid the “pay by cheque” option and use postal orders or a credit card instead.

Speedometer: For the DVSA, your speedometer must show at least MPH but ideally also KPH (kilometers per hour) if you’re planning on using the motorhome in Europe. By default a German motorhome, likely on a Fiat chassis, will only show KPH. Don’t stress about this – contact Lockwood International and discuss your motorhome with them, they are excellent in knowing what to send you. Also, their guides are brilliant and it really took less then 10 minutes for me to replace the speedometer face, despite me being very worried about this.

A tip: I used cooking / surgical gloves in this process to avoid getting fingerprint smudge marks on the dials and faceplate etc.

The DVSA step to get a UK vehicle approval certificate issued was easy enough, took less than a week to get back, but the most complicated one was the V55/5. This form is a nightmare and you might ask your friendly mechanic/MOT engineer to assist you here. However, you can leave certain boxes blank if you’re not sure of the answer (rather than filling in the wrong answer) as the DVLA can pick up the blanks from the original conformity documents, it seems.

Posting of original documents: Be aware that the DVSA and the DVLA will require the original documents (e.g. original certificate of conformity etc). They do send these back, of course. I read some online postings of things going missing whilst en-route to DVLA etc, so I made colour scans of all my documents and kept them all together in a backed up folder on my computer, just in case. Also, send these things signed for and keep the post office proof of postage slip.

Why import? I probably should have started with this but I was keen to get a left hand drive motorhome, as I will be doing most of my touring on the continent. I might even take this motorhome to the US at some stage. The biggest consideration for me was potential cost savings, which I did achieve firstly with a reduction in the sale price as I was buying ex-rental / ex-showroom stock late August using the mobile.de site (excellent), and since I avoided a UK dealer mark-up on left hand drive models. Obviously if you’re after a right hand drive model, you’ll be buying from a UK dealer.

It can be a bit stressful and you obviously need to have the time available to do this, including the going there, driving it back etc and doing all the bits mentioned above – but if you do, the savings can be immense – I estimate in total I saved about 20 to 25% of what I would have paid a UK dealer, and I have a 2019 registered UK plated motorhome now. The process took less than a month, though I was at the MOT garage on the same day as I arrived into the UK, to make sure I get this done as soon as I could. In the meantime my insurer reminder me from time to time to let them know of the new registration – they gave me 1 month to do this in, which I just about made. I’m not sure what would have happened with my insurance if it took longer! However, I’m happy I did this and I’m thoroughly enjoying my new motorhome. So, I’m off to Spain for the rest of the winter soon!