Officially a Motorhome

I have already written this on the old Posterous site, but as it's a very special thing and is an acknowledgement that our van is now officially a campervan I decided to re-post it here.

After a holiday away, a refurbish of the curtains and seat coverings and finally the addition of a table we decided our campervan ticked all the boxes required for the DVLA to consider our van as a motor caravan.  We took lots of photos of the inside and out, wrote a letter highlighting all the points for them to consider and sent off the V5 certificate to change the body type from panel van to motor caravan. We sent it off at the end of August, and finally received the new V5 mid October. They specify that it can take up to six weeks for them to consider the information you have given them before making a decision and they certainly took the whole six weeks. But we have it now and Kevin is very proud.

Camper Van Life website has an excellent run down on the requirements for changing your V5 and how to go about it. If you follow everything you're told on there to the letter you should have no problem at least for the time being, in changing your panel van into a motor caravan. There are however rumours and rumblings about a new EC Directive on the re-classification of vehicles which I think is due to come in next April (2012). It may well be worth trying to find out more about this online as it sounds like it's about to get a whole lot more difficult to be able to do a D.I.Y. conversion.

I've added Camper Van Life to the Useful Sites list to the top right of this page..  It has a very active forum and lots of information for anyone considering converting their van, but for the specific page on DVLA requirements please click here.  I've also added Campton Insurance to the list. We used Campton to insure our campervan and look forward to doing a favourable post on that at a later date.

One thing the DVLA seem to be getting more keen on is whether the conversion looks like a motor caravan from the outside too.  It must have windows fitted to the sides and should be instantly recognisable as a motor caravan when it's seen out on the road by for example the police.  We added some graphics for good measure, though I'm never too sure about the stars on the bonnet.  Everyone seems to think they look good, perhaps they're just being kind.